Neither . . . Heat Nor Gloom of Night

There’s this sign I bought when I was at my lowest point and thought I might never survive what life had thrown at me:

If cauliflower can somehow become pizza . . .

You, my friend, can do anything.

It’s still on my desk making me smile, giving me hope. Think about it. If you can take a tasteless, colorless, unloved vegetable like a head of cauliflower and, after steaming it into submission and pulverizing it into compliance, blend what's left with Italian ingredients and turn out a respectable pizza pie, you have performed a miracle. The transformation of a humble cauliflower into an unlikely hero means that this must also be true:

I can do anything.

That’s what hope does, right? It takes the mangled parts of our life and turns them into something new and amazing. Like a collage of photographs which, when they’re laid out in just the right pattern, make an entirely new image of someone else. There’s a young woman on YouTube who loves to take thrift store pillowcases and re-use the fabric to make clothing. Or how about a mosaic made with broken pieces of china? Finally, as in the case of our mailman, with enough determination you can even transform letters and packages into origami.

I just don’t think that’s what Japanese culture had in mind when they came up with the shapeshifting art of paper folding. 

I’ll admit, now that I share an address with my daughter and her family, there is a little more mail taking up space in their average-sized mailbox. Like, an extra two or three envelopes a day and maybe twice a year a small package, at birthdays and Christmas. Even a mail order clothing delivery might find its way into the hands of our crafty mail person. The problem is that what goes in may not look the same way when it comes out again.

Case in point. A dear friend painted a watercolor of my beloved dog, Brody (who lives with Jesus and chases balls for Rob now) and mailed it to me for my birthday. She framed it with a cardboard matting and backed it with more cardboard and sent it to me in a large, padded envelope. Seems like a reasonable amount of protection to me.  The problem was that it’s shaped like most pictures are—flat. But our mailbox is shaped like—a mailbox. It was a predicament, for sure. How on earth does one convince a stiff item in a padded envelope to submit to a representative of the United States Postal Service and behave itself inside a mailbox?

Our clever mailtech solved that little disconnect and now my handpainted watercolor has the same shape as our mailbox. I guess that way I can use it to cover the mailbox instead of my wall and everyone in the neighborhood can enjoy seeing Brody and remembering what a good boy he was the way I wanted to.

You might be surprised to learn that the next day I hand carried this reimagined piece of art into our local post office, stood in line for thirty minutes to speak with a supervisor, only to discover supervisors take Saturday mornings off. I was promised he would call me personally the next week, which was two weeks ago. I bet that comes as a surprise to you, too. I thought I’d give him some time to reach out, since I know the post office is so busy that even their mailmen don’t have time to walk up a driveway and leave a padded envelope outside a homeowner’s door when it won’t fit inside a mailbox.

But perhaps I’m not giving the supervisor enough credit for caring about my feelings, or the feelings of the artist whose watercolor now sports folds and creases that weren’t originally part of Brody. Last week, my son-in-law, Dan, stopped by with some more mail for me and dropped it on my kitchen counter.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said, as I stood over the crumpled mess that included a birthday card from my mother-in-law. What is it about my birthday gifts that has this mailman so irate? Is he against birthdays? Growing old? Women? Or does he just hate me or my name personally? It wasn’t the last one.

“Our mail was crumpled up, too,” Dan added.

Now I’m afraid to go back to the post office on a weekday and ask to speak to a supervisor. I’m afraid he already spoke to our mailman. It’s not like I can be anonymous about this complaint. The guy knows where we live. What if his fuse is even shorter than I think and he goes postal on us?

Today I went to Katy and Dan’s for lunch and when I left there were a couple of letters for me lying on their fireplace hearth. That’s usually where they put my mail until we connect, but I wasn’t sure it was mine at first. There wasn’t a crease in it anywhere.

Maybe the mailman was just having a bad day when he took his anger out on my birthday present. Or a bad month. Maybe he’s a frustrated artist who rides around in an un-airconditioned truck on hundred-degree days and hates his job. I know I would. Maybe his home life is in tatters and his wife just texted him to stop at the store when he gets off work because she wants to turn a cauliflower into pizza.

And He.Just.Couldn’t.Take.It.Anymore.

I think I may have to get rid of my little sign and go back to eating gluten-filled pizza crusts again. I'm feeling a lot less courageous after all this excitement. I still think hope is a strong core value, though, and that within limits I can do anything I set my mind to.

Right now, I’m setting my mind on getting a bigger mailbox.

With apologies to Brody, whose watercolor can be viewed above, for the unkind way he was handled, and also to the artist, Sheila, who may have to re-think mailing gifts to me. I'd stand up for all our rights, but right now I'm afraid of the mailman.