Year-End Stats

First of all, let me get this off my chest. Mexico is decidedly not the country to go to get postcards. What precious few I could find were faded, curled, sandy, and cost more than a taco. I bought them anyway, though they did not substantially add to my collection. (It costs less to buy a set of 20 Mark Rothko postcards at a MUSEUM than to pick up seven dirty nasty ones in a village near Puerto Vallarta.)

Not that this forbodes anything. While the end of December showed a sharp decline in my sending and receiving, I plan to spend 2013 trying to beat my 2012 record.

Now for the stats. Through the U.S. postal service:

• I sent 200 postcards in 2012 and received 120.
• I wrote more than 90 cards and letters and received at least 68 in return.
• I didn't send a single Christmas card and my loved ones didn't hold it against me: I still got 20 holiday cards.

Not even counting the few packages that were shipped and received, this amounts to more than $182.50 in the Postal Service's coffers. Actually, it's way more, since many of you are not nearly as thrifty as I am, and put 45-cent stamps on postcards plus double or triple the number of stamps needed on a letter. Good job.

We did well, my friends. Let's continue the trend and make it a hobby in 2013!

The Meta Postcard Experience

In my year-long experiment with mini-correspondence, I had the most meta of meta-experiences the other day. I opened my mailbox to find a photocopy of a postcard sent to somebody else. Understanding the significance of my recent singledom after years of serial monogamy, the original recipient felt compelled to send it to me. Here's what it said:

she liked imaginary men best of all

It made me laugh deep and hard. Then I read the note. My friend and I have long agreed that men and women would get along better if they didn't co-habitate. The original sender of this clever card is happily married to a man who lives in an apartment in the building next door to her.

Two messages in one; two validations; two reminders that it's okay to be different - to try and fail - to never stop trying to invent a new way, an alternative path to happiness. 

The Xmas Letter

My mom is the expert at Xmas letter writing. She's not one of those people who shrinks the font and expands the margins so she can fit every last detail of all 365 days on both sides of the candy-cane bordered quality paper from Office Max. No. She is brief. She is chipper. And she does that thing that everyone seems to do - she brags about her kid. I am 46 and haven't lived at home in 27 years but my antics are still prominently featured and yeah, I kind of love it.

Recently, my mom attended an Xmas Letter Writing Workshop. Yes, there is someone out there teaching people how to do it (and it isn't my master mom). My secret fantasy is that this teacher concentrates on brevity and the limits of braggadocio. "Cut it by 75%" she says in a commanding voice to gasps of horror across the room. I admit, I'm throwing pebbles inside my champagne glass home, having been the guilty writer of more than one overlong, over-boastful Xmas letter. But let's not dwell on my shortcomings...

Back to other people's letters, the senders with the incredibly perfect lives. Their children are in AP Honors classes and winning soccer trophies. They themselves have just purchased their second Mercedes SLS. It's all yang and no yin, all pictures of beaming, beautiful children. You are left to wonder what your old friends, the letter-writers, look like, and you just have to assume they are wrinkly and fat. (Unless they're working out at Crossfit and running the Ironman. Then, you'll see their photos, too.)

Wouldn't you love to get an Xmas letter someday that says, "This year, my husband left me for a man and my kids dropped out of MIT to deal crystal meth"? The only problem with that is, should such a letter ever arrive, it'll conclude: "Everything's worked out fabulously - my husband's lover just redecorated my home and my kids? They're making more money than they ever would have with college degrees so ... they're flying us all to Tahiti! Happy Holidays, Everyone!!!"

I've decided not to send an Xmas letter, and not just because there's been an inordinate amount of yin in my life lately. I usually try to never say never, but I'm not sure I'll ever write another Xmas letter. It just doesn't fit my plans, which are to write, and continue writing postcards and personal correspondence for the rest of my life. Why jumble it all up with a form letter?

If you hear from me this holiday season, it'll be something like you'd get any other day of the year.

