I like letter writing. I like stamps. I like to find cool stamps to send snail mail.
Possibly because I became an avid letter writer in Jr. High and HS. Mainly notes penned and folded specially to pass to friends or boys when English was boring and there was free time. Or was it that I didn't make the best of my time?
Actually it's inception was when my aunt's boyfriend went on a mission to another country and we wrote him, he wrote back, and there were really cool stamps on them. I tucked them into my Credit Union billfold in a little baggie.
That as most of my readers know, I threw AWAY. Because I was embarrassed about them being in a credit union baggie.
My letter obsession led to writing my sweetheart while he was at college.
He told me about something really cool that I could do if I went to Ricks' library called eeeemail. There I could create an account, link to his, and we could mail each other rather than write and send mail.
Save stamps and money to call each other cause it was so expensive. However there were some technical difficulties following through with my uber smart computer degree getting Sweetheart.
1. The walk to the library was UPHILL, Rexburg is freezing cold, & I really had no idea what he was talking about.
TWO:
Even if I did know how to get this complicated eeemail off the ground it sounded like something sneeky and what if I got caught???????????????
3. The computer line was long to get into the lab to even do your basic homework. I think only 50 computers existed. So it better be a dang good reason why I was there and no way was I raising my hand to ask the helpers to help me create this complicated eeeemail account on Ricks College computers. In front of everyone..
And lastly, I was so scared of creating this so called eeeemail account on a computer- the computer could combust in front of my face.
So I continued to write snail mail,
by cards at a local hallmark- which I had to walk to in the winter- and put the stamp on the letter UPSIDE down.
The latest ones are black and white and show men and women doing the industrial work that put us on the map. I like the one of a gal on a type writer and may keep this one.
Before you yawn, or while you are yawning, I have a sentimental post. They didn't show a man or woman on any of the stamps parenting- or nurturing. No one pulling a pie or cookies from an oven.
A woman in a dress with cat-eye glasses propping a baby on her hip and wearing the polyester house slippers on over her too brown for me nylons.
Okay, so the plunging neck line wasn't that low and the dress a little longer. But it was there.
While the rest of her grandkids hoop di loo-ed around her in their silk jammies sent from their missionary brother over in Korea.
There isn't a picture of a huge family gathering around a small table that was and still is the center of my grand central grandpa and grandma station. The boys are wearing the same glasses right now that my uncles did back then is timeless. The only difference to the table is more candy is around.
They have made a point about a lot of the WWII vets are becoming smaller and smaller. So is the group of people who lived during that time.
Like my Grandparents. Who doesn't love their grandparents? Maybe I know them too well because we went over too much, but it is hard to see that they are aging. And not growing to be as old as their parents. (They hit their 100's) So I thought I had more time.
They had a large family who in turn, turned around and had large families. And, well, you know the score. That's a lot.
In talking to one of my family members who has been there A LOT we talked about her real job working with little kids and by the second one, I was relieved that I wasn't teaching. It requires so much of a person. It is mothering we established together at my Grandmother's table.
Roles reverse as age takes hold and the ones that were cared for so gently by a grandmother like mine, is now on the receiving end.
Now that I am older, and so wise- right??, I can take something like her falling, having symptoms of a disease in total stride. It doesn't scare me.
However, when another of my Great grandmothers was in a wreck and her face was bruised, my Dad took a picture and it went in the family album to scare me for years. Until I realized it was a documentation. And that bruises are bruises. I get them all the time. But on the face.... it is creepier.
Especially to a kid.
But with J it is a reminder that to a kid it is horrifying. All of it. Sure he was cute at four and he was at the funeral and saw his Great, Great Grandmother because he had no idea what was going on. Now he does.
Now I do.
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