Postcards: does anyone read them?
During our travels in Europe, my mother and I seemed to spend more time addressing the postcards than writing them, the world around us proving more distracting than we anticipated. And we'd laugh each time it was time to move on to another country, because we still had a stack of unwritten cards with stamps and scrawled addresses, and nothing more. We'd furiously scribble some notes at the airport then run around trying to find a postbox to send them. Or beg the on-board staff to post them when they got back home. In April and May, 2006, as my husband and I drove around Greece researching a guidebook, my mum back in Australia in a coma, I would write her a postcard a day, sharing my everyday experiences, my secret thoughts, my fears that I might never see her again, as much as my ideas for the things we'd do together upon her recovery. I just wanted her to know that I was thinking of her. Fortunately, three weeks later she was out of the coma, speaking a little, slowly remembering, and (miraculously) rapidly recovering. I was by her side a month later. The postcards were in the drawer beside her hospital bed. I never did ask her if the nurses or anyone had read her the cards. Knowing she was well enough now to read them was enough. But now I wonder: does anyone read the postcards when we send them?
During our travels in Europe, my mother and I seemed to spend more time addressing the postcards than writing them, the world around us proving more distracting than we anticipated. And we'd laugh each time it was time to move on to another country, because we still had a stack of unwritten cards with stamps and scrawled addresses, and nothing more. We'd furiously scribble some notes at the airport then run around trying to find a postbox to send them. Or beg the on-board staff to post them when they got back home. In April and May, 2006, as my husband and I drove around Greece researching a guidebook, my mum back in Australia in a coma, I would write her a postcard a day, sharing my everyday experiences, my secret thoughts, my fears that I might never see her again, as much as my ideas for the things we'd do together upon her recovery. I just wanted her to know that I was thinking of her. Fortunately, three weeks later she was out of the coma, speaking a little, slowly remembering, and (miraculously) rapidly recovering. I was by her side a month later. The postcards were in the drawer beside her hospital bed. I never did ask her if the nurses or anyone had read her the cards. Knowing she was well enough now to read them was enough. But now I wonder: does anyone read the postcards when we send them?