However. I still want your Xmas letters, each and every one of them. Especially if your husband's a secret homosexual and your kids successful drug dealers. As Dorothy Parker famously said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."

One Fell Swoop

I had all my hair cut off.

Well. Not all of it, though I was briefly tempted to do a Jamie Lee Curtis, or a G.I. Jane. I did it spontaneously, in anguish, having lost something dear to me that I felt unlikely to ever get back. I didn't donate the hair; it was an act far too impulsive for that. I was just sitting there, crying and crying over this loss, and I wondered What would make me feel better? A full body tattoo. Free-falling out of an airplane. Catching the next overnight flight to Paris. Ah, yes, but what would make me feel better that I can do right this minute?

Armed with four photos hastily grabbed off google images, I drove to the first Great Clips I could find. I sat in the chair of the first available stylist - I think her name was Tiffany. I showed her the pictures: Sheryl Crow with hair the length of mine; Michelle Pfeiffer with hair just below the shoulders; a pre-facelift Meg Ryan just-above-the-shoulders; and Charlize Theron an inch below the chin.

Obviously, I'd been on the fence up till the moment I sat in the chair. "Somewhere between this and this," I blurted, pointing to Meg and Charlize. "So... just above the shoulders?" Tiffany asked. "Yeah, but be careful, 'cause my hair is super heavy, so it will spring right up once you cut it... go longer than you think."

I guess Tiffany didn't hear that part, because I wound up with something more akin to Meg Ryan circa "French Kiss." Clearly, my dangerously high celebrity standards had, once again, backfired.

And yet it's perfect. Tiff got a really fat tip on the $11 cut. (Yeah, I know, right? So much cheaper than a full body tattoo.)

Thus I went from a 14-page double-sided letter about boring ancient history to a postcard from Biarritz in

ONE

FELL

SWOOP

of the scissors.

New Handwriting

I love hearing from the regulars now. It's a thrill to open the box and see familiar handwriting on the backs of postcards and the fronts of envelopes. A stomach-flipping-over joyous rush of yay.

And then there's this different kind of jubilation, a rarer occurrence: new handwriting. A stomach-flip-flop of Who's this from? Glance at the postmark. Be tempted to skip over the writing, straight to the bottom, find the signature ... but No. Read it. See if you can detect the writer through his or her words. Do you hear her voice? Is there something familiar in his message? 

There always is. It's like a Magic Eye picture in words, slowly coming into focus, and if you don't rush to the ending, if you don't spoil the surprise, you figure out who wrote the card before getting to that last line.

And that gives you a kind of thundering roar in the belly, not unlike applause.

(Thanks for the roars, ladies.)

From Sally:
Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.

From Sherry:
"The Be Bop Boy and his One Man Band."

Vintage

I recently received a "letter in postcards" from my friend Laura: 8 vintage postcards, to be exact, numbered and mailed in one fell swoop.

I cannot put into words the joy and delight that filled me upon opening the mailbox to find EIGHT postcards - all at once - from a beloved friend who lives on the opposite end of the continent.

She is 34 weeks pregnant (probably 36 or 37 by the time of this writing), and philosophical about her future as a parent. While I had a brief stage under the influence of my biological clock (tick-tock, tick-tock!), it passed and now I'm basking in the simplicity and splendor of being a GINK (Green Inclinations, No Kids http://www.facebook.com/GINKthink and http://ginkthink.wordpress.com)

So I must confess, most of the time I can no more relate to pregnant women than I can to mothers of young children.

But Laura said something that finally put the whole thing into a perspective to which I can relate. She wrote, "It's kind of like this... When you have a 'BIG TRIP,' you spend months reading guide books, getting essentials, learning about your destination, etc. etc. When you come home, you pretty much go back to life as it was before the trip. Yet for PARENThood, your life is different forever."

It's actually been my experience that the BIG TRIPs never let you go back to life as it was before. So we have that in common. As Angelina Jolie famously said, "A single journey can change the course of a life."

And so I wish you - Laura in particular, future and new mothers in general - Bon voyage! May you have the most splendid of journeys.

