Mail

10/24/12

Mail

Do you remember when you looked forward to getting your mail?  When you actually received mail that wasn't addressed to "recipient"?  Growing up and living far away from my grandmother, we used to receive regular letters from her.  Now the only time you are likely to get a "real" letter is at Christmas and most of those are newsletters.  I used to handwrite letters at Christmas time to all of my correspondents, most of them in California.  In return, I received a card with a scrawled signature.  I know it's better to give than to receive - but still.

I gave up on handwritten letters several years ago and I even tried the tried and true newsletter approach.  Some how I just couldn't keep that up year after year trying to stretch another ho-hum year into something interesting.  All that sugary goodness can only go so far.  Maybe folks don't want to depress us by telling us that they're behind in the mortgage or little Johnny is behind bars again.  But as a friend I'm interested in the real you so if your big news for the year involves jail time, I can handle it.  After all one of my sons has "visited" there a few times.  Admittedly, in my own letters I downplayed anything negative that had occurred during the year which sometimes left me very little to say.

Now I'm down to a picture with our names already printed on.  The picture of late generally involves our plane or something to do with flying.  This makes sense to us since flying is what we're into now and for the foreseeable future.  I know it's the easy way out - but you got to do what you got to do.

I've gone through my address book and realized that a lot of the people, most of whom were Jeff's parents' friends, have died.  So why are they still in my address book?  For memory sake perhaps?  This year I've decided to cull a few folks from my card list.  I know it's cold but with some friends all we do is exchange cards, no words.  All that tells me is that they're not dead yet.

When we left California all three of the boys had attended a wonderful nursery school run by Mr. Bill and Miss Mary, his wife.  I wrote to them every year faithfully and sent pictures of the boys because I knew they would want to see how the boys were changing.  Eventually I was writing only to Miss Mary after Bill passed away.  One day I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Bill and Mary's son.  Mary had passed away and he found my name in her address book and he wanted me to know.  I was deeply touched that he would reach out to a complete stranger 3,000 miles away.  I appreciated the call very much and was glad that I wouldn't receive a card that year marked "undeliverable, recipient not at this address" which would have left me wondering what happened.

Since we're talking about "real" correspondence I want to acknowledge both of my sisters-in-law (California and Illinois) who do a better job of sending me real mail than I do in return.  Thank you both for taking the time to drop me a line or send me an interesting newspaper article.  It's appreciated very much.

Well that's my thought for the day folks.  Since October is almost over (using my thoughts on calendering) that means you only have one more month before you'll start receiving real mail!  Exciting.

Happy Wednesday - the week is half over and Jeff will be home in two days (I don't count today because it's already here).

P