Ask my mother about my drawings and she'll tell you I've been doodling since I was old enough to hold a crayon. My nickname growing up was "Meggie Doodle Bug" which has been affectionately (and embarrassingly) shortened to "Meggie".
I always wanted to be an artist. I thought that would be the greatest job in the world. My dad bought me my first sketch book. Santa Claus brought me art kits. My neighbor invited me over to help with her water color projects. I was enrolled in a program called G.A.T.E. (Gifted And Talent Enrichment) for art where every Friday I would go to another school and learn about different artists, different creative methods and produce art pieces.
Art and the ability to create has been huge for me. I find drawing even the simplest doodle to be therapeutic. It gave and continues to give me joy. It makes me smile!
Now onto the letters. My first pen pal was with my best friend. We met when we were four years old. At first she didn't like me and pushed me down the stairs at her grandma's house, but surprisingly we were became inseparable after that! She was from Indiana and her grandmother and I lived in Ohio, but she would visit often. Eventually we both had to go to school. Once we learned enough of the alphabet and how to combine the letters to make words, we started sending letters to one another. The letters were also filled with drawings of horses and photographs of our dogs.
I still have those letters.
Writing back and forth stopped though when Facebook and texting came about.
My love of letters and mail came again when I decided to serve a mission for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was waiting for a large, white envelope that would tell me where I would be for the next 18 months of my life. Needless to say, I was extremely anxious and I would walk to our mailbox every day and wait for the mailman to deliver the mail.
It got to the point where he just handed the mail to me instead of put it in the box, which is probably as close to a first name basis as we'd ever get.
As a missionary, my form of communication with my family and friends was through email and letters. That's when I fused my two loves together - the doodles and sending and receiving mail. Every letter I sent to my friends had some doodle on the front - a state to state, an LDS temple, flowers, you name it.
And even though I've been back from my mission for over a year, I still doodle on envelopes. It still makes me smile and it makes the receiver smile also.
Thank you for helping me spread the "Sending Smiles" sunshine around. It's something I love and I couldn't do any of this without you! Thank you for being a part of my "Sending Smiles" story.
