Blood

 Earlier this month I donated blood for the 3d time this year, the 132d time lifetime. INOVA loves my O positive blood.

I received a $10 Walmart gift card for my effort, the third such reward gift card I have received in the last three years for donating blood. Next winter I'll put one gift card in each birthday card for my three estranged adult sons and send it to the best address I have for each one, two in NC (their mother lives there and my sons are nearby because they are all, obvious to me, still in thrall of this, in my opinion, covert narcissist with pathological lying tendencies) and one in Richmond, I think, if he and his achieving wife are still married.  This last child I have never had an adult address for so I just send his card to my house addressed to him in care of me, and then I throw it in his box in my basement which he can have if he comes to get it or upon my demise unless the executors of my estate pitch those three boxes (one for each of my children) in the trash first.

I hope the cards will benefit each of them in some small degree. I also hope that my overarching message to these three special people will resonate with them to some degree that volunteering is beneficial to society as a whole.

 The last I heard from or of any of them was in 2007 when the youngest one was ready for college and he wrote to me ("Dear Peter") asking me to provide for the full payment of all his tuition and fees for the four years he attended, which I did. I was sad he didn't let me know if he actually graduated, although I know full tuition and all fees for eight full semesters were paid for over the next five years (I guess he took a year off, and hopefully he finished up by the end of his eighth semester). Basically he also went to two years of prep boarding school on money my mother left to me to be used for his benefit--which his mother sued me for (she was eventually assessed costs and penalties by the court of almost $50,000 for bringing forth unjustified and harassing litigation) and then used it anyway to get him out of state his last two years of high school because, I believe, she couldn't or didn't want to handle the little darling anymore and so she packed him off without even telling me about it; and then never has a single word been said by any of these three boys (now men) to any Lamberton in over two decades expressing any appreciation or acknowledgement in any form for my mother's (their grandmother) generosity towards them as they each received about a $100,000 fund from her in custodial accounts to be used for their benefit.