Answering

Every December I clear the kitchen table and answer everything. This year that took most of the weekend.

My mother's rule is that a letter should be answered within a week, and most of the year I manage it. But things pile up, and December is when I go through the pile and pay what I owe. This year the pile was bigger than usual, because the letters about the quest haven't stopped. They've slowed down since the summer, but they still come, two or three a week, and every one gets an answer. I've used up the good paper and gone through most of a second box.

Then there are the cards. I send about sixty. My mother sends more than a hundred and considers me lax. I write something in every one, even if it's only a line, because a card with just a name in it is a receipt, as my mother says. I keep a list in the back of a notebook: who I sent to, who sent to me, and anything I'd want to remember to ask about next year. Whose dog was sick. Who moved. Who had a baby, and its name, spelled right.

There's a point, maybe forty cards in, when my hand starts to cramp and my handwriting turns into something only my mother can read. I take a break, make tea, and look out at the rain. Then I go back and write the next one as carefully as the first, because the person opening it will only see the one.

By this evening the stack on the table was stamped and ready, and I walked it down to the mailbox on the corner in the dark. There's always a moment, letting go of them into the slot, when I want to reach in after them. I never have.