Week 1 of my writing pilgrimage has taken me to ordinary places in search of the Sacred. Yesterday, it was my own living room. Today, it’s a place that’s always gotten on my nerves: the post office.
I seldom go to the post office any longer—I communicate almost entirely online. And yet, here I am, standing in line with a letter clutched in my fist.
The letter I am sending is to a sister I haven’t seen in 12 years. A sister who lives in far-away Italy and who has a number of beefs with the family (including me). A sister I’m not sure wants to hear from me.
I am sending her a letter because I’m going to be in Italy this summer and want to visit her. I have no email address for her, and don’t know anyone who is in contact with her. My only link to her is a scribbled entry in an old address book—a house number and street name in a town 4900 miles away.
I am waiting in line—there are always lines in post offices, one of the things I dislike about them. I am holding my letter like the relic of a saint. I reread the address and press the seal with my thumb, as if it might mysteriously come unglued. A lot is riding on that letter.
Behind the counter, a smiling man is selling stamps to a tired-looking woman with a two-year old clinging to her skirt. Next to him, a woman who looks like she’s in her teens is weighing a package for an old man, struggling to communicate with him in Spanish. I watch them and wait. And I’m suddenly aware that one of these people behind the counter will have control over the fate of my letter and whether it ever reaches my sister. And not just these people, but many others.
What a perilous journey my letter faces. Somehow, this single piece of paper folded into a 3-by-5 inch envelope will have to go from the hands of a person behind the counter to someone else’s to someone else’s after that. It will have to get into the right bag and onto the right plane. The plane will have to fly safely across the Atlantic, and then my letter will have to make its way (by train? by truck?) across Italy to my sister’s town. More people will hold it, file it, put it (I can only hope) in the right bin or bag or box and, at long last, someone I will never know will deliver it to my sister’s door.
All those miles. All those hands. All those possibilities for things to go wrong. And my letter depends on every single one of them. Each step will determine whether my letter reaches my sister. And possibly, whether I ever see my sister again.
The world usually seems small these days: In an eye-blink, you can connect with someone on the other side of the globe. But as I stand in the post office, it suddenly feels enormous, like it did when I was a child. My letter, like a tiny hummingbird migrating from Minnesota to Mexico, has so far to travel, and so much to do when it arrives.
And yet, the overwhelming likelihood is that it will arrive. Just like millions and millions of other tiny letters crossing continents and oceans, making their way down country roads and city streets, carrying news and money and photos and love. That’s the remarkable thing. The post office—that dull place with its counter and lines—is, it turns out, a miracle. A rather ordinary miracle, perhaps, but a miracle just the same.
The tired-looking woman with the two-year old at her skirt is leaving with her stamps. The man behind the counter is nodding me over. I approach the counter with my little letter, ready to send it on its way.
Do hope your letter reaches your sister and that you are able to visit her. To give you hope, my husband’s estranged daughter contacted him recently after thirty years of hostility, has made her peace with her dad and is coming to see us at the end of this month. I do hope all goes well with your reunion with your sister.
Thank you so much. And what a wonderful ending to your husband’s story.