Daily, on our early morning walks, Butch’s first stop is always for a sprinkle on a little bush just around the corner. Without fail, and for the past year and a half, that one bush has been fed his first morning pee, every day.

Of all the many bushes along that sidewalk, Butch’s favorite bush is the healthiest, greenest, and best thriving hands down. Personally, I think Butch is magical in many ways, but now there is incontrovertible evidence that he’s making a real difference on the landscape of this world.

I’m a proud dad.

Some days forever change your perspective.

“You got a card,” said the receptionist on her rounds about the office, tossing a small pink envelope with no return address on my desk at lunchtime.

Busy working through the hour on a difficult project, I could have easily lost it amid the mounds of scattered papers I call my desk.

By the time I was finished, I’d added another wave of debris to the stacks but the little pink corner peeked out among the mess as if it had climbed itself to the top not to go unnoticed. I grabbed it with my left and gulped a sip of cold coffee with my right.

Nobody sends me cards at work. A pink one at that.

But It being just a few days ‘til Valentine’s Day, I sniffed it for perfume but it smelled just like a card, so I tossed it back and went to lunch.

The day had been merciless at our little non-profit that helps people stay housed, fed and plugged in to utilities at critical times of their lives when nobody else cares. Much of my morning had been spent on such cases but I returned from lunch with a salad and what I thought might be some better ideas how to help these people.

A dozen more urgent memos had made their way onto my heap during the 20 minutes away but the corner of that same pink envelope had again risen like a phoenix as if were begging to be opened.

I notice things like that.

My desk may be a fire hazard but I keep snapshots of it in my mind for times like this and I knew that card wasn’t buried where I had left it just minutes earlier.

No return address, I opened it.

“I just want to thank you for all you do for me. Seems we never find the time to say it enough but thank you, I will always remember this day.”

That was it. No salutation. No signature. No return address. Nothing.

Easing back in my chair puzzled as a forensic investigator, I was attempting to recognize the penmanship or some other telltale mark that might reveal the sender’s identity, when it hit me.

So many names, cases and contacts I have made over the years. I suppose it could have come from any one of them, or all of them for that matter. I let my mind sort through the register of memories and in doing so, I smiled, realizing the absolute brilliance in the strategy of this one anonymous pink envelope author.

He or she wasn’t satisfied with just paying it forward as so many get noticed doing these days. Buying someone’s coffee or meal, pitching in a buck when someone comes up short at checkout, all are wonderful displays of a caring humanity, but the power held in this tiny, pink, anonymous card trumped them all.

Its anonymity had the power to change the world, or at least one person’s perspective of it.

For the remainder of the day, while doing my work, I kept imagining names and faces of possible senders and individual reasons for their thankfulness. It could have been pretty much any one of them. By 6pm as I left the office for home, the entire experience had changed me.

The cluelessness of that lunchtime mystery had put a smile on my face that remained all afternoon.

That brilliant anonymous author of the pink envelope never meant their identity to be known.

They meant to be Anyone or Everyone.

I tucked the pink card from Anyone in the corner of my bulletin board, turned out my light, and said goodbye to the staff in what had become a lovely ending to a difficult week and began my weekend with a smile and a stop at the store to pick up postage and a few blank little pink cards of my own.

I wonder if they’ll wonder why

I never ever said good bye.

I’m not around and out of touch

Nothing nowhere, not so much.

I wonder if they’ll wonder where

I’ve clearly vanished to thin air.

Or look and see I’m not around

And hear me not, and can’t be found.

I wonder if they’ll wonder how

I took my leave without a bow.

Or disappeared without a trace

And left a tear on no one’s face.

I wonder if they’ll wonder when

I might be coming back again.

Like absences that reappear,

Not very likely, this is clear.

I wonder if they’ll wonder if

At six feet under when I’m stiff

I’ve gone away to heaven’s gate

With earnest hope for them to wait.

I wonder who will wonder then

Or think of things which might have been

Or wonder not, their life resume

To wonder things they just presume.

I wonder if I’ll even wonder

In that sleep to think and ponder

Thoughts like these I left behind

Or in their slumber never mind.

Or if and when and how and why

It even matters when I die?

But wonder not where I have gone,

Rejoice instead “He’s finally home!”