Surprises

If you know me, you probably know that I love getting and sending real mail. There is just something about handwriting and postmarks and paper that I consider small pleasures. Some years I have to force myself to wait until December 1 to send out holiday cards because I'm just that excited to make a big stack of cheery mail and send it out all over the world.

Today I taught until late and came home to find a manila envelope wedged in our little apartment mailbox. I saw the return address was from my aunt in WI and the label was typed so I thought maybe she had published another book and was sending me a copy (yes, such an accomplished woman that I can casually say she published "another" book). Anyway, I opened the package and found two amazing gifts. One, a childhood book that I love and had recently mentioned to her called _The Fledgling_ and two, far more precious, Auntie M's prose recounting the two of us meeting for coffee/tea right before I moved. She wrote about me! And us! This is the woman who, way back when, told this little small town WI girl that she'd end up a writer in Paris or some such thing and planted the seed. I was touched to my very core by the special delivery, especially in the midst of getting some bad news about my extended family and friends recently, to find such a wonderfully deliberate act of kindness in my very own mailbox. Ma vie est belle.