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Monday, August 30, 2010

Snail Mail is still making a trail!

It’s time to send the daughter off to college, which means it’s time to start sending letters and packages and postcards in the mail to her retro mailbox with little window and dial. She’s headed to a dormitory that was built in the late 1950’s, complete with a recessed boomerang ceiling and mosaic tiles of aqua, black and gray that trim the lobby of this blast from the past. It is the same dormitory that housed two of my aunts, her aunts, a few of the cousins of more recent years and now my own daughter along with her cousin, who will room just one flight of stairs above her.

The college is different from the one I attended, but the memories these girls will have while living in their dorm will be much like my own and all of the other women in our family who lived on this campus and called it home for a short but memorable time in their lives. The girls will gain friendships that will last a lifetime, and maybe, just maybe one day they will bring their own daughters back to this same campus to carry on the family tradition.

Since communication is so easy now with emails, Facebook, texting and even the old landline (my fave), it seems to me that the one form of communication that gets less attention these days is good ’ol fashion snail mail. Well, I’m determined not to let it be a thing of the past, so I hope to fill that little mailbox in the retro dorm with postcards every so often to give the girls a little something to hold onto, literally.


Here is the first card I sent to the girls. It speaks for itself, and it’s true of these cousins. They are both amazing girls with wonderful traits. I know I speak for the family, but I’m sure they all agree. We are proud of the girls and hope for the best in their next stage in life.

I have actually discovered that mail being sent to a college campus is truly s-n-a-i-l mail. What takes two or three days to go from coast to coast with the U.S. postal service, seams to change from snail mail to pony express when it hits a campus. I guess the name SnailMail is more fitting than I thought.

Remember, everyone likes to get something in the mail, even if it takes forever to arrive.