A Place to Get Mail

I remember that late July morning, back in the days when my daily walk would take me down the quarter mile driveway, past our “up front” neighbor Sherry’s place with all her interesting and exotic chickens and a quail or two and out into the then-gravel two lane road (now asphalt, with yellow lines, even!). Once in a while, Sherry’s rooster would take a swipe at me, flying low with his spurs in the attack position and I’d use my walking stick to (gently, I assure you) send him on his way. It livened things up in those first few minutes of the walk when you’re trying to get your heart rate elevated, and I suspect the rooster thought it great fun to watch me continue down the slope of the driveway, head bowed and looking humble (I humored him). Character-building for both of us and a reminder that I really didn’t live in the suburbs anymore.

It was a Sunday, that summer morning in July, pleasantly cool and just before sunrise when the woods and sky are still deciding whether to give up their secrets. I was keeping an eye out for the kingfisher who usually perched on the electric wires that stretched across the creek when I noticed our mailbox, wooden post and all, smoldering in the grass on the other side of the road. Pulled clean out if the ground and set aflame by Someone in the wee and mischievous hours of the night, probably on a dare or part of some rural rite of passage for being the new kid in school. As I examined the remains of our mail, scattered and burnt on the edges (no great loss, truly. Just postcards from local logging companies promising to make us rich if we’d let them harvest the straightest of our lovely grooved-bark black walnuts. A hard “no” on our side of the offer), I pushed at the charred and still smoking post with my toe, turning it over in the dewy thick grass. This prank was no small feat and probably took more than a few minutes, with the perpetrators no doubt keeping one eye on the darkened windows of our street-side neighbors whose homes were in full view of the road’s traffic and activity. Would anyone hear the grunting and giggling group as they wrestled a 4x4x6 post from the ground? We older folks all slept through it, apparently, adding another task on Patrick’s to-do list that week.

A couple of years before this episode, we experienced our first snowplow vs. mailbox meet-up, glad for the clear path to our daily commute but wishing the driver had steered about six inches to his left, sparing our only connection to creditors and relatives sending birthday wishes from afar. We showed up at the local post office in Homer next morning to rent a safer place to receive our mail and as the postmistress handed over the keys, we felt as if we’d settled one more inch into our rural life. I didn’t know anyone in the suburbs or city who had a post office box and if any letter had such an address in the upper lefthand corner of the envelope, I would have thought it suspect. I had a locked mailbox on campus in college at the student center where we also took our meals and danced at the fall homecoming event, but that was different somehow. The cashier at the bookstore doubled as postmistress, commenting warmly how much our parents must miss us, to send us such regular missives and packages. But real people, grown-up people, the ones who paid bills and had mortgages also had metal repositories nailed to the clapboard of their homes or drilled into the mortar between the bricks. A PO box was a symbol of being untethered, unfettered and not quite belonging to any community.

Fortunately, the Homer postmistress, Ruth, who discharged her duties at that small office just a mile up the road from us, was friendly and welcoming, giving us bits of background about our new rural neighborhood each time we stopped by to drop off or pick up. Before long, we were sharing more than just bits about our own lives and exchanging views on current events and local happenings. One summer, I asked her to help me sew a jacket from scratch and I remember how she talked me through each step instead of doing it for me. I respected that. And I still have the jacket.

So here we are, eighteen years into sending and receiving our mail at an office I could walk to (it’s that close if I’m up for it), and we come to find out that this sweet little hub of local news and communication commerce is marked for closure by the Powers That Be in a couple of weeks. I’ve rented a new box at the slightly larger post office serving the small town four miles east of us, filled out the requisite forwarding order postcard and now it’s dawning on both of us just how many folks we’ll need to notify of our new address. Banks, healthcare providers, magazine subscriptions, Amazon delivery… Smart, then, that the USPS thought this through before we did, making the forwarding order on any mail good for a year unless otherwise noted by the requestor. It’ll take me that long to remember who all we get mail from and how to track them down. Since the current office in Homer is still open, this change doesn’t feel real. We’ve started to receive mail at the new location but it feels temporary and a little reckless, like a sleepover at a new friend’s house. I wonder if I’ll stop by the old one after work one day with my keys in hand and reach for the door, finding it locked and then remembering our letters don’t live there anymore.

I’m sure we’ll get used to the new place over time. Everyone is as kind as can be and our creditors will find us (of that we are certain). We may even get a few birthday cards. But Ruth has long since retired and I don’t know if anyone at the new office knows how to sew.

I guess I could ask.