Message from Home

Imagine my surprise and delight when I returned to my room this evening after a long day at residency and found the message light blinking on my room telephone.  For a split second, I was worried, wondering if maybe something had happened at home in Denver and that perhaps my family had been trying in vain to reach me.  I picked up the phone and called the front desk.  "The message light is blinking on my phone; did someone leave a message for me?" I asked.  "No," the young desk clerk replied, "but you have mail."  Mail?  Someone mailed me something in Cambridge?

The curiosity was killing me, so I immediately descended the flights of stairs that I had just walked up and asked for my mail at the desk.  Seeing my bewildered look, the clerk smiled and handed me a bright yellow envelope.  The return address should not have surprised me.  My son's beautiful best friend, Alex, who in maybe 10 years time might turn out to be the boy's soul mate, had taken the time to mail me a card, all the way here to Cambridge, just to make me smile.

I remember a time, not long in the past, when writing letters was commonplace.  I wrote them often to friends, grandparents, and my own parents when I lived far from home.  Then the internet stepped in, and the immediacy of electronic communication caused the epistolary form to wane.  While we can still write letters and send them through email, those messages are a sorry replacement for a handwritten note.  There's something timeless and beautiful about the craft of writing something special to someone in our own hand.  It's careful, deliberate, and full of thought.  Email is wonderful, but it exists in a brief moment of space and time that is fleeting.  Cards and letters, sent through the mail and still hand-delivered to the recipient are tangible in a way that email will never be.

I've already dated this card, and added a note about where and when I received it on the back.  I'll get home and add it to my memory box, as it is as strong a memory of my Cambridge experience as any other.  This beautiful young woman whom I adore, took the time to tell me that she was thinking about me and wanted me to know.  With her sparkly green pen, she filled up the side of the card with her thoughts, and likely more praise than I deserve, but she means it and I hope that I can live up to it.  It is a gift of dramatic proportion to be thought of in that way.  "Daughter-in-law", I love you, too.