The Rural Mailbox

"I've always felt there is something sacred in a piece of paper that travels the earth from hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart." ~ Robert Michael Pyle Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place

At the end of our (currently washed-out) lane, across the road, is our rural mailbox. It sits atop a post at the side of our meadow - which once was an orchard. It does not yet have a sign attached indicating that the mail is being delivered to Fat Hummingbird Farm - but it will. The mail is delivered by a wee white car with a flashing yellow light on top. When we have mail, the red flag is put up. This mail 'event' has become a very important part of the day. We have a pair of binoculars on the kitchen windowsill - the window that faces the road. Several times throughout the morning I peer through the binoculars to see if the red flag is standing at attention. A thrill runs through me when I see that the diminutive car (usually unseen) has been by and the red flag beckons to me to come and see what surprises may be waiting. The walk down the lane to pick up the mail is bristling with anticipation. It has been a long time since I have felt this way about the mail.

Years and years ago, over 30 years now, some mail I received was very special. I have an artist friend, Kaija Savinainen Mountain. And she was my friend then, too. A friendship that has endured for a very long time. But there came a time, those 30 years ago, when my husband and myself and our two boys moved far away, to a different life. But Kaija wrote letters.

The letters came every few weeks and were fat and bulky, taped together with wads of tape. The letter itself was always at least 10 pages long, hand-written. Newspaper and magazine articles, art cards, gallery opening announcements, snippets of information about the place we had left behind were included. Sometimes photos of her children. Each letter was a little gift of time, thought, and effort. An aspect that was especially enjoyed by our postman was the drawings all over the outside of the envelope. They almost obscured the address and were scrawled over the stamps - something I'm sure the post office did not sanction.

She drew tiny ink pictures of horses grazing with deer. Or horses lying curled on the ground or with noses turned up to a bulbous moon. She drew pictures of her dog, Togo, a dog one of my sons particularly adored. She drew pictures of a pony she had that had victoriously bucked off each of my sons, appropriately named Bucky. A kind of right of passage, I suppose, being on one's butt in the dust while a pint-sized pony trotted smugly off into a prairie sunset.

The letters Kaija wrote, and the letters I wrote in return, were a still song of friendship; of the shared thoughts and communal confidences that bound us together as individuals, mothers, and artists. Within those pages, each to the other, were the intertwined words made up of stories of family, motherhood, aging, and creativity.

I kept those letters, with everything that was gorged into them, with the envelopes festooned with drawings, for a very very long time. They travelled with us from house to house, from place to place. The pages grew yellowed and the edges of the envelopes became soft, felted, and torn. Until one day I just didn't have them anymore. Perhaps they got lost when moving, or moldered in a damp basement, or just like so much of the ephemera of our lived lives they were simply no more.

That rural mailbox at our farm, with the red flag that hints at possible surprises? I think each time I open the flap, I hope to find letters. Especially ones with envelopes where horses gallop with deer across our address . . . and Togo howls at the stamp.

Our rural mailbox with red flag up to announce mail.