A Mailbag of Mother’s Day Memories

 

A Mailbag of Mother’s Day Memories

 

by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

 

 

In 1955, when I was five years old, I had to wait one more year to begin my education at Jacksonville Grade School because our rural Indiana school had no kindergarten.  In that same year, my mother was quite happy to begin a twenty-eight-year career as postmaster of our Blanford Post Office.  Since my dad worked various shifts at the Newport Army Ammunitions Plant, he, at times, was, much to my delight, at home to care for me while Mother was working full-time at the third-class post office of our small town.  Of course, when both of my parents were working, I had to stay with my Aunt Zita at her Italian Restaurant or with my maternal grandmother and my Uncle Pete at their grocery store.  At other times, my paternal grandmother came from the farm in the nearby rural area of Klondyke to “babysit” me.  Despite this, what we would call today, “Support system,” I do recall a number of times when I went to work with Mother at the post office.

 

In the earlier years of my mother’s “reign” as postmaster, a mail carrier delivered mail and picked up out-going mail twice a day.  So, besides all the people who were in and out of the building’s lobby each day, only my mother, her two part-time clerks, and the mail carrier were allowed  in the actual office area  of the post office.  Although I had plenty of ways to entertain myself in the ample lobby, I sometimes wanted to be in the forbidden area of the post office.  Also, perhaps, at times, my mother let me go in the back of the post office because that area was warmer in late autumn and throughout the winter.

 

Mother kept a number of large, heavy-duty empty mailbags on a pallet in the far southwest corner of the building.  Whenever I was in the limited-access area of the post office, Mother always insisted that I had to be very quiet.  When the mail carrier was to arrive, Mother hid me with the extra, empty mailbags and firmly instructed me to say nothing and be still.  I obeyed.  Being incognito at the post office was much more fun for a five-year-old than being babysat by a grandmother at home.  I am certain that my career-minded mother was quite pleased and relieved that I could keep absolutely quiet while hiding in the mailbags.  Fortunately, the number of minutes when I had to be so quiet and still were rather few because the mail carrier was always in a hurry to go to the next stop on his route.  How many people have such a Mother’s Day memory?  Not too many–and perhaps, I am the only one.

 

Like many of you, I can only remember my mother on Mother’s Day.  Since her passing in July of 2001, I can only order fresh-cut, pink and white flowers for her grave in Indiana–so far from where I have lived for almost twenty-eight years.  However, where I feel closest to my mother nowadays is when Willow, my fourth Leader Dog, and I enter our nearby post office.  “Find the deposit,” I say to Willow; and she takes me directly to the deposit.  So often when I place an envelope through the opening of the deposit, I remember  how I used to make an envelope “fly” past the receptacle of the Blanford Post Office’s deposit and onto the floor where my mother had to pick up the envelope.  Most often, she ignored my flight behavior and said nothing.  After all, I rarely had more than one piece of mail to deposit.

 

Sometimes, while I am depositing mail inside our post office today, I hear customers opening  and closing the little mailboxes:  indeed, this sound brings me back to my mother’s post office which meant so much to her and to our town of about four hundred residents.  Oh, how my mother did love being postmaster of Blanford!  Greeting all of her postal patrons with a bright and welcoming smile, my mother was eager to help whomever entered the Blanford Post Office.

 

Yes, if my local post office were open on Sunday, that is where I would go to honor and remember my mother on Mother’s Day.

 

With blessings for all of the mothers whom we fondly remember

and with best wishes for all who will celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend,

Alice and Leader Dog Willow

 

May 9, 2018, Wednesday

 

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