Snail mail is my favorite.  Slow and frustrating to my family, friends, and colleagues, I didn't get texting on my phone until a year and a half ago.   (I do feel quite savvy these days having gotten WhatsApp to chat and text with folks back home.)  In the past, I have been more likely to sit down and write a letter to a friend.  Sipping tea and writing a letter feel like a good substitute for a visit or walk with a friend.  (I've never been cool enough to say, "Let's go for a beer!  Let's go for a glass of wine!"  It's not that I don't drink either -- I drink both -- but inviting someone for tea or a walk comes out more naturally for me, and I think I'll actually follow up on it.)

Having left Boston with many things undone, I sat down some days ago to write some belated thank you notes.  I found a few postcards from the previous tenants (Bologna, Santorini, Ravenna, Alaska Inside Passage -- all places I've not visited), wrote my notes on these, and went to the Poste Italiane.

In the past, I had gone to Vatican City for stamps and mailing notes because people advised that Vatican City is more reliable than the Italian mail service.  So this was a new experience for me.  Inside the door was a huge machine with a screen with choices that were written, of course, in Italian.  All I wanted to do was buy some stamps, and I had no idea which category I needed for that.  I asked another customer; he pressed a box and out came a number for me, just like one I'd get at the deli counter at home.  My number was 144.  On the screen by the sportelli were the numbers 123 - 127.  Last week when Dave (works for SYA) took me to get my Italian social security number, we had a similar experience, so this day I came prepared with my book (The Nightingale).  After twenty minutes, I sat down and read.  And read.

Fifty minutes later 144 was up on the board to report to sportello (counter -- learned this also when getting social security number) 9.  While waiting, I had googled stamps in Italian (francobolli) and how to ask for them.  In halting and tentative Italian I said, Buongiorno.  Posso per favore comprare francobolli?  The postal employee indicated that sure, I could buy some stamps, how many did I want and what kind?  I gestured to the postcards and the envelopes, and then asked for treinta, thinking that will give me an extra twenty-five for thank you notes that the kids still need to write when they arrive, and any other notes we feel like writing.  Postcards are always fun to send.

The woman left her desk and went into the back.  She returned a few minutes later, I ran my credit card, and she asked me for my documentazione.  I had no documents to give her, and I could think of nothing I should have.  A few more gestures and her reaching into her purse let me know she meant my passport.  My passport to buy stamps with my credit card?!  I was so not prepared: I try not to carry my passport with me, thinking that's the best way to keep it safe.  She smiled, gestured again, looked around a bit, and then gave me my receipt and thirty stamps.

Outside I added the stamps to the postcards and notes and put them in a red box.  Some red boxes I've seen around town are all taped up.  There's no spot to actually put the mail in.  These looked functional, so in went the stamped notes.  I looked at the receipt, noticed it said 72,00, and thought, That's strange.  Maybe it's supposed to say 7.20, as in $7.20 and not 72 dollars or Euro.

When I dumped out my pockets onto the dining room table later, I saw the receipt again.  I got that sick feeling, my mom would call it, of what have I done and what does this mean?  There's no way I could have spent $83 (Yes, I googled it...been googling euro to dollars; kilometers to miles; Celsius to Farenheit.  I write down the formulas with the thought that eventually they'll sink in.  Another item on my list to google is driving a stick shift.  Must happen this year if I want to drive anywhere.  Scary, but must be done.  I figure that if I learn it in theory first, then I can practice on the car we're borrowing for the year somewhere quiet.  What did we ever do before google?) on thirty stamps.  I imagine the mistake, wonder what else I purchased that I didn't know, and later on text the all-knowing Roberta (admin assistant and general go-to for almost everything SYA).  When she doesn't respond, I think, Why don't I google stamps, too?  (Wished I had thought of this before bothering Roberta...)

To mail a postcard or letter from the United States to Italy is $1.15.  To mail a postcard or letter from Italy to the U.S. is 2.3 Euro, which, google tells me, is $2.55.  (Eventually I really will stop converting every measurement and Italian word, but I'm still in the transition phase.  Likely I won't have time to google every little thing once the gang arrives next week.  And this could be good for me.)

So indeed I did spend 72 Euro on thirty stamps.  When people travel, there should be a built-in warning, Plan at least $100 over budget for those early errors you make because you just won't know any better.  (How in the world do immigrants survive when they get to a new land?)

Now I've accepted the charge and (almost) let it go.  I don't want to see real mail go.  But it may be the thirty stamps and then emails.  And we must use one stamp to send a note to our own mailbox for LeeAnn.

LeeAnn is our mail carrier and one of the highlights of our day at home.  She knows every person in the neighbourhood, what they do for a living, how their days are going, who's sick, who's lost someone recently, who has a birthday coming up, who sends postcards to complain to Trump about his administration ("Nevertheless, we will prevail!"), in which corner of the garage to store Santa boxes in December.  She is light in the day.  If she has a minute, she'll tell you a story about growing up in Lowell and wishing she could have played more basketball, or she'll play a quick game of knockout with Sebastian, or she'll do silly snapchats and send me photos of the kids with her in the neighbourhood.   She occasionally leaves huge bags of popcorn sticking out of our mailbox from the store where she buys her lottery tickets.  And when she is driving around early in the morning during the Christmas season, Connor and Hannah yell from their bunkbed by their window, "LeeAnn's here!" And they run to the door to holler, "Hi, LeeAnn!"  She is funny and real and kind and blunt.  She is no-nonsense and sensitive at the same time.  She is friendly with the youngest and the oldest folks on her route.  As she makes her deliveries each days, she collects stories, a welcoming nature beneath her self-proclaimed "tell it like it is" m.o.

One day she said to me, "So, Daniel's getting together with Mary Murphy."
"What?" I said.
"Yeah, I saw his name on her calendar when I was over there," she said.
I thought, remembered.  Mary Murphy is an eighty-four-year old kind woman a couple blocks over that Daniel had met and with whom he was planning a cup of tea.
"Oh, yes!" I said.
"She's great," LeeAnn said.

I'm glad I'm here buying ridiculously priced stamps.  And we all will miss LeeAnn this year.

Italian mailbox that does not take mail

The magic number