Change and the Old Hubbardston Mailman

By Craig: When my son was five years old I bought a brand new truck. He went with me to the Ford dealer and was excited about sitting in a shiny big red truck. It was a lot different from the vehicle that he was use to traveling in. He had known only the black Jeep Liberty that I had bought shortly before he was born. It was the only vehicle that he had ever known except for my beat up old Dodge Dakota that I had been driving since the early 90s, but he hardly ever got to ride in it. The salesman let me take it for a test run and my son was excited to say the least. The same could not be said about the salesman who was reluctant to be on a test drive with a talkative five year old sitting in the backseat. After the test drive I told the salesman that I would be back the next day, much to his chagrin. My son asked me if we could take the truck home, and I told him that we would the next day if it was still there. The next day I was true to my word and returned to the dealership with my son and wife and drove out of the lot in the shiny red truck that my son had kept asking about. However, as we were pulling out of the lot a funny thing happened. My son became serious and asked me why we were leaving the Jeep behind. I told him quite succinctly that the Jeep no longer belonged to us. I had sold it to the dealer. For a few seconds he was quiet. I thought it a natural question for him to ask, but what happened next surprised me...although it probably shouldn't have. He started to cry. When I asked him why he was crying he could only say two words over and over. "The jeep" The jeep" and then "I want the jeep!" He really liked the big red truck, but he never thought that he would have to say goodbye to the old Liberty which in his mind was the only vehicle that he associated with his existence. In his mind the Jeep was to be with him always. It always had been. Why should things change? He was comfortable and familiar with the Jeep. I tried to talk to him about change but it is difficult to reason with a five year old. Eventually he forgot all about the Jeep and when I recently reminded him about that day he laughed.

When I was a young boy I had a habit of waiting for the mailman to come. Was something coming for me today? I don't know what I expected. Most of the time the mail consisted of nothing but boring bills addressed to my parents, or lame advertisements and promotions offering a sweepstakes. Those sweepstakes mailings always puzzled me. First of all nobody I ever knew won. Secondly, they were almost always published on a thick cardboard, and made to look real important and enticing to the person receiving them. Sometimes they were sent by a car dealership in an attempt to get you to come to their lot by offering a chance to win a NEW CAR! Other times a magazine publisher would try to get you to subscribe to different magazines with free subscriptions knowing that at the end of your trial period you would forget to unsubscribe and they would send you a bill. Even though I never subscribed to any of the magazines I use to like separating the stamps of the magazines I wanted  from their perforations and sticking them on the postcard. Why I did this I cannot say. I never had the money to subscribe to magazines when I was a kid, and even if I did there were probably other things that I would have spent my money on. I guess it was something to do. The mailman usually arrived after I got home from school. He was a middle aged man I only knew as Mr. Meagher. He always arrived in a light colored car, the make and model I have long since forgotten. He was a pleasant fellow and would always smile. Even though it has been nearly 40 years I can still see his hand reaching through the window and opening the mailbox, stuffing the mail in and closing it again before driving off to the next house. It was a daily ritual, except, of course on Sunday. He performed this action of opening, stuffing, and closing in one fluid motion as if he were born to do it. It was inveterate to his being. I couldn't fathom anyone else doing it the way he did it, although this notion of mine was of course ridiculous. He was just one of thousands of mail carriers, but to me in my isolated world he WAS the mail carrier. Anyone else in the role would have seemed preposterous to my juvenile brain. One day, a new dark colored car pulled up to the mailbox. I was naturally taken aback and suspicious of this new turn of events, but when I saw Mr. Meagher's familiar hand and smiling countenance I realized what had happened, but it still wasn't right. Where was the light colored car that had always carried Mr. Meagher to our mailbox? It had been a constant in my life. Never changing...always the same...forever and ever. As I sit here today and reflect back on this time I don't think I ever recall seeing Mr. Meagher outside of that car? It is as if he were born in it. As if the only parts of his body that existed were his head... and his hand, that was needed for opening the mailbox.

I am not even sure why I write sometimes. Usually I write in a sort of stream of consciousness and jot down my thoughts and reflections that sometimes have no order or fluid motion to them. They are also mostly irrelevant things, fragmented memories from another lifetime that are always changing... Unlike an old mailman that seemed to represent order and a stability at a time when the world of youth was still filled with wonder, and a seemingly endless infinity ahead... which I now know to be specious.