We’ll get to the hearts and flowers. But first, this is awkward.
It’s February. Congratulations if you have accomplished anything this year.
I spent the morning sorting through Valentine’s greetings. Love is in the air, and rest assured there are albums full of gorgeous arrangements and heartfelt sentiments in the weeks ahead.
But first, I need to bring up something awkward. Not everyone loves this sweetheart’s holiday. For the lovelorn, it’s excruciating. For the grieving, a sad set of reminders. For the wicked, a chance to lance the joy bubbles in the air.
In postcards, we have to acknowledge the neck strain.
Also, captions that might have meant exactly what they suggest.
Lastly, those with an anti-Valentine vibe, a bad bargain, or even a threat!
We will return next week to the regular schedule of sweetness and light, heart and flowers, charm and chocolate, passion and promises. How… delightful!
A picture is worth a thousand words, which can be tough news for a writer. I like words and images together, and art cards are a peaceful place to be while sorting through the longer storylines happening around here.
To start an art card, I pull together a collection of cards and ephemera related to a theme or style I want to explore. Gather tools, supplies, and a drink at my art board. Set my phone aside, and pick up an exacto knife. Then, I sit down, quiet down, and begin to make meaning out of the materials in front of me. I’m nowhere near my computer or journal, but making an art card now and then is part and parcel with my writing process.
The Posted Past Art Card Gallery is inspired by so many wonderful postcard projects over the years. Worth mentioning are PostSecret, which invites anyone to share an anonymous secret on a postcard, and PostCrossing, which makes it easy to send and receive postcards around the world.
For our part, we collaborate with collage artists to make something small and special for everyone to enjoy. The artist requests a theme or two based on interests like, trees, farms, or portraits. We send an art card bundle and they create collage postcards with these materials. The postcard collages come back through the mail, celebrating the wear and tear of the postal service journey.
The Art Card Gallery is a place to see art card collages created by artists around the world.
If you’re already a subscriber, bless you for hanging on as you do. You get a little note in your inbox each Wednesday. Most times it flits away like a red cardinal, down into the cold, thatched hinterland of your inbox scroll. I know.
Introducing the Wednesday Weekly Reader, a new place to catch up with a previous story series bundled in a way that is easier to read. If you love our national parks, wonder about where the past gets lost, or know a few lonely snowbirds, a story series may meet your fancy.
Reed Fowler is a textile artist, pastor, and writer. Originally from Vermont, he now calls Minnesota home. Reed taught themselves to sew at a young age, following in the path of their grandma and aunt, and fell in love with weaving in college. Reed’s dad instilled in him an embodied love and care for the spaces and people he lives with, expressed through craft.
Reed is a member of the Weaver’s Guild of MN, and a founding member of a queer-centered intentional community, where they live with their spouse, their four cats, and housemates. They love books about magical libraries, watching reality cooking shows, and dreaming about garden layouts, systems, and tea blends.
Q: Are there stories that came to you while looking through the Art Card bundle that was sent to you?
A: Unfolding pathways, roots, landscapes. Distance and closeness – across time, and geography. Timespans of creative practice, of months feeling like decades. Calling back to ourselves, to our embodiment, to the tactile. Mycelium below the surface.
Q: How has your relationship with these collages changed from first receiving the images, through the process of cutting and gluing, and to final finishing touches?
A: The relationship to empty space evolved over the course of the collages. Density, words, lines, space. I originally resisted the blank cards, choosing instead for one to collage atop an existing postcard, rather than dissembling it. The sharp contrast of new printed paper to what I knew had passed through many hands before it reached mine threw me at first.
Q: Among your creations, which images stand out and why?
A: The “All happiness this day” was one of the hardest for me to cut into – the postcard was from the 1920’s, and was the main card I received that had writing on it – it had already gone through the mail. The final collage it’s in makes my heart happiest. The collage on the existing postcard, with the line “home away from home” feels most aligned to when I was creating it – in a cabin at a state park, celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary with my spouse, crafting by lantern-light.
