Love, Jan

Do you pause when signing an e-mail or a letter? Do you scour your mind to determine what kind of relationship you have with the addressee? Do you feel affectionate towards that person? Wish her well? Love her? Tolerate but need to communicate with her?

And regardless of how you feel, how do you perceive him or her to feel towards you? If you sign the note with "Love", will he be offended? Scared? Intimidated? Or will he not even notice how you sign the note?

Are you obsessing about this way too much? In my case, probably so. But I worry. I worry about people liking me. The Little Adoptee rears its ugly head yet again—I don't want to be re-abandoned.

I wrote a note to my oldest brother this morning. I started to sign it "Love, Jan", as I do care about him and he is a family member. But I rarely feel he cares at all about me. I don't think I'm a blip on his radar screen. His acaring trumped my desire for a close and loving family, so I signed it, "Hope you're doing well, Jan". A total cop-out!

When writing e-mails to people with whom I regularly correspond, I frequently review notes from them to see how they signed their notes, then I will mirror that closing with a similar phrase of the same emotional merit. "Warmly" "Regards" "Best".

"Hugs" seems to say "Love" without using that intimidating L-word. But I would only use "Hugs" with someone I've actually hugged. If it's a cyberfriend that I've shared a lot of my life with, I might close with "cyberhugs" or "hugs across the miles".

If it's a close girlfriend or a man I'm dating (can there be such a thing?), I might sign "xo, jc". That's the most familiar closing and implies that the addressee knows me very well. Oh, and that we've shared hugs and/or kisses.

Who knew that the simple act of signing an e-mail could carry such enormous emotional weight.

(Yeah, and if you think I was obsessive about this, you oughta be with me when I'm picking out a greeting card for my mother. How do I make her feel suitably acknowledged (in her mind) while not saying something I don't feel? I just want to say, "Thanks for taking me to all those piano lessons and helping me learn to sew." I certainly don't want to mush on and on about what a great mother she was; she wasn't!

Oh, wait. It's only a greeting card, not a contract.)