Metamorphosis

A friend who went to Australia sent me a pretty amazing postcard the other day. One of those images that reaches out and grabs you, that goes beyond depicting a pretty scene or a fun experience. The kind of picture that makes you think deep, philosophical thoughts and drives vivid memories from your past back into the bright foreground of consciousness.

OK, maybe I'm overstating it, but only just a little.

At first glance, it's just four shots of limestone rock formations on the coast of Victoria, Australia. Then... wait a minute... each one is captioned with a different date. 2 July 2005; 3 July 2005; 14 January 1990; and 15 January 1990. While the pictures are all of the "Twelve Apostles" and the "London Bridge," each is very different.

For starters, on January 14, 1990, when the place was still called London Bridge, it was a natural bridge from land to sea. Overnight, the part that connected the bridge to the land was gone. 

Fifteen years later, you can see why they changed the name. Bridge? What bridge? On July 2, 2005 it's simply stacks of rocks: presumably twelve of them, though in the photo you can only see six - and, then, well, just five by sunset July 3.

The ocean and tides had been doing that hard (or do I mean easy?) work of changing the landscape forever.

Which reminded me that in the 1990's, I was living in Santa Cruz, California, trying to be a vegan, dating a boy far too young for me, and frequently visiting a place called Natural Bridges State Beach. In 1990, there was only one mudstone bridge remaining of the original three. Today, there's no bridge at all, and the literature provided by the park service deemphasizes the rock formation and focuses on the main tourist attraction: the eucalyptus forest that forms the temporary home of over 100,000 Monarch butterflies during their annual migration.

If you had told me in 1990 that by 2012 I'd be a divorced, barbecue-loving special education teacher living in the Bible Belt and using the word "y'all" on a daily basis (not to mention everything in between), you know I would have said in my Valley Girl accent, "Yeah, like, right."

This postcard, then, is a literal depiction of how changeable all things are. It's called erosion at the beach, but the word has a negative connotation of destruction. In living things, it's not erosion. For the monarchs, it's called metamorphosis, which has a definition I can live with: a change in the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one.

This postcard is a reminder of what I sometimes forget, that ultimate truism: "this too shall pass."

And this is not, by its very nature, a bad thing.

Abundance

I've been rereading Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth. It's the third time. I almost never read books more than once, so that tells you something. I think of it as a how-to manual for staying in the present moment, being kind and generous, and spreading good will. It may well be the best book I've ever read.

In the chapter "Finding Who You Truly Are," Eckhart writes about abundance. I was listening to it in my car, and had an Ah-hah! moment.

"Who you think you are is also intimately connected with how you see yourself treated by others," Eckhart writes. "Many people complain that others do not treat them well enough."

Boy, have I walked a few hundred miles in those shoes! When I got home, I pulled my print copy of the book off the shelf found the section where I had the Ah-hah!

Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you - praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on - give it to them. You don't have it? Just act as if you had it, and it will come. ... You cannot receive what you don't give. 

Eckhart goes on a few sentences later to say:

See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist's shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. You become a giver. 

I want to live my life every day like this.

It's shallow, I know, to think of postcards having anything to do with this spiritual quest. But, for me at least, they do.

I'm actually getting plenty of praise, appreciation, assistance, and loving care. My life feels full and rich, and I don't take that for granted.  I've got nothing to fuss about. But - dammit - my mailbox runneth empty. (There are approximately two exceptions. You know who you are.) And I get it. Summer's over. Back to work. No more vacations to Myrtle Beach, to tourist shops, to five postcards for a dollar. But I had been rather enjoying a run of receiving several a week, and now I'm back to redplum.com advertisements and my water bill. Blech.

The only thing missing in my life - what people are "withholding" from me - is postcards!

So, on the advice of Eckhart Tolle, I will give what I'm not getting. I will go through my entire address book and give, and give, and give. I will remind myself, "You cannot receive what you don't give."

