I am not an intentional deltiologist, a collector of postcards, and yet one of the many boxes I have worked through recently was filled with hundreds of postcards, notecards, and letters from family and friends, sent from around the world over more than 30 years. It was the one box that had stumped me until the very end - the very last box. What to do with all this personal history of thoughts on life, impressions from travels, invitations to weddings, announcements of the births of babies, and reports of other life events? A small bonfire?? It seemed tempting, an easy and final way to 'take care' of the contents of this box, but never an option I was seriously considering.
It took a while, but finally, I stopped procrastinating. I sat down on the floor in our living room and slowly sorted the contents of the box into piles. One big pile for letters from my father. He was a prolific writer of letters, which I definitely wanted to save to read them again one day. Those were easy enough to organize. I purchased a set of binders, organized the letters in chronological order, hole-punched them, filed them away, and hey presto! Organized. Check! Next, three fairly small and manageable piles of letters and cards from each of my siblings. Another small pile of mail from extended family and family friends, and a final pile with mail from personal friends around the world. Eventually, these small piles mostly ended up in a couple of binders too.
But then there were the postcards from my mother! My final count came to, give or take, 778 Postcards, and I am sure I did not save all of them. While my father wrote letters, my mother wrote postcards, lots of postcards! In the first few years of my travels and life abroad, she would fairly consistently do her 'Montagspost' (Mondaypost) at the beginning of every week. She would send postcards and frequent 'care packages' which included notes written on postcards or notecards, and while on trips abroad she'd write extra postcards. Postcards didn't lend themselves to simple hole-punching and filing in a binder. What to do? As my brain had been given the challenge to find a solution, it quietly computed in the background, until one day a lightbulb went on. I remembered the big stash of laminations pouches that I would never be able to use up, so why not laminate the postcards and then put the laminated sheets in binders?! I thought this was a fantastic idea, not only would it tidy up the postcards, but it would also use up some materials I already had. I tried laminating a few spare, unwritten postcards, just to make sure it would work. The test run was successful, lamination was the way to go! Next, I sorted the postcards into piles by decade, then each decade into individual years, sorted each of the 33 years of postcards into chronological order and the lamination could begin!! It took a few days of several hours of laminating and I may have worn out my laminator. I won't lie, it was a lot of work, but now most of the 778 postcards are laminated and sorted into binders equally as colorful on the outside as the postcards on the inside.
Like the letters from my father, I have not yet had the time to sit down and read all the cards again, but I am glad I saved and organized them. Matt suggested that the binders could make great coffee table books with lots of colorful pictures from all over the world to flick through. What I also love about having them organized this way and looking through them, is that they give an interesting and comprehensive summary of all the places that I have lived, as well as many of the places my Mom has visited over the years.
Here are some approximate numbers to summarize the collection:
- 480 addressed postcards.
- 298 folding notecards, or postcards used as notecards, which would have been included in packages or letters.
- Sent from 15 different countries, mostly from Germany, but also from Austria, England, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and the USA.
- Addressed to 14 permanent addresses in 6 countries: 5 in Ireland, 4 in the USA, 2 in England, 1 in Scotland, 1 in Portugal, 1 in Germany.
- Addressed to 9 temporary, short-term addresses in 5 countries: 4 in Germany, 2 in Ireland, 1 in the USA, 1 in England, 1 in Scotland.
One of the temporary addresses in Ireland is a complete mystery to me. One single postcard is addressed to 4C Newell Homes, Snipe Avenue, Newcastle Rd., Galway, Ireland. I have no recollection of ever staying at this address. It is amazing how spotty the memory can be! I continue to feel like a detective, working through the evidence of my past. Sometimes finding a tidbit of information will trigger a memory, and sometimes, like with this address in Galway, the memory remains blank. I look forward to actually reading through the letters and postcards in the future when time allows. I have no doubt interesting nuggets remain to be discovered.
