Love Stamps
As part of my parental requirement to teach responsibility to my only offspring, my son gets the mail from the box on his way to the house from the bus each day after school. I arrive home shortly after he does (the continued age of the latch-key children) to a pile of mostly crap that may or may not include one valid bill. My son, in his infinite wisdom and maturity has already taken account of everything in the mail and will quickly point out pieces he deems “important”. If perhaps, Chase Financial sends me two identical credit card offers, the Little Man firmly believes it doubles its priority. He has learned over the last two years that anything that arrives with my former married name on it is indeed as much junk as my marriage was. Pieces of mail that read “Open Immediately”; “Dated Materials Enclosed” or “Special Offer” he stacks on top. As I quickly rip up each piece and place it in the trash pile, his eyes get wider and wider in disbelief. He will even stop to say, “Mom, that one there is from your college.” as though it will change my mind on using my single-mom budget to support a small liberal arts college in Illinois rather than putting money aside for his collegiate education. All this from the same child who once called my cell phone on my way home to alert me to a message on the answering machine. “Mom. Don’t erase this one until you’ve listened to it the whole way through. The man says he can reduce your interest rate on your MORTGAGE payment!”
I must admit, there was a time when I was as enamored with the U.S. Mail System and all that
it delivered. But somehow, during that mythical and intangible time when you stop being a child and start being an adult, when you stop having the ability to hand off the bills to someone else to worry about, you realize something has changed about the mail. Those envelopes with handwriting on them are a thing of the past. No packages arrive unexpectedly anymore. The mail rarely holds any good surprises. It is full of bills, useless catalogs (you would not believe the obsession the former home-owners here had with mail-order everything) and offers to put myself further and further into debt if only I’ll sign here, or cash this. What a sheer joy it would be to sort through my mail to see my name handwritten on an envelope. When the Little Man receives a letter from a pen-pal many states away, I am often more excited than he is. Perhaps because I don’t have the task of sitting down to pencil and paper to write him back, the absolute, most inconceivable form of torture known to a nine-year old boy. I am sincerely jealous of this small treasure that he has received.
In the back of my closet, in a worn old shoebox I have a collection of letters. The letters themselves, I’m sure are unremarkable except for the label on the box itself. My mother, whom I lost to cancer 12 years ago, wrote on the box full of letters my sister and I wrote to her from college in the years leading up to her death, “Letters Saved for a Rainy Day”. Not only does it touch my heart to know that she saved letters from the two of us to help cheer her up during the rough days, but it touches a deep part of me to know that I am remarkably like my mother in the way that I covet handwritten tokens of love. I intend this week to put ink to paper and send off a few sentiments to old friends. I hope to find a return letter on top of the pile one day, but even if I don’t, I will treasure the thought of my friends finding their name handwritten on an envelope mingled in with the bills. Maybe they will brighten up another rainy day.
I must admit, there was a time when I was as enamored with the U.S. Mail System and all that
it delivered. But somehow, during that mythical and intangible time when you stop being a child and start being an adult, when you stop having the ability to hand off the bills to someone else to worry about, you realize something has changed about the mail. Those envelopes with handwriting on them are a thing of the past. No packages arrive unexpectedly anymore. The mail rarely holds any good surprises. It is full of bills, useless catalogs (you would not believe the obsession the former home-owners here had with mail-order everything) and offers to put myself further and further into debt if only I’ll sign here, or cash this. What a sheer joy it would be to sort through my mail to see my name handwritten on an envelope. When the Little Man receives a letter from a pen-pal many states away, I am often more excited than he is. Perhaps because I don’t have the task of sitting down to pencil and paper to write him back, the absolute, most inconceivable form of torture known to a nine-year old boy. I am sincerely jealous of this small treasure that he has received.In the back of my closet, in a worn old shoebox I have a collection of letters. The letters themselves, I’m sure are unremarkable except for the label on the box itself. My mother, whom I lost to cancer 12 years ago, wrote on the box full of letters my sister and I wrote to her from college in the years leading up to her death, “Letters Saved for a Rainy Day”. Not only does it touch my heart to know that she saved letters from the two of us to help cheer her up during the rough days, but it touches a deep part of me to know that I am remarkably like my mother in the way that I covet handwritten tokens of love. I intend this week to put ink to paper and send off a few sentiments to old friends. I hope to find a return letter on top of the pile one day, but even if I don’t, I will treasure the thought of my friends finding their name handwritten on an envelope mingled in with the bills. Maybe they will brighten up another rainy day.
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