Click this link for more on Eckhart Tolle

Postcard Mixtape

I was driving along listening to my MP3 player and here came the good old Talking Heads. I was doing my na-na-na-NA-na thing (I remember song lyrics about as well as I remember phone numbers, but that doesn't stop me from "singing" along). Then came some words I DID know, and I started belting them out:

Why stay in college? Why go to night school?

Gonna be different this time

Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard,

I can't write nothing at all

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,

this ain't no fooling around

And then it came to me like a message from above… my mission needs a mix tape! (Don't you just picture Javier Bardem in "Eat Pray Love" saying "I made you a meex tape" whenever you hear someone say "mix tape?" Or is that just me? Okay, fine. Call it a soundtrack.)

And here it is. (Something for everyone.) (With commentary.) (Of course.) (And links!)

1. "Another Postcard" Barenaked Ladies (they make postcarding funny!)

2. "Postcard from Paris" The Band Perry (not bad for cute CandW)

3. "Postcard from Italy" Beirut (quavery-voiced lead singer of meaningless lyrics, but great trumpet)

         (if you like Florence and the Machine like I do, this version's better FandTM)

4.  "Postcard" Steven Wilson (a good, whiney fit for a Grey's Anatomy episode about angsty Christina, and none of the lyrics have anything to do with the title, but the animation is cool)

5.  "Postcard - (new shoes)" Beyonce (I am Sasha Fierce!)

6.  "Postcard" Jordin Sparks (not bad RandB for an American Idol) (but she ain't no Sasha Fierce)

7. "Postcard" The Babys (OH MY GOD I'd TOTALLY forgotten this band - and YES I played their 45 "Every Time I Think of You" about a million times in 1980)

8. "The Postcard" Robbie Williams (folksy 21st century Brit - easy on the eyes)

9. "Postcards From Richard Nixon" Elton John (Sir Elton gets political, plays great piano, and mentions Steve McQueen)

10. "Postcard" The Who (Quadrophenia! 1973!)

11. "Send Me a Postcard" Shocking Blue (Dutch rock band circa 1967 - who knew Grace Slick had competition across the pond? ROCKIN')

12. "Life During Wartime" [don't say The] Talking Heads (original inspiration)

And this is the edited version. There's actually enough out there for a double album.

The Small and the Brief

There is not enough praise for smallness in this world, for brevity.

We tend to think bigger is better. Baby grand vs. spinet. Four-bedroom vs. cottage. Ford F150 vs. Toyota Tacoma. Supersize vs. small fries. 

Whatever happened to less is more? The spinet requires less dusting and space; the four-bedroom, more maintenance (and dusting!); the Tacoma is easier to park and the Supersize? Well. We all know what happened to the Supersize.

As we began our teacher inservices last week, I received some praise. More than one person mentioned they liked the way I'm so vocally time-conscious at faculty and IEP meetings; I keep everyone on track, so our meetings are short. You know when comic strip characters feel proud, little rays emanate off of them in arced lines, sometimes tipped in stars? That's what I looked like walking around all afternoon. Beaming. 

As I drove home from work, anticipating the students' return to school (a Thursday start, those two days so brief and breezy), I admired the fuel efficiency of my compact Versa and thought it was time to [concisely] list some little things I love. 

Smaller everything.

Bichon Frises (I used to want a Lab). 

2nd graders (I used to like high-schoolers) (That's a bald-faced lie - I've always preferred non-hormonal people who are shorter than me).

My temper (no, wait, I don't mean it's shorter - that would be scary - but I don't lose it as often, which is some kind of shrinking, right?).

A novella by Julian Barnes (163 pages) (read in an afternoon). Compare this to an 849-page novel by an author I won't embarrass by naming (I'm speaking of you, "Richard Bachman") (in three weeks of my life that I wouldn't mind having back).

My flash drive. To store anything approaching 4gb in 1988, you needed a whole refrigerated room full of disks the size  of car wheels.

The size of your thumb.

14 " (and about 10 lbs).

