There were many things I expected to miss when we moved south. I expected to miss the feeling of autumn in New England, where crisp juicy apples hang on trees just begging me to pick them and put them into pies. I expected to miss the annual football vs. hockey discussions between parents who have children trying to survive triple session summer practice and those who have to wake themselves just after midnight to get all the gear, children, snacks, blankets and outerwear to the rink for the tournament that begins at six am on the other side of the state. Having no players in either sport, I could always watch from the sidelines as the "you think you've got it bad" lists escalated.
I didn't see the mail thing coming. When I was growing up, we had a mailbox attached to the front of our house. George the mailman would stuff the box full of letters, bills, flyers and magazines. Things too big to fit into the box but too small to be left at the post office were left by the door. This was in the kind of small town where you ran into George the mailman later in the day and he bought you, your brother and the neighbor's cousin ice cream when the truck went by.
When I was older, mail was delivered to various boxes or slots located in the buildings and houses where I lived. I checked those boxes once to several times a day in direct proportion to how far I was from home and how lonely I was at the moment. In one memorable location, the mail slot was positioned in the door at the perfect height to allow for mailman to canine hand off. My dog seemed to believe we had orchestrated this just for her and was ecstatic at the daily influx of chewable material. It was years before I got some of those bills straightened out. In my first overseas posting, mail became my link to home and family. Letters would arrive by bush taxi, wrapped in thick stacks that contained many weeks worth of correspondence.
When we moved to Chapel Hill, I assumed that since we were living in essentially the same kind of house we had in Massachusetts, we would have the same wave and smile relationship with the mail carrier. I thought I would wander out each day into my new climate to pick up flyers for interesting activities and offers from local merchants. Instead, our mailbox is located in a mailbox bank around the corner from the house. In order to get the mail, we leave the house and walk about five hundred yards past the end of the circle to the mailbox bank. We have to have a special mailbox key. It's an odd hybrid of the post office box and the house mounted mail delivery system. I didn't like it from the beginning but thought it might allow for bonding with the neighbors.
I pictured myself having pleasant chats about weather and neighborhood activities over Crate and Barrel catalogs. Discussions of school mailings would undoubtedly lead to coffee on the deck while the dogs romped in the yard. People who are already familiar with the system will be unsurprised to learn that this hasn't happened. In fact, the mailbox bank is almost the opposite of a social opportunity. We drive up to the box as we arrive home after work or head out on errands. On rainy days, we leave the mail to wait in the box until things dry out. Even mail mix ups don't lead to new friendships. Each postal carrier has so many boxes on the route that we get mail for people three subdivisions away. We repost it into the outgoing mailbox and think about how interesting it would be to meet the people who get a catalog from the British bookseller, or the Indian tea merchant.
Instead, I wave from the car as we queue up and hop out to unlock the little box and squirrel away its treasures. Sometimes, if we are very lucky, our box will contain another key. This key will unlock the larger "package" box at the bottom of the mailbox bank. It's not the same as ice cream from George the mailman but it beats having the dog eat the Christmas cards.
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