Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books (www.amazon.com/author/millerkathleenclary). She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula.

********

            Jo comforts me every time my adult daughters leave me to return to their homes back East.  She tells the story of how she forbade her son-in-law to move her own daughter to North Dakota for a better job.  “You’re not taking her away from me; you’re staying right here!” she told him.  They stayed, her daughter had a baby, and since they live a few doors apart on the same road, she sees them every day.  Just the way I always thought my life would be… but isn’t. 

            Jo is the only woman I know who understands my grief to realize that my imminent grandson will be born in a hospital in Philadelphia.  She knows the hole in my heart that he will not taste my after-school chocolate chip cookies; I will never really know his friends.  Everyone else I talk to thinks that visits are the answer, and certainly there will be many of those.  Jo knows better (“There’s nothing quite like around the corner”), hence offers heartfelt prayer and consolation.

            Betty and I talk knitting and catalogues.  She has consulted on every baby bonnet and pair of booties I’ve produced since my daughter announced she was expecting last Christmas, from cast-on to bind-off.  During her late-week shift to spell Jo, we chuckle over the finished size a typical yarn project becomes—as opposed to the one planned.  She volunteers helpful tips and sale information; I save The Vermont Store catalogue for her every time it finds its way into my post office box.  As well, I reap fresh produce from her garden.  Jo passes on cherry tomatoes as sweet as candy.

            I am not their only friend.  Because they work the window at our little local post office, their society is large.

            The Huson Post Office, like any rural post office, is much more than a collection of lockboxes from which to collect correspondence or a counter from which to send it.  These transactions occur, certainly.  But these are not the exchanges that matter.

            Off the beaten path and down dirt roads, many folks opt to have their mail delivered to a secure destination rather than risk identity theft or vandalism from partying perpetrators to a personal roadside mailbox.  As such, local residents flock to the unassuming facility to retrieve daily letters and parcels, and I run across my neighbors in a manner I never would otherwise.  We linger, we chat, and we exchange information pertinent to daily life and culture—both wildlife and human.  It may not be a pretty building (the paint is chipped, the Mercantile is out of business and boarded up now) but it’s party to a population of hard-working, caring people and it’s more than just employment to the two who take pride in their ability to serve us all. 

            Because we come together over the counter and in front of the wall of boxes that house our daily business instead of ambling down the driveway to our separate containers we share a bit about life: we know where the latest mountain lion had been spotted, whose trash receptacle is being ravaged by a brown bear…does anyone else suffer from an infestation of mice?  We hear whose son is finally coming home, whose daughter is suddenly getting married, whose grandchild, whew, made the team.  Every time I open the door, the friendly chatter at the window is a reminder that although the weather in winter may be below zero, warm-blooded connection has not grown cold.  The promise of acquaintance and new news!

            I don’t know about you, but I before I moved here I was a big city girl.  In the suburban post office I frequented there the only voices were groans and grumbles—from customers and employees such as the man who in 1993 was responsible for the term “going postal” when he flipped out one day and killed his mother, then shot two fellow postal workers dead. 

            So I’ll take the convivial rural post office, thank you.  I can’t wait to show off my grandson after he is born and comes to visit, and until then?  Well, today I’m picking up my purse and heading out the back door.

           “Where are you going?” asks my husband. 

            I have Katharine’s ultrasound pictures and questions about this baby-sweater pattern, I tell him.  Oh yes, and while I’m there I’ll get the mail. 

-