An Open P.O. Box

      once, a long time ago— not eras or eons, but many decades—i, like many others, opted to open a post office box in another town not because i received material in brown paper envelopes or magazines with titillating photos or information from left leaning groups

      no, i received letters— letters from friends, sometimes they came two or three times a week and instead of a one page note they were written on different pieces of paper not fine watermarked paper, but lined paper and notebook paper and occasionally on scraps of paper

penned in ink, written with a fountain pen with a smudge here and there

     books read, walks taken, thoughts, theology, politics all spun out over many pages

     as soon as I stared into the maw of my open postbox and spotted a letter, or letters, i knew that i’d stop at the town bakery order a raspberry twist and a coffee and settle in to read 

     I kept a notebook with the date a letter was read and wait a week before responding unlike the rapid response of an email

    some letters required time to mull over a response and a few were a spontaneous spilling over with words and ideas

    one winter i read all of melville’s books and exchanged long letters about his writings and then there was my introduction to flannnery  o’connor’s writings and her thoughts on grace and redemption and i became immersed in southern literature

     a friend opened up a women’s bookstore and wrote of  writers who wrote books that didn’t appear on the bookshelves of mainstream stores and i sought out those books and read words that spoke my story

     two quotations marked that time:  Tolkien’s line from The Hobbit, “ It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. ”and Joel 2:25, “And I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten...”