Right as the Mail

I just came back from a long road trip from Seattle to Mexico and found a stack of letters on my desk with the accompanying note, in Lindsey Grant's hand:

Welcome Back, Señorita Tupe! Enclosed are wonderful thanks from Campers… a happy way to return…

As usual, Lindsey is right! I am so happy! What a delight it has been to read through all of these (and not only because each one contained $1!) but because each one is an example of what at times can seem an activity foggy with nostalgia: letter writing. I'm a letter writer, and on this trip I sent many postcards, as I always do, but it can feel a very solitary activity: stumbling through towns, clutching stamps, surprising people by asking for actual, physical addresses, surprising them again by sending words there, and checking the mailbox every day on my return to mostly find it empty. So it truly felt like coming home to sit at my desk and open envelopes (!), unfold paper (!), and hear the news from New Mexico, Kentucky, Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Oklahoma, Finland, Germany… I took a road trip of the mind right here at my desk!

The instigator of that journey is our own Cylithria A. Dubois, otherwise known as eensybeensyspider. Eensybeensy started a powerful campaign with 1 Envelope, 1 Stamp, 1 Note, 1 US Dollar and her call was heeded. The letters we've received in response to eensybeensy's awesomeness are being passed around the office so everyone can take a journey not only to all the places the letters are from, but back to that time when letters were how people showed that distance is, well, not. Thank you, eensybeensy! Thank you, NM, KY, TX, MA, OH, NJ, FL, OK, NV, AZ, MI, TN, CT, NY, Canada, Deutschland, and Suomi!

I'd love to hear from other letter writers out there! Who else has boxes of letters saved from different correspondents over the years? What relationships have you built in this way? Or rekindled? How sweet is that feeling of dropping a card or letter through the slot, knowing it is going to cross the miles you cannot and make someone's day?

– Señorita Tupelo

P.S. This picture is from my road trip! The mailbox in the middle was once my family's and comes with a funny story. The first day I learned to drive, I tried sidling my dad's huge car up against these to check the mail, like he always did on his way home. I managed to insert the side mirror between two mailboxes so perfectly that the entire structure came out of the ground when I drove off. The things a girl will do just to see if anyone's written back yet!