The distance across the state in which I live (SC: 273 miles; TX: 821 miles). (What makes that special? Mountains to the sea in 3 hours or less!)

My cellphone's better than Gordon Gekko's.

The time it takes the USPS to get a letter from South Carolina to Colorado: 1,800 miles in 2 days.

and…

Postcards. 

Duh.

(I really, really like the word "duh.")

Split and Spin

I've got this complicated thing about the concept of home.

I've probably mentioned it before. I've lived in more than 25 houses, apartments, flats, cars, youth hostels, and boats. First 23 years in California. Tried out Florida and college in Colorado. A 3-year tour of Latin America. Then big ol' Texas for half a decade. 

No wonder I have so many postcards. But what about home?

For the past four years, I've lived in South Carolina - the most unlikely place of all. I mean, really. I thought I'd set up residence someplace like Patagonia or Mozambique before I'd catch myself with a mortgage in the Bible Belt.

Is home where you went to high school, or where your parents live? What if your parents moved away from your alma mater soon after graduation? Is their home now your home? Even if you don't live there?

Is home where you got married, or where you bought your first house together? What if you got all settled, started calling that place home more earnestly than you'd called a place since grade school, and then wound up divorced? And then your ex made it clear that the town - hell, the whole state of Texas - wasn't big enough for both of you? And that he wasn't the one gonna budge? 

What if you fell in love at 41, with someone six states away, on the other side of the continent from where you were born? And since you had to get out of Texas anyway, you uprooted and transplanted in South Carolina, buying a house and everything. Is this place home now? 

Whenever I contemplate it, I feel like a cross between Linda Blair and Sybil, my conflicting identities making my head wildly spin. There's no priest standing by to exorcise the ambivalence demon, so the only choice I have is to buy another piece of heavy furniture or plant a tree in the yard.

And it helps, but it doesn't quite strike home. 

Just when I start feeling rooted to the southeast, I fly out to Colorado during summer vacation. I stay with my parents, who were born and grew up there, moved to California long enough to raise me, then returned "home" where they've lived ever since. The guest room where I sleep has the same yellow furniture they bought for my California bedroom circa 1974.  Almost all of my relatives live in the state, cousins and uncles and aunts, people I've known my whole life. They don't know about my Linda Blairhead and split personality, about the pictures I take in the mountains I can't name, or the 40 postcards I buy in all the gift shops I visit. I act the same way I would in Paris, France, but my relatives never fail to ask, "So when are ya moving back?" As if I'm from there. As if Colorado is really my home.

When it's time to board the plane back to - where is it I live now? - the head starts revolving and my throat chokes. I don't want to fly away from this sort-of-home, from my extended kin and the friends I made in college and my mom and dad. But I'm also desperate to see my beloved back in South Carolina, and my dog, and the house I bought and even kind of like sometimes. Not to mention the only job I ever wanted to keep - the 36th one in my notoriously haphazard career. 

If home is where the heart is, what do you do when your heart is split in two? 

Picture Postcard Ouray

Although I grew up in California, I spent part of every childhood summer in Ouray, Colorado, nestled in the San Juan Mountains. Most of my mom's relatives either lived there year-round or stayed part of their summers, too. So I ran around with first and second and third cousins, daring to wade into the rapid Uncompahgre River, teetering over the swinging bridge, climbing to Box Cañon, swimming in the hot springs pool, setting off firecrackers, and getting the occasional spanking for it. 

On Fourth of July, thousands of tourists filled the tiny town's streets. My Aunt Karen never failed to grumble and call them "turkeys." Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus fought in the crowd-pleasing water fight - an event where teams blast streams of water from high-pressure fire hoses to try and beat their opponents into submission. Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus won year after year.  

What's more, my family has history there. My mom's people came over from Italy in the early 1900s to work in Ouray's productive mines. Decades later, my Grandpa Fay and Uncle Jack were the last of the gold miners in our family. The mines in the surrounding mountains are now closed, the outbuildings historic landmarks. Even the house where my mom grew up - a turn-of-the-century two-story her family called the baracca (Italian for "hovel" or "shanty") - looks like Doc Holliday might walk out of it any minute. 

