You've Got Mail

Most mail is unpleasant, but the fact of mail is nice.

Naturally, 95% of it is useless. I don’t even open it; I tear it up and into the trash it goes. Most of the rest of it is bills or psychiatric ads or bad things somebody couldn’t tell me face to face. Still, I rummage daily through the post, hoping for something good like a letter, a postcard, or a card.

My brother the tech-wizard keeps trying to convince me that ‘snail mail’ is obsolete, that we don’t need it now, and even the bills will be by email, like it or not. Personal messages go by email. Nothing left for the postman but junk.

I trust this is wrong. We’ll hang onto mail as it is a small recurring pleasure of life. It is a daily promise.

Once in a while we even get a letter. Contrary to popular belief, some people still write letters. I do. They may not be long, literate, or even two-way but I write because in a letter I can say what I mean to say rather than blurting something over the phone or in a hastily typed email. I hope I write so the recipient can read at reread it at leisure, over a cup of tea. It can be saved for sentiment’s sake. And it’s personal and private; it seems a graver sin than listening in on a phone call.

I used to write love letters to Someone, but since I know live with Someone it seems a silly to do (and with postage what it is). Still, I hope he bundled the few I wrote up in a cord and stored them somewhere, so our next of kin can read them on a rainy day and smirk with laughter that I ever felt that way about dreary old us.

Whatever our past let downs in it, today’s mail bundle still feels promising. I come home every day and look at the mail. You never know.