Q: Is collage similar or different from your regular studio practice?
A: Collage is one element of my regular studio practice, at least for my personal creative practices. I’m primarily (currently) a textile artist – working in wool and thread and fabric. Earlier in my life, I was more of a mixed-media artist, where collage featured more heavily. So now, when I need a creative outlet just for myself, or if I’m trying to think through a project, or feeling, I’ll often turn back towards mixed-media, and collage.
Q: If you could give and/or receive a postcard from anyone living or passed, who would it be and why?
A: My late grandfather. He shaped my current path in beautiful ways that he never knew, and I’d love a chance to send him a postcard and receive one in return.
Mai’s brothers check-in and George follows up. Nina and Tom find Delia’s postcard stash, and their way home. Nora knows her way around town now. Peace is in practice, not perfect circumstances, says Mrs. Hanabusa.
Careful block letters adorned the outside of a #10 envelope. George recognized Jack’s handwriting. Precise, old-fashioned, like an architect from a bygone era. Inside, George found a letter to addressed to him, and a long list of books Jack had read. Not just titles, but notes.
The Hidden Life of Trees – I like how roots connect underground.
The Mapmakers – Bird migrations mapped with ocean currents.
A Sand County Almanac – The geese made me cry.
George sat at his kitchen table, poured over the letter twice, then kept going back to it in mild wonder. The boy was thirteen. Reading natural philosophy at a level twice his age and writing elegant, matter-of-fact prose.
George now had a collection of postcards just for his grandson. He kept an eye out for anything inspired by books, libraries, explorers, architecture, and history. But today, he had a different one in mind.
Jack – Your list made my week! You remind me why books matter. Keep reading, all of life is in there. – Grandpa
George bundled up and trudged to the mailbox in the extremely cold and icy January morning. Stood there a moment, breath visible in the air, so proud of a thirteen-year-old boy who cried over geese.
The phone rang Saturday afternoon. It was Mai.
“Dad? You busy?”
“Never too busy. What’s up?”
“So—weird thing. I heard from both Derek and Marcus this week, within a day of each other.”
George set down his coffee. Mai’s brothers were also adopted from the chaos in Laos, but by different families. Mai didn’t know or remember much as a child. They’d reconnected as young adults as they discovered their shared histories. George had met Mai’s brothers only three times, at each of their weddings. Derek, the oldest, spent his early years in an orphanage before his adoption. He now runs a tech business in Palo Alto. Marcus, the youngest, grew up in a musical family and plays professional brass in traveling shows.
“That’s wonderful. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, they’re fine. Both texted out of the blue. Derek asked about the kids, Marcus asked about you. I think they’re feeling their age,” Mai chuckled.
After they hung up, George sat at his table looking at his postcard stacks. He found a San Francisco classic for Derek, and an old club card from Illinois for Marcus. Relics from a jazzier time. Same short notes to both of them.
Mai says you’re doing well. Glad to hear it! – George
Nina loaded into her car early Sunday morning. Coffee in a thermos, bag full of stuff, and Mrs. Hanabusa’s advice in her head. Leave room. Her mind drifted for most of the drive, watching the sunrise over the desert and mountains to the East. She took the old road through Florence for just that reason.
Nina climbed the stairs in the worn, beige apartment complex, and knocked.
Tom opened the door looking nervous. “Hi. Come in.”
Nina noticed immediately, he was making an effort. Coffee brewing, store-bought pastries on a plate, magazines and mail in piles recently cleared from the couch. Seemed like he intended to inhabit the place, not just occupy space.
The talk was halted at first, then easier. Nina found it so strange that she grew up with the man and knew him not at all.
“I brought something,” Nina said. She pulled out all the postcards he’d sent over the years, a large batch that bulged at the seams of a padded envelope. Airport terminals, layover cities, all those airplanes. The last year had revealed so much, including the way her father had actually stayed connected in a quiet (and still insufficient) way.
