Waiting for the Mail

You remember when you were a little kid and learning all the jobs that you could be when you grow up? You know, the career days in class when kids would bring in their parents and their parents would explain what their job was, what things they did every day and how cool and exciting it was. Did you ever get a parent who was a mailman? None of my classes never did. Honestly, when I was a kid the mail wasn't thought about until it neared Christmas, with all of the big department store catalogs, or your birthday - that's when I would eagerly wait for someone to retrieve the mail so I could see if maybe I got a card with some money in it or there was something interesting to look through.

As I got older, I started to write letters. Of course, when you're a kid, there isn't much skill in putting pen to paper and forming sentences. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually staying on subject or completing a paragraph. That took time to master, you had to take it slow, think things through, plan ahead on what you would say next - things that when you're a kid, you just don't have the patience for. I'm not sure how grams ever made it through my letters without throwing them away in frustration, but she made it and she always wrote back. The only problem I ever had with her replies were that they were usually in cursive and I had trouble reading it.

Then writing letters, and writing in general, just seemed to flow and I would fill pages of things that I thought should be known. For example, when I lost a tooth, or a story I'd heard at school, something going on in the family perhaps or a performance I wasn't looking forward to. I've always been erratic when it comes to letter writing. Sometimes I'll go for months, not writing anyone, then suddenly I'll think 'wow, I haven't sent a letter in a while' and suddenly I'm making a mental list of people I could send one to. For a while, it'll capture my attention and I'll wait patiently for a letter to return, other times I'll forget completely and after receiving a reply to my letter, will simply set aside to be discovered another day.

I actually keep most of my letters. I haven't quite figured out how to scrapbook them or archive them or anything but I keep them in a photo-box (which is, let's face it, a glorified shoe box) on my shelf. I don't take them out to read them but I know they're there and their stories, their words of wisdom, encouragement, love and laughter are there whether I send a letter or not. Its comforting in a sense because if I need it, I know its there. A helper when it comes to getting older and things aren't as clear as it used to be - years, names of people, events. You know they happened but you just can't quite put them in the right order. Those letters in that box upon my shelf are a kind of personal timeline, there if I need it, there if I don't.

I suppose that's why I still write to people whenever I get my whims. Somethings going on in my life and I want to share it with someone else and have them ask me questions so if I need to look back, I can say 'I remember when...'

Oh well. I don't receive letters anymore, although I have a drawer full of writing pads, pens, cards, envelopes and stamps that have been given to me and that I have bought. My grams lives at home now, my sister calls my mother every day for an update (and she and I were never close anyways), I have no pen pals... so now all I ever get in the mail are bank statements, credit card offers, magazines, catalogs, various important pieces of information like letters from college, but otherwise, completely void of personal touch. Still, I go to the mailbox every day, still hoping that something interesting might come my way.