I love mail. I love the old charm of it in the age of email, twitter and facebook. Sometimes I will order things online simply to enjoy the anticipation of the arrival of them in my mailbox. I especially love receiving letters from someone near and dear to me. Although I must confess, I'm not very good at sending things to others. I'm not even good at responding to emails. I tend to be a pretty miserable pen pal, which is, in my eyes, an undesirable trait; something I seem to have grown into. When I was in the 7th grade, my choir director made arrangements with the band teacher to share the load of their pen pal requests when they had too many from a Finland middle school, and not enough students in band to pair everybody up. I cannot remember my pen pal's name now, but I remember I thought she was fascinating. She loved horses and dotted her i's with open circles, like halos. Receiving letters from Finland at the age of 11 was mystifying to me. I'm not even sure if at that age Finland seemed like a real place. I was very excited and prompt to respond to her letters then, but for whatever reason, as I've gotten older, I've lost the letter sending touch.
My sister, on the other hand, is proving much better at long distance relationships than myself. This is not the first time she has sent me little gifts via post since her move to New York. She has always been a generous person and over the years has often surprised me with thoughtful gifts. So, I suppose it's no wonder that she maintains that even still, from the other side of the country. These sweet somethings in particular were completely unexpected and just so happen to have arrived with impeccable timing. This week my nerves have been a little, well, nervy. There's nothing like salted dark chocolate caramels and the scent of a campfire or fig leaves to sit back, relax and escape into a book with.
Discovering that red, white and blue parcel in my mailbox this evening was a very happy ending to my day. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, dearest sissy.
PS. The candles are from Catbird (a shop in Williamsburg that I wish I could frequent) and they smell divine!
