Comics

Strangely, I've become one of those women who cuts comics out of newspapers and magazines and mails them to people.

I always thought this activity was reserved for mothers of adult children and perhaps elderly, doting aunts. 

But no. I see a cartoon strip that reminds me of someone and it's as if I'm driven by a deep, innate instinct beyond my control. I'm a Stepford Wife, I'm on automatic pilot, I'm a zombie marching inevitably to the scissors, the stationery, the envelope, the stamp. Must. Get. In. Mail. A.S.A.P.

Should you receive one of these odd little mailings from me, please don't regard it the same way you think of as junk or spam. Give me your empathy, your appreciation, or at least some pity. I have no children off at college to whom I might send care packages with cute little Dennis the Menaces or Family Circuses tucked neatly between the chocolate chip cookies and banana bread. I'm no maiden aunt, either (the plight of the only child). 

Since I have no one appropriate on whom to pawn this nascent urge, perhaps you can consider yourself - I don't know - lucky? It is personal - I wouldn't send it if it didn't remind me of you. Will it make you feel better if it's from The New Yorker? I'll do my very best. And think of yourself as lovingly chosen to stand in for nieces and nephews everywhere.

Mailing Labels - A Cautionary Tale

Unsurprisingly, I have run out of return address labels. The ones I'd been using were a set of Ziggy labels I received four years ago when I gave some money to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The others were a set of beach scenes that I again got for "free" when I donated to St. Jude's. They have my name annoyingly spelled with a lower case q. Mcqueen is just not the same as McQueen, is it?

It was a bit of a shock when I placed the last ugly beach scene label on an envelope recently. Apparently, the organizations to whom I've been doing my charitable giving stopped offering this service, and I hadn't been paying attention.

I had no choice but to resort to ordering and purchasing return address labels - something I hadn't done in over 20 years.

Back in the day, you'd find ads for these things in coupon mailers and the Lillian Vernon catalogs that my mom received. It was a quick and simple process, with few choices and almost no shipping fees.

Now, of course, there are approximately 5,500,000 companies from whom you can order return address labels over the internet. Just click on, say, the first company in the lineup and you'll find yourself with 8,185 design choices.

A word of advice: don't (as I did) spend two hours late on a Friday night perusing most of the 8,185 designs, only to have your wi-fi bog just when you've made a decision. Wait until morning. Pick something from the first page. IT'S AN ADDRESS LABEL - not a tattoo that will mark you till the end of days. Give yourself ten seconds, pick, click, and don't balk at the $4.50 shipping fee, even though the labels only cost $1.99.

Sigh. Who knew it was possible to miss Lillian Vernon catalogs?

Anonymous

I was waiting for Wendy outside a Starbucks on Government Street in Victoria, British Columbia when I noticed something odd. There was a little indentation in the side of the building, like you’d see for an urn at a memorial site. In the niche sat a crown of concrete. Beneath it, a plaque that read:

FIRST

DOMINION GOVERNMENT

CROWN ERECTED IN

BRITISH COLUMBIA

SURMOUNTING THE

POST OFFICE BUILT ON

THIS SITE IN 1873

Well, of course I took pictures.

Then: a firm tap on my shoulder. I turned and looked around, then down. An old, hunchbacked woman with a red and white scarf tied around her head peered up at me. Her small self was bundled in a black coat buttoned up to her neck. She wore black gloves and her white hair peeked out of the scarf. Her eyes were clear and bright.

In a right British accent she said, “I’ve lived here for 30 years and never noticed that there, what you’re taking pictures of. Let’s have a look.” We stood at the bronze inscription together. I felt compelled to explain, “I have a – um – thing – for post offices.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, yes, I remember when this building still was a post office. A grand old thing it was. See this?” She gestured to the end of the block, past the Starbucks and Eddie Bauer stores. “All of this was the Post Office, the whole thing,” she sighed. “Beautiful inside. You could go in and never wait in a queue, and everyone was friendly and helpful.” I could practically hear the footsteps echoing across the old marble floor tiles.

