And a Tale of Many Many Good Things
Sometimes timing really can hit with such a deafening impact that long after you still feel its echo.
I was up late binge updating cards on Postcrossing late last night/Saturday morning and organizing a bit when it happened. I didn't expect it to happen. Even yesterday morning after I'd slept, I really didn't expect it to happen.
But there it was... on a weathered card that had decided to make a cameo perhaps with a purpose.
It most certainly has a purpose.
Or so says sentimental cheesy me.
I'd found a few cards shuffled into things where they shouldn't be. Two cards were written about over on my mail portion of the blog. It's a section which is starting to get more attention again with a fury and even sparked a whole other Twitter account too.
The last week has been full of some unforeseen stresses that bid me to escape down a rabbit hole of distraction. Postcards and stamps seemed suiting of that. Postal escapes and binge cleaning and organizing.
Stamps and mail have been something comforting to me since childhood. I'm not sure when or how it came about but I remember collecting stamps and having a box of them under my bed when I lived in IL at that house I will remember "home" the most from my childhood in my room with lavender walls at 1021 Highland Ave.
I don't have access to the library of analog prints to plow through to see if there are any pictures to prove it in action for this draft. Perhaps I will find some when I go through things in my storage next weekend. I have quite a bit stored away so I am not regularly sitting and looking at and dealing with it. There is a chance that I might not find anything in there though with that. Many of my pictures from that time ironically have gone to be held at my father's home...
A place where...
I was updating postcards to my registered list and catalog on Postcrossing. Eventually, or so I tell myself, I'll compile spreadsheets with the tracking lists to see. Perhaps I'll make a book with them. Perhaps not.
I have no idea yet.
Life tends to give me an ever long list of projects to occupy my time and provide a distraction and focus.
It is motivating in some subtle way.
But that's how coping mechanisms are I suppose.
If that's what that even is.
Hobbies are silly like that or maybe that's just me.
Maybe it's a bit of both.
When I can, I love to provide magic and wishes to people. If I can make someone's day it makes my day. This is something that even my most painful exes can all say consistently even through their anger and frustrations with me that they'd surely pile fault as being mostly or solely on me.
It makes sense I'm sure in some ways. Everyone is trying to guard their heart after all and it's also been common to call me "dangerous*" in emotionally beautiful and tempting ways although uncertain and...
But those are tales that aren't written yet.
Or at least the stories and chapters aren't done.
They aren't even defined yet.
They may never be,
This moment is all that matters though.
This moment is all we have.
The mail has served to be an easy place to provide smiles to strangers and escape. It brings me back to that childhood escape looking at stamps of all the places far away from the pain I had growing up with parents that didn't care the ways that I do about my treasured children.
Of the places that I would dream to go to far far from Illinois and the family I was born into that I am partially ecstatic is not something that at least someone would be stuck "connected to forever"*.
Oh my mail and letters and cards would help tear down the borders and cell walls of pain and imprisonment and go to anywhere beyond the place that although it was home, felt more like just a stuff where my stuff was.
Mail has been that escape in a few ways, or has, over the years. You can follow along with that on my mail section of the blog if the specifics are of interest to you.
One outlet I use regularly is a place called Postcrossing. I send and receive cards from strangers all over the world due to that site. Folks over there make profiles with requests for different styles of cards to collect (as well as stamps and sometimes pen paling) which I try to cater to whenever possible. I was looking for a card to send to a fellow quirky Postcrosser who had some similar desires and possibly mindsets.
I was doing a combination of sending as well as receiving the last few days. I'd sent a few out as well this weekend.
In the late hours which have seemed to take over my prime time with the weather being too melting hot to function really during the day, I was registering cards in a massive stack.
I was registering so many cards the last couple of days as I'd gotten two batches with over 30 cards that were waiting to be logged in to the registration on the site. I've been diligent with things massively as well this time. I wanted to ensure that I took photos of all of them for my online catalog there, my blog section here, and future rabbit hole possible projects that have been wandering around my brainmeats to possibly provide the world.
Three rouge cards got mixed in somehow in the mix of it all. I wrote about two of them already on the other section but this one...
This one I didn't realize was going to hit a harder note than the others for a very specific reason: the date on the card.
The card had been sent bidding me a happy belated birthday and "many, MANY good things with the year ahead."
It didn't hit me when I went to register it until I saw it show the message in red that it was expired. Immediately I erased the small note I'd written thanking them for the birthday wishes and the card of a painting called "The Reading Woman" by artist Leon Kamir and sent this instead:
For those unable to read the image, this is what it said:
““Jay Bee,
Many many thanks to the now VERY belated birthday message and reading woman art card. It is now 2 years later and I came across this card while organizing things. It somehow got mixed with some other things in a box that I’d had blank cards to send when I lived in San Francisco that I was sorting through this week in Los Angeles. 3 cards from a long time ago were found in a box. At 2 or 3 am this morning I didn’t realize that they were backdated until I attempted to register 2 of them and saw that they had expired.
Things in 2016 were extremely difficult. I was (and sadly still am) in the middle of a lot of family pain and unnecessary hardships. On the date you sent your card in 2016 was actually the day that we would later learned was my sister’s last day living as she was murdered on May 23rd, 2016 and found on June 1st, 2016. This story is chronicled a bit on my blog Littlegirlbigcity in the section Little Mom Big City in the post called Pre-Trial.
Your sentiment wishing “many, MANY, good things with the year ahead” is accidentally painful and beautiful and all shades of spectrums. You see, as strange as it may sound for someone who has been through the pain that I have, I must admit that “many, MANY good things” did come in that year ahead. They would be moments of realizations, beauty, understanding and... a cultivation of a harder, stronger, fuller me even during the absence.
While 2016 was absolutely dreadful in ways that I don’t believe I’d wish upon my enemies as I feel bad for them more than I despise them, I want to thank you regardless for your kind sentiment and wonderful card. I’m sorry that it took 2 years to register it.
Hope your years are full of life and love and lessons and good things... but perhaps even some bad can sometimes be good too.
Warmly,
Jennifer””
There have been some very difficult full years over the past couple of years. Recently I was in a conversation about the past and the present and the [uncertain] future and...
Some things stick with you whether you like it or not. Some memories are painful and pull so much out of you. Some are beautiful and lovely and contain so much sunshine and... really should be remembered and thought of even if they are painful at the same time.
I think I'm going to write an email after this post and request the video of some of them again.
Nope.
Not "I think." I am just going to do it.
This is the tale of a card that hit chords of pain and indeed, in some ways, "many, MANY good things."
In the aftermath of the blast, I've found family and pieces of me that never should have been shattered but perhaps...
I'm still fighting.
I'm still standing.
I'm still wobbling through red bridge cities and redwoods and on skates bounding about the cities I love and dreaming and daring to...
Continue to every day be thankful for many many good things even if the people I've loved and still loved are not present in ways that they had once been before.
Our time will come my dears.
Time comes when we least expect it.
After it all.
Before it all.
I will always continue to think of the good and the tales of many many good things even if many were tragically not.
Happiness or belated timing or not.
Long after the echo.
