Sometimes you simply must hand it to the post office. The beleaguered U.S. postal service is of course as American as apple pie, though perhaps not nearly as useful. However I don’t like apple pie.
A year ago my husband, the kids and I moved into our new home, literally four blocks away from our old house. Two weeks before the move I dutifully went to my local post office with a change of address form. Actually, not one, not two, but four, since funny enough, my husband kept his name when we got married, and our two remaining teenagers at home now get plenty of their own mail. I waited in a long line and finally handed the completed forms to a harried clerk and that apparently was that.
For the first three months in our new home we received about half our mail. We learned this only when I received a text message from an unknown number that some important mail of ours would be left for me outside our old front door. This went on for about another three months: a brief text, a quick thank you in response, and a dead drop collection when ever convenient. I continued with my monthly trips to the post office with completed change of address forms. To no avail.
A few months later, while working in my home office, the doorbell rang. I open the door to face a stranger who said “I was going to text you but I was walking to the beach, so here you go” and she then handed me our mail. We stood there for a nearly an hour talking when I realized we were still standing outside (such bad manners) and I invited her in. And that was the beginning.
She has become one of my closest and dearest friends and we now routinely “toast the postal service” with gratitude for its ineptitude. Our mail still regularly goes to her home, but now it’s just yet another excuse to take a walk to the beach, have a glass of wine or simply toast the post office and laugh.
So while I can’t seem to be able to get the post office to get our mail straight to save my life, I may just send the postmaster general a thank you card and a box of chocolates instead for the serendipitous and timely arrival of one of life’s best treasures: a great friend. JLK
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