Can you believe one of these women is 90?

I smiled at her encouragingly. That was all it took. As Wendy joined us (looking just a little puzzled), my new friend shared a bit of her story. Nostalgic for the old P.O., she showed disdain for the influx of chain shops on Government, the so-called march of progress. The new P.O. was relegated to a nondescript storefront where “nobody knows what they’re doing and the lines are just dreadful.” In a spurt of off-topic verbosity, she revealed that she was 90 and had moved to B.C. at 60 to be nearer her children. “I think people your age – you’re about my grandchildren’s age, I think – you’re the ones who appreciate things like this old building. The generation before you ruined things like this.” 

When I asked her name, she smiled coyly. “Oh, I never tell anyone my name. I say, ‘Call me Anonymous. Annie, for short.'” When I said I wanted her picture in front of the crown, she would only relent when Wendy posed with her.

Oh, Annie. If you weren’t so private, we might be pen pals.

Mother's Mail

Twenty-two years ago, when I first set off on my life of adventure, I think I was mad at my mother. I’m not sure she had actually done anything wrong. With the benefit of more than two decades of hindsight, I now believe that in order to become a woman, I felt like I needed to rebel against something, and so I picked her. I took a backpack and went to Europe, and made excuses to not write her anything but the spare (and all too infrequent) postcard: “Yes, Mom, I’m still alive.”  Even after returning from Amsterdam, what paltry bits of communication I’d been doling out tapered off to a tiny little drip.

That went on for an eternity – something like eight months. Then, fully fledged (and I hope a little less self-absorbed) (though probably not much), I gave a little more to my mother. Years passed. More travels ensued. But in those passing years, I learned to stay in touch with my mom because I wanted to – not because I felt obligated.

For years now Mom and I have emailed and facebooked and let that suffice (along with a couple of visits to each others' far flung states each year). Then, what with saving the U.S.P.S. and all, my mother and I started corresponding by post again. At first it was a postcard or two. Then I got a one-page note with a clipping from her small town’s newspaper. After my parents’ spring visit, a four-pager arrived, and this was the first sentence: “I want to tell you thank you for so many things that I fear I will take up too much of your time…”

You could dismiss this as finely-honed guilt-tripping – all mothers know which buttons to push, especially the ones raised Catholic – but I didn’t read it that way. Now that I’m just about the age she was when I rebelled against her, perhaps I’ve developed a little empathy. Perhaps she thinks that I still think I’m too important or special or whatever it was I believed way back when to sit down and read a letter from her. 

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, Waving Girl.

I want to assure her that is not the case. I am learning, from my little experiment, that we all write better correspondence when we write by hand, but my mom? She really knows how to write! She can tell a story on paper as well as anyone, and her letters are fun to read.

I’m also old enough to recognize the good fortune I have that my mom is alive, and healthy, and reasonably sane, and loving toward me. She’s worried she’ll take up too much of my time?

Mom. We have all the time in the world. Let’s not waste another minute of it.

Your Handwriting

Some say the fine art of correspondence has fallen by the wayside in this electronic age. My friend Winnie recently said in her beautiful, handwritten letter, "When did it become standard practice to send only snippets of communication through time and space and consider it 'staying in touch' with people we care about?"

I'm only too glad to report that the times, they are a-changin'. I received three letters (plus the one from Win) and four postcards last week. That’s an average of >one piece of personal correspondence per day!

And I don’t want to take it for granted.

Not when every day is like Christmas at the mailbox. I creep up on it, wondering, hmmm, will there be … ? I gingerly pull open the door with my thumb and index finger, like I’m tearing beautiful wrapping paper and peering inside …

… and yes! I see handwriting! And not faux-computer-generated-to-look-like-handwriting print on another one of a thousand requests for a donation for this or that. (I’m generous. Really. I give. But I hate those sneaky envelopes.)

However. Handwriting! I love to see your handwriting!

And this. Calligraphy? Yes! (Thank you, Jacquie.) This is why…

… I’m doing it.