A United States Postal Service employee delivers mail to a residence in New Orleans on Friday, August 14, 2020. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save I work from home a good bit, which means I’m often around when the mail carrier arrives at our front porch. I usually hear her before I see her, the gentle sound of mail landing in our box now as familiar to me as the chime of our mantel clock.
The depth of the thud tells me what to expect when I make my way to the door. Parcels of books or garden supplies strike a pleasing bass note, while the random bill hardly registers as it drops through the slot. When I get to our welcome mat to collect the morning deliveries, our mail lady is already halfway to her next stop.
That doesn’t make for easy conversation, and she wouldn’t have time to talk, anyway. Mostly, I just say thanks, assuming that what mail carriers deserve most these days is gratitude. That seems true enough in Louisiana, where slogging through city blocks as the summer mercury climbs must be a test of endurance.
I sometimes wish the mail I receive was more worth the effort. The standard stuff — a flyer for life insurance, a postcard from a siding company — doesn’t seem vital enough for a postal worker to risk a heat stroke while getting it to my door. Over the summer, though, my mail brought a few surprises.
A London publisher sent a book across the Atlantic, and the envelope included a Queen Elizabeth II postage stamp, her face .
