You've got mail
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
There is nothing quite so thrilling as walking down a lane, opening up the front of a rural mail box and discovering a letter on the inside with familiar handwriting on the envelope (for this reason, I believe there should be a law that says, "No junk mail and no advertising delivered by U.S. Mail" — unless you request it, of course.)
We loved getting mail at our post office box in Ramona through the years. We were only here for a short time in the summer and all of our bills went straight to California. It was pure vacation luxury to have a morning chat with the postmaster and only receive first class mail in return!
Getting a personal letter in the mail is like Christmas, Easter, and the Fourth of July all mixed up into one. It's Christmas, because while you may know that something is coming, you don't know what it is for sure until you open the package. Same with a letter. You can wish and wish and wish for it to appear, but it isn't there until it arrives. It's like finding a clutch of Easter eggs to discover an unexpected missive from a friend in your mailbox. And when the letter is from someone you love, the contents can be as exciting as the fireworks on the Fourth of July!
I just received a note from my Aunt Anna yesterday in her familiar handwriting and always look forward to hearing what she has to say, even though she only lives 10 miles away. She's a proper lady, at 96, with thank-you notes, birthday cards, and little tid-bits of information that she knows you will enjoy all appearing in straight lines and precise caligraphy. When her sister, my mother, writes, however, she fills her pages with large looping letters. We tease her and say that one whole side of a page could be completely consumed with a single sentence describing what she's cooking for dinner.
Being a lover of words, I thrive on correspondence and enjoyed receiving letters from a dear old friend of mine in Michigan through the years. He was a professor, teaching speech and rhetoric. He had the most profound vocabulary of anyone I've ever known. I still have his unabridged dictionary here in the office with one of his yellow Post-it notes stuck to the front. It reads, "ailurophile, cat lover. Ailuroidea includes cats, civets, and hyenas." Now how was he going to use that information? "There is a faint scent of ailuroidea in the air, don't you think?"
Shawzee, that's what I called him, read Webster's like I read Agatha Christie. He was always in search of a good mystery. Words were mysterious to him and immensely pleasureable. They carried the power to inspire, caress, soothe, move, and liberate the silent tongue or the beating heart. His letters were such a delight to receive — witty, poignant, exciting, ever-revealing. The fun started on the outside of the envelope where some clue appeared in the return address: Tye Dupp, P.O. Box 1, Berrien Springs, Mich., it would read — and I knew he was apologizing for how long it had been since he'd written — he'd been busy.
Inside, anything could appear. One time it was a rose all smished flat, encased in a plastic bag with a tiny bit of wet Kleenex wrapped around the stem. "This was the first bud on the rosebush outside my window," he wrote. "I wanted you to have it." I smiled at his tender touch and read on, "The only thing better, would have been if I could have given it to you in person." How precious! For 10 years or more, Shawzee and I sent letters across country until the day came when he could no longer live alone. His wife was dead, he had no children, so he made the decision to move to California and be near me so that I could care for him in what he called "the best years yet."
Plethora was a favorite word. He delighted in throwing it into a conversation — like I'm doing now. And plethora it was, when my sister and I went to Michigan to close down his house. We found a filing cabinet with every drawer stuffed full of our correspondence — a chronicle of 10 years of my life, signed, sealed, and delivered back to me! Row after row of carefully, lovingly arranged letters in chronological order with rubber bands around the envelopes. Sometimes there were notes on the exterior. He'd read these letters over and over and some were evidently his favorites to peruse.
Last week, a cousin, once or twice removed, gave us a postcard for the Dirt Gambler's Museum we've started in Ramona, that her grandparents had received in 1908 with a one cent stamp on it. There's a picture of harvest in Kansas on one side and such precise tiny handwriting on the other that we had to blow it up 400% to make it readable.
It's another day in the country and the postal rates have gone up again. E-mail may be fast, but it just doesn't cut it, honey. You can't save them in a box with a bow tied 'round for another generation to read. And just how would I ever send that four-leaf clover I found by e-mail? It's well worth 37 cents to be able to send a missive to someone you love. And write neatly! Who knows who'll be reading it in a hundred years!
