Postcards from the Edge

“What did you write. Let me see.” Chris was leaning across me, like a child eager to snatch a Christmas present.

“It’s private!” I placed my hand over the words.

“No it’s not! It’s a postcard! Everyone from here to Jackie’s front door will read that thing.”

He had a point. I offered up the postcard, which was hardly scrawled with state secrets or mafia admissions. It was your a-typical vacation rundown. “Bangkok is sunny, gorgeous and 9,000 degrees. I have eaten all the Pad Thai in the city. We are in a little bookshop now, but in a week we will be on this beach on the front of this card. Love you and wish you were here!”

“That’s no good!”

My boyfriend has this face he makes. His nose wrinkles at the bridge, and his dark eyebrows come together. There’s a slight uptick of his lip on the right side. It’s a pretty impressive face. You can tell he’s displeased from the cheap seats to the 50-yard-line. I once actually had to elbow him when we walked past a particularly noxious man, because Chris doesn’t always realize he’s making his Face of Displeasure.

I love the Face of Displeasure. Because, it’s not actually his angry face. When he’s mad, he just gets quiet and tired looking. When he’s playing around, his face really comes alive. It’s a caricature of shock and disgust.

“What do you mean it’s not any good?” The writer in me was huffing at the rather personal affront.

“Here.” He slid his own postcard over.

First, it was nothing about Bangkok. His parents knew we were in Bangkok. It was about some inner dialogue he’d had with himself. A question posed about the Universe. Nerdy, but entertaining.

Then, along the sides, he’d written other things. A tome about my flip flop coming apart, and his skillful use of duct-tape on his own. He attempted to capture the majesty of a street cat we met that morning, just beneath the stamp. The cartoon rendering had explanations scrawled around it. The reader had to turn the card certain ways to read it all. It was bursting at the seams with lofty questions no one could answer. Absurd for a postcard. There were drawings and sketches and bits of conversation, enlightening random occurrences.

It put you into our vacation minutia. Into an actual, random conversation. It screamed, “We really do wish you were here!”

All in all, he was right. Asked to choose the more entertaining postcard, his was RuPaul. Mine, Elizabeth Warren.

I changed my postcards and my correspondence that very day. I stopped describing the grandiose moments. Everyone knows you went to Paris, and of course you saw the Eiffel Tower. I talk about the pigeons and the pasta sauce I spilled on my shirt. I sent friends messages of stealing flowers from the roadside in Scotland and of trying––unsuccessfully––to pet someone’s goat in Cambodia. I might never mention the place, but instead start it with, “Hey … remember that one time in high school …”

I also now write postcards to myself. I have one on my fridge––an appliance I’ve been come deeply acquainted with these last few weeks––that only contains two sentences.

“Remember … you are blessed. And Smile.”

It’s from Colombo, Sri Lanka. I do smile … every time I yank open the door for another slice of Brie or a pickle from the Vlasic jar. It makes me remember Sri Lanka, and a hot day of traveling dusty roads in a tuk tuk. There were cobras in a baskets. There were monkeys hassling tourists. I bought a blue sapphire ring from a small shop with intense air conditioning. I remember the man who sold it to me had the tiniest, silver mustache. You could tell it was a point of pride. Though sparse, it was deftly landscaped, and it did lend his face a certain panache.

I remember all these things when I see that one word, “Smile.”

There’s the taste of Egg Hoppers. The smell of saffron threads. I smile. Every time.

Send me your address, and I’ll send you some correspondence. I’d love a handwritten note in return. Make it witty. Draw me a cat. Tell me a joke or ask me an unanswerable question.

We aren’t traveling right now, but doesn’t mean we can’t send postcards from the edge … even if it’s just the edge of your fridge, on the edge of a virus.