You Can't Go Home Again Stories

I've been catching up on my blog reading. One of Rural Lesbian's posts reminded me of a small incident at my Mom's house this past week. First of all, I should mention that I am a very sound sleeper. I have been known to sleep through responding fire engines just outside my window... This time it was a mailbox.

I woke up one morning and my Mom asked, "Did you hear anything last night?" Saying "No," I wondered why she was asking? "Well, there's a mailbox laying on our front lawn." You see, the house is in an old 'burb of the 60's. It is on a street that people often use as a short-cut getting from one street to another, so it is more travelled than most. Over the years the lawn has been driven on, debris has been thrown on it, all sorts of things.

I went outside and found a black mailbox laying neatly, right-side up, on the curb just at the end of the lawn (we have no side-walks). Looking up and down the street, I couldn't just then identify if anyone was missing said mailbox. I leaned down, looked closely at it, and saw that the metal floor of the mailbox was jagged and ripped - obviously, it had been torn from its post. There was no house number on the box, either. And the weird thing was that it hadn't been thrown up on the lawn, as one might expect a vandal to do, but instead it had been neatly set on the curb. A neat vandal?

By that evening the mailbox had disappeared. The next day I was on an errand for my Mom and I spied the same mailbox laying on the ground, down the street a ways, next to what I took to be its own wooden post.

I guess the occupants noted their mailbox was missing, and found it in front of our house. No words were exchanged. My mom preferred it this way. Which is logical - she wouldn't want to invite trouble. It is hard enough to manage daily living without worries. Why add to them?

If this had happened on my own street, my whole family would have been all over the place, talking to people, putting out the word, looking for our mailbox and the miscreant who cruelly ripped it from its moorings. Different places, different times, different people. I wonder what life will be like for me at eighty-one?