My daughter's coming home. She's very disappointed, and I can see why. Her Air Force Boot Camp injury is worse than they thought. After 30 days at home and 60 days of physical therapy she has to return to another flight. That's a huge disappointment to her. And, I'm going to miss her letters. For the first time in many, many years, I have been getting letters in the mail. Not junk mail. Not letters that are personalized to me, with fake handwriting on the address line, but real honest letters. I'm the postal service's biggest fan. I love letters. I have been writing as much as time allows these days, every other day at the least. Then, every day I wait for letters from my daughter. Claire met a girl that had not received one letter from home in three weeks, so she asked me to write one to her. I did. I mailed Easter cards and photos. It was a good thing.
I have boxes of letters, written history of my past. Words are misspelled because there is no spell checker. Handwriting is sometimes difficult to make out, there is no line spacing option. But the tiny curves of penmanship mapping out a story across a piece of fine linen paper sends shivers up my spine. My earliest memories include mail-order envelopes taken to the bank first for a money order, and then to the post office to mail. Couple weeks later, stuff came in big packages from J.C. Penny or Sears and Roebuck. As we got a little older, we started saving cereal boxtops and soup can labels and mailed them in for premiums. Then we waited until things like little dolls and cookie jars magically appeared at the post office. There was no home delivery in those little towns, we had to walk to the post office. I wonder if I could still remember that combination?
No comments:
Post a Comment