Job appreciated

Every holiday--mainly Mother's Day and Christmas, I always get requests to downsize photos for lockets. I've done so many that I have my technique down pat and can get it all done within an hour. My charge isn't much because I use scraps of photo paper. The worse part is cutting the photos to size, especially if the locket is small and heart shaped.

This Mother's day I only did one for a guy who was giving the locket to his daughter. The locket had two large slots and two very small ones. He sent the photos and locket via his wife. A little later he called with instructions on where to put which. Feeling comfortable with me, he told me the story behind the pictures. The first was of his daughter, her hubbie and their sick infant. They were sitting on a couch with Mom holding the baby and dad with his arms around Mom--both parents looking down at the sleeping child. The next photo was of the same baby in a coffin. It had died from crib death. The third and forth photos were of their new baby--a healthy girl who was around 7 months old. My customer wanted to include both children because they were equally loved. It touched my heart that the first child wasn't forgotten. SO I carefully worked on getting the pictures downsized, cut to shape and placed witin the locket.

I did the best I could and wasn't around when the locket was picked up. I asked Dad if they liked what I did. He said they were all every emotional. So I took that to mean I did a good job.

Friday, the guy called to tell me how much his daughter loved the locket and to thank me for doing it, because he had taken the photos to several places and no one could help him. It made my day that he wand his family were so pleased. Customers tell me all the time that they'll let me know if so and so likes the photos I repair, but very seldom do they call back.

About twenty mins later, a floral delivery arrived. It was from the man and his family thanking me for a 'wonderful job' and I confess...I cried a few quick tears. I was touched to the bone. Later I called the customer's cell phone and left a teary thank you on his voice mail.

The arrangement is small and has one of my favorite flowers in it. I took it to Al's and it's on the desk with his computer. Looks as if it was made to fit there.

Sometimes you feel as if what you do doesn't mean much until you get customers like this who remind you, just how much you can touch a life.