What with all that history, extended family, and my intimate knowledge of its gravel back streets, I got away with considering myself a Ouray local. 

Nowadays, I spend a week with my parents nearly every summer. They live about 40 minutes from Ouray, in the forgiving valley that gets about one-fourth as much snow in winter. When I visit, we spend at least a day in Ouray, hiking a 5-mile trail around its perimeter and eating lunch somewhere on Main. It's impossible not to run into a relative or two, or one of my mom's high school classmates. 

Though this makes me feel at home there, let's be honest - I'm not. My camera is perpetually around my neck. I'm shooting photo after photo after photo. I go in the Columbine Gift Shop. I buy postcards and silver baubles. I look at vacation rentals and dream.

If there's a more picturesque town in the country, I haven't seen it. Surrounded on three sides by 13,000-foot snowcapped peaks, a person could stand at the intersection of 6th and Main and make a living taking pictures for postcard companies. (Well. As long as she lived somewhere else. To own a house in Ouray you're not grandfathered into, you pretty much need to make an Oprah Winfrey type living. But I digress.)

Gobble Gobble.

On my recent trip, I scooped up dozens of postcards after the annual perimeter hike. I also made a point of visiting the tiny little Post Office (to buy postcard stamps I didn't even need). I stood in a line three people deep. All three were picking up parcels too big for their P.O. boxes, and the postmistress knew each of them by name. When I reached the counter and she said, "What can I do for you, ma'am," I realized just how hard I was working to fit in.

It hit me like a slap. I've become one of Aunt Karen's much-loathed "turkeys." But you know what?  It's worth it, for a day in Ouray.

100th Anniversary!

To call it an "anniversary" is misleading in every possible way, but "100th Postcard Sent!" didn't have quite the right punch.

Just the latest batch of postcards.

It's true! I've sent my hundredth postcard. I've run out of 29-cent+2-cent+1-cent stamps! I can now admit that I had my doubts when I started last January as to how long I'd stick with it.  A hundred stamps just felt daunting. How long it would take me to send 100 postcards? All year? Two years? Half a year? How many times would the Post Office raise the rates before I ran out?

Well, it feels like an accomplishment of some kind to have used them up in 209 days. It makes me smile to think of those hundred postcards out there, sitting on my friends' and relatives'  desks or taped to their refrigerators (or lining their recycle bins).

Pretty little bag o' stamps.

And then there's this! I started something at New Year's and kept at it for more than a week - that alone might be a first.

But is it over? Oh no, it's only just begun. I've restocked my postcard supply at grocery stores and airports and gift shops from South Carolina to Alaska. I went into my local post office and purchased several sheets of the fabulous 32-cent Aloha stamps, along with 50 Forever stamps for those fat long letters I sometimes write. In fact, I bought so many different kinds of stamps they had to put them in a sack for me - and it was as pretty as the stamps are.

Let's see how long it takes me to get to 200 postcards, shall we?

Pith in a Postcard

My dear friend Wendy and I have a long standing tradition of sending each other postcards. Years before I began my current mission, she and I were postcarding just for fun. She'd go somewhere (Arkansas for a family reunion; Portland for a long weekend), stock up on postcards, and send me one. I did the same. We communicated this way about weekly, each postcard a pithy response to the one just received. We struck it up again this year, a very satisfying, amusing habit.

In early June, I met up with Wendy in Seattle. We arrived a day early for our Alaska cruise, so we had time to take the light rail from our airport hotel to the waterfront to explore things like Pike Place Market. Pioneer Square was our train stop, and we climbed out of the subway onto a chilly, windy street overlooking the sun glinting off the Puget Sound. (Actually, the sun was obscured by clouds, but "glinting" sounds better, right?)

Founded in 1852, Pioneer Square was once the city's heart.  Though it purports to be a 21st Century center for night life, charming cafes, and art galleries, my impression is that now, it is the city's bowel. There was just a gloominess hanging over the area, a nonspecific, murky sense of foreboding.

