When I was twelve or so, my friend Andi & I set up a hide-out under the stairs. It was there that I colored my first “letters & postcards box.” I remember I colored flowers in orange & blue or green & red, creating a wrapping paper out of several sheets of letter paper. I wrapped a shoebox, and then wrote in orange “Letters & Postcards.” I used this box for the rest of my teenage years to collect mail from friends and family.
Finally, after Wyatt and I got married, I found a larger lap-top computer box to use (by now my original, tattered box was overflowing with the correspondence of the years). I have been using that box ever since.
I asked Wyatt the other day if he thought I was pack-rat-ish, and he said yes, pointing to my letters and postcards box. “But that’s different!” I objected. He shook his head.
But I know he gets a little jealous when ever a letter shows up in the mailbox for me. I laugh and giggle as I read the latest misadventures of a friend, or cry and sigh as I read about the heartache of another. He wishes he got hand-written letters with home-made envelopes, instead of just credit card offers and value-pac ads. He wishes he had his own letters & postcards box.
Tonight I was organizing my box, and I giggled through a letter from my freshman room-mate. She was writing about the excited anticipation of an upcoming road trip the two of us were planning, and bemoaning the heart-ache of Christmas break seperation from her then-crush, now-husband Peter. I commented to Wyatt afterwards: “I love my letters & postcards box. It reminds me that I’m loved in the world.”
“You need a box to do that? I tell you that everyday.”
“Yeah, but it reminds me of all the love I’ve had over my whole life. And all the things I’d forgotten.”
It tells the story of my life, and the lives of those that I love, and am loved by. It tells of how our lives connect creating a deep well of love and laughter and strength; all delivered by the US Postal System.
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