End of a Tradition?

Say what?! That was my reaction when the clerk at the post office in Ambleside said 10.20 pounds for three international postcard stamps. That is nearly five dollars per postcard!

I will not recover from the PTSD.

I came back from the post office muttering furiously about this being the last time I will send postcards from abroad. The young ones in the family had a dog with tipped ear look. What is a postcard and why do you send them they asked silently while I ranted!

BECAUSE THAT IS HOW I CHRONICLE OUR TRIPS!!!

But…you can post on Insta and TikTok they countered.

Ugh. Nobody understands. I don’t do social media!

Decades ago, I started this tradition by sending my mother postcards every time I was in a new city. I would also send her multiples from the same city if I saw or did something she would enjoy.

The brilliance of this tradition was Ma’s return gift to me - she dutifully kept all the cards. On our visits back to her, I loved reading about our trips. It was even better than albums with hundreds of photos. These postcards held the details and chronology of our trips, the rush of my chicken-scratch writing, the effort to buy stamps, the joy of dropping them in a post box and my expectation of Ma’s anticipation. Over the years, Tarun became an ardent supporter of finding stores that sell stamps and finding mailboxes. Failing to find a mailbox, I would leave the stamped cards at the front desk of our hotel, hoping that the staff would remember to send them out. Ma and my friends who received the cards always sent me an acknowledgement. The analog connections that ensued are priceless.

After Mina was born and Ma passed, Tarun and I started sending postcards to Mina. The legacy of a box of writing from her grandparents was intriguing.

Usually I write. Occasionally, I leave room for Tarun to write. We use block letters so it will be easy for Mina to read.

At almost five dollars a pop for three or four lines of scribbles, am I at the end of the road on a tradition that has lasted for decades?

Yes, I am.

As I came to this conclusion, I read about the demise of letter delivery in the Danish postal service. This is the beginning of the inevitable.

Tarun offered a compromise to relieve my anxiety. Get the postcards, write on them, address them but mail them from the US, he suggested. With Ma gone, all my cards are now domestic so this makes sense. It’s tragic to lose the international stamping and the Por Avion stickers (is there really another way?!) but c’est la vie.

My decision to abandon the tradition to mail from abroad will only exacerbate the problem that is contributing to rising postal rates - drop in mail volume. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem where I am neither chicken nor egg but I am crossing the road first and getting hit by a semi-truck.

End of a tradition it is!

Sorry Mina. Mimi and Dadu did their best on filling the box of cards from abroad, but we can’t anymore. We will send you cards from good old New Hampshire instead until the US postal service suspends letter delivery.

In the meantime, I will derive pleasure from my daughter-in-law, Erika, buying postcards from the 1800s on eBay. To think I was part of a centuries-old tradition makes me chuckle about how vintage I am!

Bring on the new year and new traditions!

Happy Hogmanay as they say in Scotland. Happy New Year to all!