“I kept them.”
“I didn’t know if you would. You weren’t always into them like we were.”
“I wasn’t. I didn’t even remember that I saved them. Found this stash looking through a bunch of old boxes, now that I know what to look for. Dad, I never made the connection before now.”
Tom smiled sheepishly, stood, went to his bedroom, came back with a shoebox full of postcards from Delia, dozens of them, saved over their entire marriage. Travel postcards from trips they’d taken together. Funny ones he’d sent her from far away places, anniversary cards.
“I couldn’t throw them away,” he said. “But I couldn’t look at them either.”
Nina picked up one after the other to read the backs. Her mother’s handwriting, cheerful, full of small news from home.
“She loved you.”
“I loved her, too, and I love you.”
They sat with the postcards spread out between them, talking about travel and their family trips together. Tom unearthed the ones Nina herself sent home from the summer she spent in France. Both were careful to keep his collection from Delia separate from the ones Nina brought. They were both still sorting through the imperfect evidence of what had been.
“Next time,” Nina promised as she left. They hugged briefly, and she hopped in the car for the drive home on the freeway with the sunset to her right.
Monday, Nina found Mrs. Hanabusa in her usual spot, the late afternoon light turning everything gold.
“How was your visit?” Mrs. Hanabusa asked without looking up.
“Good. Hard. Both.”
“That’s how it goes.”
Nina found herself marveling, again. Mrs. H’s daily practices, the flower arranging, carefully selecting which sentiments to include and which to set aside. She seemed to belong more to the glow than the room, now.
“How did you learn to be at peace in the world?”
Mrs. Hanabusa smiled slightly. “Well, I needed it and then I experienced it once or twice. It felt good, and now I have practiced enough. Every day. Some days better than others.”
Peace wasn’t a state achieved once and held static forever. It was active, chosen, renewed daily through small deliberate gestures.
“You’re practicing, too, but you don’t call it that yet. It’s nicer when you know.”
Nina thought about the drive to Tempe, the decision to keep the postcards, the inclination to let her father try, and the fear he’ll fly away again. It was not easy, definitely practice. Also, yes… nice.
Nora’s cards came less frequently through the spring. Nina recognized the sacred cycle of becoming and belonging. Nora had less to say about longing, more about the daily goings-on. She was living in Taiwan.
Hiked Taroko Gorge with work friends. Mountains are unreal—marble cliffs, jade rivers. Think of you, often. –N
Nina pulled out a postcards of Saguaro at sunset awash with a super bloom of springtime flowers. She wrote her response, but didn’t rush it. Set it on her desk, next to the others ready to go out. There was time. Their lives would keep coming and going in a different rhythm now, and that was enough.
Though our holiday story series stops here, we hope you stay in touch! Subscribe to get a message about a postcard every Wednesday. Also, love is in the air! Next month rare embroideries.
Limited edition Cardinal on a Cactus postcards available at Tempe Yarn & Fabric and online.
Tom finally touches grass, and Lily paints impossible cats.
Tom’s rental car idled at a red light on University, three blocks from his apartment. He’d made it through Sky Harbor quickly, drove straight here without stopping for groceries or coffee or errands. Just land and figure out what’s next, he thought.
The apartment was small, on the second floor of a stucco complex built in the eighties. View of the parking lot. He’d signed the lease abruptly after Delia died. Left the house for Nina to handle. Since then—hotel rooms in Atlanta, crew bunks in Singapore, a fishing boat off Catalina.
He parked, climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to recycled air and silence, flipped through the mail piled on the counter from the last time he was here. He missed the last local election. There was a party in a park nearby. A local group is replacing trees that were damaged in the last freak storm.
He set his bag down, pulled out his phone, texted Nina before he could reconsider.
