My Mom loves paper. From magazine subscriptions to printing flight confirmations, hotel bookings, recipes, and Amazon receipts, she’s keeping Staples in business and publishing giants afloat. (Thankfully, she recycles.) And while she does read books on a Kindle, message via Gchat (despite still maintaining and preferring an AOL address), and watch my stories on Instagram, she also loves sending good, old-fashioned snail mail.
Since the pandemic began, grounding our nuclear family of five oceans apart — with me in Paris, my sister in Los Angeles, and my father and brother back in New York with her — my mother has been sending me mail every few weeks. Whether it costs more than the contents itself or takes ages to arrive isn’t the point. It’s almost like we’re quarantining together, experiencing this bizarre moment in time thousands of miles and a time zone away, but still connected by a few stamps and the United States Postal Service…