Memorial to Mail

I love mail. I love getting it but above all I love sending mail. Mail is magical. That a letter can travel around the world in a week and a bit, or across a country in a few days is phenomenal. When I was growing up, mail was extra special. We had a red milk churn for a mailbox. It was so fabulous. I remember dad welding it together, painting it, making the sign with our property name on it & fixing it to the tree. It became a direction poster. "We're the red milk churn mail box, if you hit the Big Egg you've gone too far." Mail only came 4 days a week. We had a larikan for a postie who'd write messages on our mail "Looks like a good one Hoges" & do burn outs at the top of our driveway. The mailbox was half a km from the house so in the summer my sister & I would grab our bikes & cycle up to check if it'd come. If there was a package we got to make a special trip to the village post office to collect it off Jackie & maybe even score a Peppermint Pattie if we were good.

When I went to college, email was still in it's infancy. Our little mail pigeonholes by the dining room were a source of constant delight for me. Mailing mixed tapes to my beloved friend Cath in Toowoomba & receiving them in return was consistently the highlight of my month. Sending letters to friends about boys, challenges of living in Sydney & how sophisticated I imagined myself to be were my lifeblood. Letters to my grandmas helped me stave off homesickness.

Now as an adult, going out to the mailbox to check it with Lachie is a daily ritual. The absolute joy on his face when a letter arrives for him is priceless. The excitement he gets from "helping" me write, address, stamp & put letters in the mailbox is infectious. He's experiencing literacy & learning about distance. The picture letters my dad sends him are the closest thing to perfection I will experience. His re-reading of the card to me, without compare.

I hope when you get a birthday card from me you know I was thinking about you on your special day. But not just on your day, before it too. You are important to me. I think about you often.

I remember my mum's address book with her friend's children's birthdays all listed. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person I know with a "birthday book." I understand that honoring your friend's children's birthdays seems to be a dying tradition (it's okay, I know as you're reading this you have no idea when my kids birthdays are, don't worry, you're not alone) but just thinking about Lachie's face when he gets mail keeps me sending them to hope that same joy is felt somewhere else.

I love text messaging, email & Facebook but I always just imagined there was something special about a card. I always think of my grandma (who I assume I inherited my love of cards from) who unfailingly goes to a store, chooses a card especially for me/Lach/Dunc, writes on it, addresses it, lines up at the post office, buys a stamp & takes it to a postbox with enough time to get to us before our birthday. She thought about us for weeks to get that card here. Facebook didn't tell her it was my/their birthday, she knew. It makes it so much more special.

However, as time goes by I have begun to realize that the love & thought I had been trying to infuse in my cards wasn't being transferred. I'll always remember the time I sent a friend an anniversary card. It was their first anniversary in their first home, it seemed a special one to celebrate. When I asked if she'd received it she said "Oh yes, I haven't seen it though yet. My husband just put it in a pile with all the other anniversary cards we got" At that moment I realized that what I thought was a special message & a reflection of how much I cared for them was not that at all.

People just don't share my love of cards & mail. I'm sure when my cards arrive they're opened, read & probably promptly put in the recycling. Hopefully they at least bring a little smile to someone's face during those short minutes. That makes it worthwhile right?

Over time my love of cards has started to hurt me. I have issues, clearly, but if I'm being honest, it has started to hurt that no one remembers my boys’ birthdays. That I send Christmas cards to the same people every year & never get one in return. It hurts when people inform me "oh I'm just too busy for cards" as if to say I don’t work as hard as them or I mustn't be as important if I have time to send them.

I don't wish to sound ungrateful, I have a couple of beautiful friends who never cease to remember us & send gorgeous words & thoughts, they never cease to bring a warn fuzzy glow to my heart. They know who they are, and the effort they go to to deal with international postage makes me love and appreciate them even more than I already do.

I love, love sending cards, but I think it's time to wean myself from the addiction. Even the US Postal service has had to cut Saturday service, so it seems both it & I have received the same message. It'll take me a while, I'm not going to lie. The thought of a little person getting as much joy as Lachie & Dunc do from ripping open an envelope will probably keep me sending them to little people for some time. I'd write something like "please don't be upset if you stop getting cards from me, I still love you" but that's the whole point of this blog right? Ironically I'm sure the only person who will notice or be upset will be me :)