Nate, our 2-year-old grandson, walks with me down the curved driveway to check the mail. Along the way, we throw a few rocks, sit on a tree stump, and watch “Farmer Brown’s” donkey, whose loud hee-haws send Nate running to grab my knees as he says, “no like donkey.” Carrying him the rest of the way, we reach our black metal mailbox, which rests atop a four-foot pole, personalized with rectangular stick-on letters, A L E X A N D E R, stretched along its side.
Nate pulls the door down as he says, “check mail,” repeating the key words in my question, “Nate, do you want to check the mail?” Finding a JC Penney sales circular, the water bill, and a Netflix envelope, I exclaim, “Mail!” as if we’ve discovered a year’s supply of chocolate or an invitation to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Nate catches on quickly that there’s something special about finding papers in this box and asks to “carry mail” on the walk back to the house.
Rural mailboxes have been around at least as long as my grandparents’ farm days, some 75 years or so. In the foreground of a faded picture showing their country home, stands a mailbox that could be the great-grandparent of the one at the end of our driveway. Same “tunnel” design, as I read in a description by the U. S. Postal Service, with an attached metal flag, ready to alert the mail carrier to stop for a pick-up when it’s raised. In the digital age where mail zips around the world invisibly and mysteriously lands in inboxes, who would have thought that these old-fashioned contraptions would still be lining roads, faithfully doing their duty through “snow, rain, heat and gloom of night.”
There’s no doubt that digital mail is faster, less costly and healthier for the environment. In fact, my inbox contains the same JC Penney coupon ready to be printed; the water bill appears as an automatic draft on our online bank statement; and the Netflix video can be downloaded and watched instantly. So, why do I get so excited about my morning walk to the mailbox, which may contain nothing but junk mail?
Nostalgia is part of it, I’m sure, connecting me to an earlier time and lifestyle; but it’s more than that. It’s the anticipation of something that can only be delivered in a three dimensional, solid, actual box. It appears rarely, maybe once in 50 trips from house to mailbox. I gasp as I open the door and discover it lying, all alone, its white envelope contrasting with the black metal. I see my name and address, handwritten, across the front. “REAL mail!” I announce, as if the whole neighborhood should gather to witness my discovery. I gently take it out, run my hand over the writing and slowly open it, hardly aware that I’ve started walking back up the driveway, so entranced by its power. The shape of the letters, the design on the paper, the carefully composed message, written just so, just for me.
Treasures. . . carefully carried to a blue and white box in my closet, occasionally pulled out and read, as if the person writing it had dropped by for a cup of tea and a chat.
One day when Nate is browsing through an antique store with a child tagging along behind, I wonder if he might spy a black metal mailbox leaning against a wall collecting dust.
“What is that thing for, Dad?” the child might ask.
“Real mail, son, real mail.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll show you when we get home. I saved some letters written by your great-grandmother when I was a growing up.”
Heaven forbid that this imagined scenario of long-forgotten mailboxes and unknown real mail should ever become a reality! But, just on the off chance, I’d better start writing those letters.
Now, where are my stamps?
