Lemonade by Post

I had a perfectly awful day, full of low-grade aesthetic irritations like bleeding blisters from my allegedly sensible shoes and a rash from an exposed zipper and underpants whose elastic waistband snapped on the subway and two handsome younger men who “ma’am”ed me (I don’t care where or how you grew up, all women hate ma’am!) and the unhappy realization that, when it gets humid, my new haircut looks like Amadeus’ wig. By the time I got off the subway all I wanted to do was lie naked in a dark room with a glass of opium, er, wine.

Instead, I got lemonade in my mailbox. There, in lieu of bills, I found a beautifully festooned card sent, unbidden, by my favorite ten-year-old in all the land: Miss Luci Vanderpile, my most epistolary of goddaughters. I mean, there were scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers! And sparkly hedgehogs! When I finally brought myself to open the envelope (really, it was almost too pretty to disturb), it contained so many hand-printed treasures that I sat on my bed and wept grateful tears. All hail the magical healing powers of snail mail–and godfamily, of course. All hail godfamily.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy