“If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.”
~ Grover Cleveland
I’m feeling nostalgic today. Oh for so many things but in particular? The postal service. One of those forever foundations of our lives that we could always depend on. Up until this very moment, no matter what, we always knew that, yes in rain, sleet or snow, our mail would magically arrive—slipped into the door slot, or the front yard mailbox, or wherever our address happened to be. The postal person (who oftentimes became part of our families and remembered always during the holidays with little gifts from us!) could be seen walking in every kind of weather carrying a huge backpack of letters and packages to be delivered throughout the neighborhoods. It was predictable. Comforting. Undeniable. It didn’t matter how small the postcard, or passionate the love letter, or mysterious the fat package, or longed-for correspondence, and yes, even the dreaded bills—they would each be hand-delivered almost always on time. Whether you mailed something yourself or eagerly awaited its arrival, this was all part of the come-and-go easy flow of America that used to be.
Like the sun in the morning and the moon at night, the mail simply just was. You never even thought that one day it wasn’t to be—that it would be stopped, removed, used as a political ploy to block a national election from happening.
So that was the source of my thinking just now. I was triggered not only by all the divisive rhetoric screaming at us—volleyed back and forth in a no-win game orchestrated by a paranoid madman. But something else set me off.
“There’s so much love sent through the mail.”
~ Sheridan Hay, The Secret of Lost Things
I was preparing a lifetime of letters for donation to a museum; they had been sent to me eons ago in extensive correspondence between Otto and Fritzi Frank, Miep Gies and Buddy Elias. The family and friends of Anne Frank had become integral to my life since I was a teenager and continued many, many years later.
And now I was unfolding what seemed like hundreds of paper thin stationary and ancient envelopes with intriguing European stamps. So much affection and messages and thank you notes and vacation post cards and telegrams and announcements of births and weddings and deaths. Massive missives reflecting my lifetime in letter-after-letter from some of the dearest people I loved with all my heart.
Whenever I speak to young students today and retell them how excited I was to wait for what seemed like forever to receive my very first letter from Otto Frank I tease them. Do you know what a letter is? Stationary? Stamps? Pens? Typewriters? Of course they laugh but they get what I’m saying. They’re from a digital world of instant words zapped around the globe in nano-seconds. How sad for them that most will never or rarely experience not only the intimacy and beauty of letter-writing, but something more. The essential importance, indeed, the very heartbeat of our lives. The MAIL.
“Has the mail arrived yet?” “Did you get the mail” “Hurry, and mail this before the postman arrives!”
I pray we take our power back and honor, cherish, preserve and generously pay for the postal service and all their workers for our children today and for generations to come. After all, it is our sacred WRITE. Right?
“The mailman delivered mail in the rain
The cashier got yelled at on her birthday
The doctor watched a person die
The heroes we know about but don’t appreciate enough.”
~ Lidia Longorio, Hey Humanity
My mother and I wrote letters weekly from my freshman year in college until a few months before she died at the age of 91. The missives were sometimes “to do” lists, book recommendations, updates about my siblings and the neighborhood, recounting another trip taken, always a connection. I felt most acutely her death the day I realized I would no longer find an envelope with her squiggly writing of my name on it in the mailbox.
Thank you, Patricia! I, too, have kept so many cherished letters from my mother with her beautiful script. I look at these written missives with such love and remembrance as I do those of
other members of my family along withthe Franks, Miep, Buddy and all who meant so much to me through the years. There really is nothing like the handwritten conversation, now, sadly becoming
rapidly lost in the ethers of time. I so appreciate your sharing your memories with me, dear lady. Stay well! And keep writing!
Hi Cara
Years and years ago; when my brother, who was a U S Air Force officer. was stationed in Iceland and I, who was stationed in Scotland with my husband, also a U S Air Force officer stationed at Prestwick Airport; wrote many letters home to our parents.
The day our postman was delivering a letter from my brother or me, he always knocked on the door to let my parents know that today he was delivering a letter from one of us.
What a caring gesture! And this TRUE story describes the extra (beautiful) steps employees of the Postal Service took.
What a wonderful memory, Benis! Thank you for sharing that! Just another example of why we so need
the tradition and essential services of the postal workers! And yes, how they always took the extra
steps to make our lives so much better. We must do all we can to fight to keep them going forever!
Big hugs and love to you, dear lady!