The Enchanted Mailbox

I believe mailboxes are magical. Think about this for a moment: a mailbox is vested with the mission of receiving on your behalf, containing and protecting soul to soul messages in the form of letters, cards and other surprises. It is a guardian of love, romance, friendship, gratitude. Sure, at times there are not so fun messages to receive, such as utility bills or hideous flyers of tires or other items you rarely need, but emphasizing the positive possibilities this gate to our human bonds can add will help see the bright side of daily existence. 

In my childhood home, where I grew up since babyhood until my mother found another home when I was 14, there was a very special mailbox. To the left side of the door on the back of our house, attached to the beige brick facade of our home, facing the driveway, there was this black, cast metal mailbox and shaped like a lovely Amish wicker picnic basket that would make a sharp, heavy sound whenever its lid flapped back to its initial position after the mail person ("le facteur") dropped the mail in it. Not only did I enjoy receiving letters from my pen pal, Lydie, living in France, her words with impeccable calligraphy protected by these beautiful pale blue envelopes with navy and red parallelograms alternating on the edges to indicate it was PAR AVION (air mail), or post cards from my male friend and study partner I had a serious crush on, but its "tonk" sound became ominous for several weeks in 1993, the year I applied to four medical schools. Every day, I was waiting anxiously for the door to my future in the form of a congratulations or a rejection to arrive in an envelope. An invitation to schedule an interview, and later the final response. I was looking outside the window to see when or if the mailman was coming my way every day. It is one of those situations where the mailman is simply your best friend.

Here is the type of basket represented by said mailbox (thanks to my mom, Rita Grenier, who took a few shots of this mini basket for me earlier today):

The one on La Vérendrye had a very similar shape but was longer, so more rectangular. And it had only one handle, right in the middle.

I forgot about this mailbox for many years after that, maybe because it had not brought the promises I was hoping for after all (I was accepted in my second-choice programs like speech therapy and physical therapy, which turned out for the best since getting a bachelor's in health sciences while gaining in maturity made me a better candidate when I was accepted in two medical schools 3 years later). And my father, after having kept the home for almost a decade after that, sold it, which made me experience a new facet of the grieving process, as I remember spending about four months missing the memories I had left behind and even dreaming of this home often at night.

The pandemic made me optimize my use of postal services as I was yearning for connections, not able to visit my beloved Canada nor having guests as regularly. So for the first year of this global disaster, I sent letters or handmade cards to friends and family for their birthday as a tangible way to sustain the social distancing. Like I mentioned in a previous blog post "Les Arts Perdus (et Retrouvés"), it is a lost art that I always tried to keep alive, and the simple act of putting a miniature frame, in the form of a stamp, on the wall of someone's address was (and still is) pure joy.

Since I moved in the House of Enchantments, I started to pay attention to the mailbox again, after I overcame my weekslong procrastination to open a stack of about twenty envelopes, fearing their content or bills with penalty to pay (even though most of my recurring payments happen on autopay) and instead discovered about 5 checks total (never mind that 4 of them were reimbursements, it felt good to deposit them), and also pleasant flyers of stores with beautiful furniture or blinds in my stand-alone mailbox, as opposed to the flyers of guns in the "apartment complex" type of mailbox I used to go to in my former house, and that filled me with horror and shock every time. Now I wonder if the algorithm to distribute those flyers is based upon a correlation between a specific zip code and spending habits of the people living within a same area ? If that is the case, I am relieved to know that I am less surrounded by gun owners and more by neighbors seeking to beautify their home. My mailbox is so magical that even the flyers for blinds are way more than that: I ignore the blinds (which I don't really need) and instead look at other aspects of the pictures, like the furniture, the composition of wall art pieces etc to gain more inspiration as I am getting settled into my own place.

Does your mailbox seem enchanted, too ? In what way ? And if not, what do you think you can do to receive all its magic ?