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A week ago Friday I neglected to pick up our mail, Celeste’s and mine, at the post office, a block east of our home here in Fjord, and I neglected to pick it up the next day, Saturday, as well. By Sunday evening I figured I better see if our tiny P.O. box was full, as we never know this time of year if we’ll get some Christmas cards and advertisements and maybe, I was hoping, even a locker key representing a surprise package from someone. So I set out on foot on Sunday evening, about eight p.m., for what should have been a ten-minute roundtrip hike. Celeste stayed home.
The night was clear and crisp, with a delicious scent of wood smoke in the air, something I have not recently noticed at other times of day. I carried a diamond willow walking stick, a gift from my Alaska brother, Rick, and I was glad I’d brought it, thump, thump, thump, as some sidewalks were icy along the way. I stopped once to admire a Christmas-lighted house with a white picket fence decorated also with colorful bulbs. I took a picture with my phone.
At the post office I did find our box was stuffed with mail. I spread the items out on the little counter across from the boxes and organized them, putting the cards and advertisements and a Netflix DVD inside a magazine so I could tuck it all into my shirt and zip my down jacket over it for the return home. While I was doing that, a neighbor lady, close to me in age I would think, and seemingly about as eccentric as I, came in to retrieve her mail. I greeted her, and then I noticed her mismatched footwear, a pair of larger-than-she-needed Crocs, one of them dark blue, and the other approximately turquoise. I don’t know her well, but maybe well enough, I thought, to tease her gently. “I wonder,” I said, “do you have another pair of shoes like those at home?”
“Yes, I do!” she said, apparently taking no offense. “One of my dogs pooped in the dining room, and I stepped in the mess.”
“Oh, my!” I said. “Oh, dear!”
While I loaded my shirt with the mail and made sure not to leave my walking stick behind, I continued to make sympathetic murmurs as the lady remarked upon the recent discontinuance of home delivery of the Wisconsin State Journal. I had heard it from others in the town—each issue now comes by U.S. Mail no sooner than one day beyond the date printed below the masthead, and thus, subscribers here no longer have the pleasure of reading a fresh newspaper while drinking their morning coffee.
I’d have liked to stay for more chit-chat, but the lady’s unoccupied automobile was idling at the curb, and I figured, also, she surely had dogs that would appreciate her attention at home.
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