I laugh at myself a lot. Despite everything, life is very funny. Sometimes I just smile at a patch of blue easing from behind a bank of clouds, reminding me there is only change.
I notice what stays the same. A letter in the mailbox. A snail mail letter, an oddity today. I glance at the onion skin thin envelope trimmed in blue and red slashes indicating Air Mail, also a lost concept.Upside down, I recognize the handwriting before reading my name.
I met Jackie in college when I was seventeen. Reverse those numbers. That’s how long we’ve been writing to each other. Sometimes years have passed or one of us moved but eventually we managed to catch up.
Now, after all these years we are only a ferry ride away from each other but still find letters the deepest way to communicate. Time and space become irrelevant. We pick up where we left off.
So, I sit with a cup of tea and read the latest tales from the San Juan Islands. Hamilton the cat purrs and rubs my ankles, knowing, I am certain, that a cat person wrote the letter I’m reading. The dogs have visited the islands and stretch as I tell them what’s happening now.
It is officially summer but the Sun delays his arrival. The fire in the wood burning stove crackles. Friendship can be loud and rowdy or calm, sweet and enduring as a letter on a cold day in summer.
When I reply I will select an interesting card (often one I have made), a special stamp (I ask for pretty stamps at the post office and collect artwork on postage stamps), and I use sealing wax with an intaglio imprint.
Do you correspond via snail mail or does texting work better for you?
C.J. Prince Poet 