I've got a real mailbox!
If you are cocking your head to the side and wondering what my excitement is about, let me tell you: I have never lived anyplace where my name was on my mailbox. Ever. But this in not a story about a name on a mailbox, it is a story about finding myself, and having choices.
Yes, I have lived in apartments, where the inside of the box had a piece of tape for the mailman to know the occupants. Usually scratched over someone else's name, in black Sharpie, spelled wrong. I have had PO Boxes, with the same kind of tape deal at the Post Office. I have lived in houses with door or curbside mail boxes, made of plain black sheet metal or ugly gold aluminum.
I had a house with my ex-husband. The mailbox was old, there from the original owner. It had the man's first initial and last name on the side in faded gold painted stencil letters. It had a dent in the top from where the mirror on the truck had hit it. It had ivy growing inside it most of the time. It was rusty. It was often home to ants that liked the ivy. It always had spider webs, and by deduction, spiders. It was ugly, and I hated it. More than the way it looked, I hated that my name was not there. My mail was delivered daily into someone else's mailbox. Granted, my ex's name was never on the mailbox either.
This never bothered my ex-husband. His take on the whole thing was one of both economy and control. He liked that he had saved the house from being torn down after the fire that had caused the house to sit empty for years. He liked that he rebuilt it with his dad and brother. He liked that it cost almost nothing because the previous owner had already given up on the property. He got very wrapped up in the house's history, the house's things and objects, and the notoriety of having a house that had an infamous, if not famous, legacy. It was all gone by this point, destroyed in the fire, and not really of any meaning to anyone, but that did not keep my ex from thinking it needed to be preserved. His pride was wrapped up in it and I understand that for the most part.
So when I asked to put my name on the mailbox, the answer was flat-out no. This stunned me. It is a name on a mailbox of the house I am going to live in forever, love in forever, and be happy in forever, and my name would not be part of it. I would have no worldly frontage of existence in the house. There goes that theme again, having no place inside my own life.
Last week, my brother told me he was building me a post for my mailbox at the new house, and to go pick out a container. It had to meet US MAIL regs and stuff, but the choice was entirely mine. Cast iron with a horse and buggy on top in hunter green. Large black steel with a lock and stainless steel handle. White aluminum with a red plastic flag and round reflector. And the letters were mind boggling. Traditional gold stenciling. Silver leaf with filigree. Black Army-box peel and sticks. There were flag choices and placement decisions and height requirements and cement mixing.
I took the kids to Home Depot. They picked a very pretty, very practical standard size mailbox, with no lock, in a lovely pewter gray-green. It has a plain brass colored pull and flag. It was about 18 bucks.
So all that talk about having my name on the side, and feeling like I needed an outside statement went away as soon as the mailbox was home. We took out bright colored acrylic paints and painted our hands, and pressed our now messy palms right on to the side of that brand new mailbox. We wiggled them and pulled them away, and had a water fight to get our hands clean after. It looks spectacular. A pink-purple-blue-yellow-red-orange personalization that makes me smile when I see it.
There is no name on it whatsoever. Just the three hand prints of the family that calls the place home. That is what I had wanted from the other mail boxes, the ones everywhere else. It never was about the name after all, just the feeling that I could put my name there if I wanted to, because it was home. It is about the right to say yes just because it will invite in happiness and belonging. This time it was yes to whimsy, and that is all that made the difference.
I think I will write myself a letter.
