Anyone who knows my mother-in-love (MIL) would agree that she’s a pretty cool customer. She’s warm and funny, supportive and wise and one of the most positive people I’ve ever met. She’s also a total babe and plays the double base in a jazz group but that’s beside the point. She’s been a psychologist, a music teacher, a museum docent and apparently now dabbles in some light trafficking.

Today I arrived home to find this in my mailbox:

Check out the size of that bottle! But wait there’s more.

Boxes and boxes of Shopper’s Drug Mart brand rapid release acetaminophen expertly hidden by newspaper (my MIL says it throws the dogs off). Aren’t they beautiful? I swear to you if you’d told me a year ago I’d be this happy about a shoebox that didn’t have any shoes in it I would’ve written you a prescription.

After I tore open the package, made a tuna sandwich with globs of Miracle Whip and took two capsules just because I could, I noticed a white envelope taped to the brown paper wrapping. I opened it expecting a packing slip but instead I found a note, not from my MIL but from another mother altogether. Apparently when Neil’s mom went to the post office the woman serving her saw my name on the parcel and asked if I was the psychiatrist who used to work in Halifax. They got to talking and sure enough I had treated her daughter a few years back.

Imagine the kindness of that woman taking time out of her busy day to write me a note. I remember her and her daughter well. She didn’t mention her child and that usually means one of two things. I choose to believe that her daughter is all grown up, happy and healthy and singing her heart out, something she used to do regularly during her sessions with me.

Anyway, this mother wished me well and hoped that I was enjoying France “because you deserve the best.” Okay, I’ll buy that and between my MIL, the son she produced and the Miracle Whip I’d say things are right on track.

I smiled as I thought about my patient’s mother taping that letter to the package and I wondered if she asked if she could. I imagine it’s illegal to tamper with anyone’s mail but then again she probably took one look at my well coiffed and beautifully dressed mother-in-law and said to herself, “I know a dealer when I see one. That letter’s going on.”