We were waiting on a corner for a red light to change when a disheveled man came up behind us, sighed and abruptly walked around us. As he crossed against the light, ignoring oncoming traffic, he shouted, "Don't just stand there like a couple of hookers! Cross the damn street!" What could we do but laugh? We'd both lived in the Bay Area. Pugnacious homeless dudes don't scare us.

And when I got home from Alaska to find a Pioneer Square postcard in my mailbox referencing prostitutes, signed by Wendy, and postmarked "Juneau, AK," what could I do but laugh all over again?

Patience Is Hard

Five months into my postal experiment, I’ve written to 43 people and heard back from 18 through the U.S. mail. I’ve had, as previously reported here, several different emotional responses to the discrepancy, impatience and disappointment prominent among them. I thought today I’d try compassion and understanding.

First, for the mothers of young children. I recently spent the weekend with a dear friend, her 4-year-old, and her 2-year-old. Just two days with these houseguests and my ability to comprehend a vast new corner of the cosmos expanded farther than my reading Stephen Hawkings’ A Brief History of Time or The Universe in a Nutshell. I now wonder how mothers of toddlers have time to sharpen a pencil, let alone write a postcard.

These women are absolutely off the hook.

As to the rest of the nonresponders – well, in the spirit of empathy, I’ll just have to intuit. Maybe they want to, but simply aren’t in the habit. Just like starting a new exercise regimen, it’s hard to work that muscle group in that whole new way.

Or maybe they mean to, but keep forgetting. They forget to buy postcards. They forget to purchase stamps. They tell themselves on the way home from demanding jobs or carefree hikes in the redwoods or piano lessons, “Tonight is the night I’ll write and send that postcard.” Somewhere between the grocery store and the American Idol finale, it slips their minds.

Maybe they paid it forward. I did say that would be fine with me. I wanted to be the person who generously expanded out to everyone, through that whole Six Degrees of Separation phenom, the joy of receiving mail.  That was, in fact, a lie. Fine. Pay it forward. But write to me as well. I’m self-centered that way. Secret’s out.

Or perhaps they don’t think their lives are interesting enough. Possibly their lives have been so exciting and eventful they don’t want to brag. Maybe they just have to get something off their chests, start writing and before they know it, three typewritten, single-spaced pages of venting lay before them. “She won’t want to read all this crap!” They tell themselves and press delete.

Stop! Hit save instead! She doesn’t care if you complain. She wants that letter!

Those who’ve emailed to say they intend to write – cards on the way – letter imminent.  Thanks. I’m trying that patience thing, and it ain’t going so great, but the waiting gives me excellent practice.

As does the entire enterprise.

Beating Back the Lonelies

I read an article recently about how Facebook is making people feel lonely and isolated.

Say what? 

Ironic, isn't it? You there with your 900 or 372 friends? Even if you only have 23, that's still quite a lot. Twenty-three would fill up your house and 372 a rented community center if they all showed up for your birthday party.

Lonely? I totally get it. You sit around in your little office or living room or college dorm all "connected" to your "social network." You read the status updates that go out to all 177 or 1,032 of your friend's friends. You look at the pictures of their recent trips to Rome or Houston or Grandma's Easter Supper. You might even feel that little green monster of envy tickling your cerebral cortex (a miserable irritation if there ever was one).

How often do you get a personal notification more than two lines long from a Facebook friend? How often do you wonder why you only got two "likes" on your recent, wholly original and super clever status update?

You know what doesn't produce a feeling of solitude?

(Wait for it. You know what I'm going to say already, don't you?)

A letter or postcard in the U.S. Mail!

Get on board with this, people! Even if you don't have a limitless social calendar full of parties and date nights and girlfriend getaways. Even if you live in a Quonset hut in the Aleutian Islands where it's pitch black from October to March. You get a piece of written correspondence with a Liberty Bell Forever stamp on it and I guarantee it staunches loneliness in its tracks.

