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Something good actually arrived in the mail today

It’s official: I get next to nothing in the mail. Sure, at Christmas there might be the odd parcel. There might be six or seven cards, when once there would have been 60.
Barbara Gunn
Barbara Gunn

It’s official: I get next to nothing in the mail.

Sure, at Christmas there might be the odd parcel. There might be six or seven cards, when once there would have been 60.

But for the most part, I get notices telling me there’s a two-for-one at McDonald’s, that a new sushi restaurant is opening at the mall and that realtor so-and-so would love to put our house on the market if only we’d give her a chance.

For the most part, the letter carrier deposits recycling schedules in our mailbox, along with appeals from charities, flyers from plumbers and Visa bills. I do not consider Visa bills mail exactly. I consider them annoyances.

Still, when the husband calls on his way home from work, or when I call the husband on my journey home, we always have the same question.

“Anything come in the mail today?” we will ask.

I don’t know why we do this. After all, the husband will never tell me that four letters had arrived. And I will never tell the husband that we had received a piece of registered mail from Revenue Canada informing us there had been an error on our taxes and that we were owed something in the neighbourhood of $4.5 million.

This does not happen. Ever.

“Nope. Nothing,” the husband will tell me.

Either that, or, if he’s feeling particularly loquacious: “A calendar from the Red Cross, some address labels from Canadian Diabetes, a reminder from the dentist that it’s time to get our teeth cleaned, a notice from city hall that it’s going to be doing some water-main work in our area, and a two-for-one coupon for cat food from that pet store at the mall.”

“Oh,” I will say. “So nothing.”

“Yep,” the husband will reply. “A great big stack of nothing.”

Nope, nothing ever comes in the mail — except that it did the other day.

I was on my way home from work on the bus, and had given the husband a call.

“Anything come in the mail today?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the husband. “Four flyers, three notices and one reminder. Oh, and a parcel for you.”

“A parcel!” I said.

‘Yes,” he said. “A parcel.”

This was puzzling, given that Christmas had come and gone, and my birthday was months and months away.

As soon as I got home, I grabbed the parcel from the front hall and ripped open the brown packaging. And there it was: a book I’d loaned to my sister, and which she was now returning.

“A book,” said the husband. “I take it you haven’t read it?”

“Of course I’ve read it,” I said. “It’s mine.”

“Oh,” said the husband. “Well, that’s a little dull then.”

Dull, he thought? Not a chance, I said. It didn’t matter that I’d already read this one. It only mattered that I’d had mail.