#43: The Postcards
I may be old fashioned, but I love getting post. It may be classed as snail-mail today, but I still prefer it over email. I have a regular letter correspondence with a good friend who travels all over Europe. Every month or so I receive beautifully written letters about her various adventures, enclosed in envelopes that bear all sorts of different stamps and postmarks. This past week I was able to do the same, as I bought and wrote a number of postcards while in Amsterdam.
Yet postcards are different. They don’t come in envelopes — they’re sent around the world just as they are, with your own personal writing on the back for everyone to read if they so wish. You are relying on the good behaviour of everyone who handles them to not look and read the message.
So what do people write on postcards? There isn’t much space to write down your latest personal gossip in much detail, describing the many exciting things you’ve been up to. There’s not much room for anything past the ‘Hello, how are you? Things are going wonderfully, the weather is lovely…’. Words on a postcard are often inconsequential, a little message in that small space of card to simply say that you’ve arrived safe, have lots of things planned, and are thinking of them fondly.
Postcards are a way to share your experiences with loved ones, a way to send a souvenir gift at the same time as making it personal to them. They’re simple, but touching. They provide a visible aspect to your trip, a select image that isn’t one of the 100 photos you upload to Facebook. Picking postcards that are photos of places you yourself have been on the trip, you can then write on the other side that you had lunch in that building on the bottom right, that you climbed up that mountain in the distance. They’re a way to share the excitement of travelling in a physical form.
Yesterday, I arrived back in Durham from my trip to Amsterdam. While I was there, I bought a number of postcards, some for myself as little mementos, and some to write and send off to people I was thinking of while I was away. I was not without wifi in Amsterdam, and I was Facebook messaging these same people while I was there, but I still wanted to send them a physical note. I wanted to show them that I was thinking of them, to share a little bit of my trip with them. Postcards combine two things that I love: sending post, and giving small, thoughtful presents. I picked the postcards that I thought each of them would like, added my own personal little note to it, and sent them off to travel back to the UK.
Now I know that I have most likely arrived back before those postcards made it to the UK, or even left Amsterdam, but speed isn’t the point. Postcards are about the tangible piece of card with the beautiful photograph and the handwritten note of affection on the back. They are about the memories they hold and share, even after you have already travelled back home.