You gotta give to receive.

So get out there and write someone a letter! Do it now!

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.

How Mexico Tastes

It’s never been my intention to promote products here, but in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I make an exception. Stop what you’re doing – finish reading this later – and run right out and buy these tortillas. They are slightly larger than a postcard; they cost twice as much as those corn tortillas that taste and feel like limp paperboard; and one bite will tell you all you need to know.

I just heated one in my toaster oven while frying two eggs in a pan. When I sat down and began eating, I was suddenly transported back to a Mexican beach called Chacala, where I once sat with several friends at a palapa restaurant with no name. We ate pescado sarandeado, fish smoked over wood from the nearby mangroves on a palm frond fire. The fish was served whole on a large platter, and we reached in with our bare hands and scooped out chunks to place in our tortillas (which had just been handmade by the woman standing a few feet away) with salsa and fresh cilantro. Ai, dios mío, que rico.

But I don’t want to get sidetracked right now by the pescado, which can, I’m almost certain, never be recreated in the U.S.

The tortilla experience, however, can be, but only by La Tortilla Factory. Trust me that unless you have a contraption in your backyard – a stove that looks like a Jamaican steel drum – and you are a Mexican woman with plump hands that can roll little balls of masa into perfect, flat circles and then heat them on your steel drum stove, you cannot possibly taste a tortilla like this one. I’ve been searching for it for 10 years now.

And ya está - in Kroger, right by the bakery. It tastes like Mexico. It is worth the extra money. I’ve learned to buy several packages when I find them, because they hold their flavor, even in the freezer. And because Kroger doesn’t always supply them, or even let you special order them (this I’ve also tried).

Ever since Mexico, I’ve sought the smoky taste of tortillas de maiz, made by that ubiquitous woman I just mentioned. And aquí son. Help me keep them in demand. You won’t regret it.

Slowing Down

I’ve experienced an unexpected side effect of my campaign to go postal. It’s called patience.

The definition of patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”

Those who know me are aware that I’ve pursued serenity most of my adult life. I’ve explored yoga, various religions, meditation, beer and wine, all in the chase of a calmer, less angry, more tolerant self.

The parents of my students invariably tell me, “You must have so much patience.” My internal response is, “Hah! If you only knew!” But they are onto something. Little kids with disabilities relentlessly test adult kindness. That’s why it’s them, more than Buddhism or focusing on the breath, who can lead us in the pursuit.

Still I struggle, even with the little ones. It takes effort and awareness to keep my cool.

Antithetical to the search for tranquility has been my overuse of email and IM and facebook to correspond. When I started writing letters and postcards again, at first I raced and waited anxiously for instant response. And waited some more for someone to write back. 

 

Then - eventually - they did.

Now I slow down when I write a letter – even with a postcard, I take my time. I’m no longer in a big, breathless hurry to finish, to hear back. It’s improved my communication, I think, this thoughtful, measured writing, and the results continue to open slowly, like envelopes. Or birds learning to sing, butterflies spreading their wings, blossoms in Spring.

Immortal Words of a Postal Worker (apologia)

The other day, quite by chance, I met a man named Connor from Mississippi. We got to talking and I mentioned the road trip along the Southern Literary Trail that Paul and I took last summer. Eudora Welty’s home in Jackson had been a highlight.

It turns out that Connor’s grandfather, a man with the novel-worthy name of Holden Vann “Skeet” Kincannon, once worked with William Faulkner in the Oxford, Mississippi Post Office.

One of Skeet’s favorite, oft-told tales on Mr. Faulkner involved his parting words on the day he quit. The illustrious author apparently said, “All my life I’ll be at the beck and call of somebody. But never again will I be at the beck and call of any son of a bitch with 2 cents to buy a stamp.”

I wonder if poor old Bill rotated in his tomb when, last month, I was fussin’ about the 3-cent price hike on a postcard.

If so, I'm real sorry about that, Mr. Faulkner.