I’m in Tempe. Can we meet? That coffee shop you like?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Yup, be up there tomorrow. 10am.
Tom exhaled. Opened the refrigerator, stared at nothing for a moment, and closed it. He sat on the couch, looked at the unpacked boxes, looked at the random furniture. Looked at his hands, and thought, tomorrow. Then he grabbed his keys to run out for a beer and a burrito.
At the coffee shop, Tom arrived early, ordered coffee he didn’t drink, watched the door. Nina came in exactly at ten. Saw him, hesitated, turned toward the line, but walked over to her dad instead.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Nina set her keys on the table and went to get her drink. A few minutes to breathe and focus while she waited in line. He was actually here. Wow.
Back at the table, Tom tried to start, stopped, and started again. Exasperated, he whispered a groan. “How do people do this?”
“Well, you always asked Mom.”
“Truth,” he conceded. “I keep getting on planes. Keep going up. Can’t figure out how to stay down.”
Nina’s face was careful, neutral. “I know. You send postcards.”
“Lonely postcards.”
“I like them.” She paused, a little surprised herself.
“This woman I know at work told me about her father. He came back from the internment camps different. Couldn’t talk about what he’d lost. Just went quiet. Disappeared into himself even when he was sitting right there.”
Tom blinked at her, stunned by the comparison. “I’m not—”
“I know you’re not. But you get away from a lot up there.”
Tom set his coffee down. “Look… I’m trying… to be present… more.”
“Okay.” Nina’s hands tightened around her cup.
“Let me know when you’re back, next,” she said slowly. “We could meet at your place. Maybe make it feel like home.”
“Sure. that’s good. It doesn’t feel like anything right now.”
They finished their coffee, scooted out of the booth, and hugged. Nina picked up her keys.
Tom drove back to the apartment. Stood in the doorway looking at the accumulation of a life he’d been avoiding.
He started with the kitchen. Unpacked Delia’s dishes, the set they’d used for at least thirty years. Put them in the cabinets. Drove to the grocery store, bought coffee and bread and eggs. Real food that would probably rot. Fine, that might actually be normal. Small steps. He’d try again tomorrow.
The knock came mid-morning. George opened the door to find Lily holding a canvas bag, Mai standing behind her with a patient smile.
Lily marched into the foyer, serious. “I brought MY paints.”
“She wanted to paint, here, with you,” Mai said.
“CATS! We want to paint cats,” she announced.
“Well then.” George stepped aside. “Come in.”
They set up at the kitchen table—Jennie’s old watercolor set now showing signs of use again. Lily arranged her brushes with care, filled a bowl with water, selected paper from the pad.
“Could you get the big book, Grandpa?” Lily asked.
George knew exactly the one she wanted. Large and heavy, and art book with full color illustrations. Yes, cats, and many more species with great examples of all variety to try one’s hand.
George pulled his chair to face the window. Lily pulled hers beside his. They worked together, silently, side by side. Lily’s brush moved in quick confident patterns. Bold strokes, loose shapes that captured moments more than detail.
George surprised himself by drawing with a sharp graphite pencil. His hands remembered motions he hadn’t used in years. Careful lines, patient shading, the disciplined attention that both he and Jennie loved.
Lily finished first. Held up her painting. “It’s not exactly right.”
“Tell me more…”
“The shape isn’t right. The lines don’t add up. It doesn’t look like a real cat.”
“Artists see differently than scientists,” George said. “Scientists measure. Artists feel. Both ways matter. Your colors are very bold.”
Lily considered this. Looked at his drawing, and said confident,”Yours is the scientist way.”
“Can I keep yours?”
“If I can keep yours.”
“Deal.”
Mai came back an hour later. Lily packed her supplies, carefully laying her paintings on the countertop to dry. At the door, she hugged George—quick, unselfconscious, generous.
After they left, George found a frame in the closet and mounted the entirely impossible animal—calm, loose, joyful. Hung it where he’d see it every morning.
The postcard arrived in Tucson ten days after Nora mailed it. Nina turned it over. Nora’s handwriting, smaller now, more compact.
Lunar New Year, red lanterns everywhere. The city transforms—fireworks, night markets, families. The work is good, the project is extending. Solitude still a gift.—N
Nina read it twice. Carried it inside. Pinned it to her wall beside the others. Seven postcards now, creating their own pattern. Different textiles, different messages, her same friend after all this time. She pulled out her phone, typed a response.
Got your latest. Glad you’re staying. Take your time.
Each travel alone, except the air they share. Nora is happy going solo, and Tom is somewhere in between.
The teahouse was tucked next to a dumpling shop on a narrow lane in Da’an District. Nora walked past it three times before noticing the English sign: Tea by Appointment Only.
Inside, a woman near seventy arranged porcelain cups on a low table. She glanced up, assessed Nora with a single look, and gestured to the cushion.
“First time?”
“First time for tea ceremony,” Nora said. “Not first time feeling lost.”
The woman smiled. Poured water over the leaves. The scent rose—something green and grassy, nothing like the black tea Nora’s grandmother used to brew.
“Lost is good,” the woman said. “A reason to pay attention.”
Nora’s colleague Mei-Ling had taken pity after watching Nora eat lunch alone for the third week running. “You need to get out,” Mei-Ling had said. “Explore. Be alone in a place that’s not your apartment.”
So here she was. Alone. Not lonely.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Nina. Nora silenced it without reading.
The tea was bitter, then sweet. She drank slowly.
“You travel alone?” the woman asked.
“Always.”
Nora had spent years cultivating solitude—long drives through Arizona backcountry, dawn hikes in Sabino Canyon, evenings on her balcony with no one talking. She chose the Taipei assignment partly for the chance to be anonymous and untethered.
The woman poured another cup. “Tourists look for what they expect to see. Solo travelers find who is actually there, including themselves.”
Nora thought about the next postcard to Nina. She wanted to tell her about the teahouse, the silence, the strange comfort of being somewhere no one knew her name.
It’s lovely to be solo in a strange land. Watching without explaining. Moving without negotiating. I sometimes forget who I am at home.
She finished her tea, bowed to the woman, stepped back into the crowded street feeling lighter than she had in months.
Tom stood on the deck of a fishing charter near Catalina, watching the captain clean yellowtail in the afternoon sun. He worked the knife along the spine with practiced efficiency, lifting the skin and scattering ribbons of bronze scales across the wet deck.
Tom was at sea three days, paid in full. His time between flights was long enough, he could have gone to Phoenix to check on the empty apartment. Or driven the two hours to Tucson to talk to Nina. Instead, he’d gone straight from the airport to the marina.
The ocean felt safer to Tom. He knew what he was dealing with—wind, current, the pull of the moon. On land, everything felt unmoored and awash in silence. The apartment with no one else there. Nina’s careful, measured heartache. The desperate life he’d abandoned in favor of flight schedules and hotel rooms.
The captain looked up. “You alright, man?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You thinking about jumping?”
Tom laughed, the gallows humor helped. “Not far enough down.”
The captain went back to his work. Tom watched the horizon. His daughter was not far away. Working at the hospice. Taking care of people the way she’d taken care of her mother. While he was gone somewhere over the Pacific.
Tom didn’t make it to Jennie’s funeral. Delia was still sick and he had a flight schedule to keep. George hadn’t said much.
When Delia died two months later, George drove from Minnesota. Stayed ten days. Made coffee, answered the phone, helped with plans, and stood beside Tom at the service. Then, George drove back alone. Tom couldn’t make himself useful like that to anybody. Couldn’t even make himself stay.
A raven landed on the railing, tilted its head.
“Where’d you come from?” Tom asked.
The raven looked at Tom, croaked once, deep in its throat.
Suddenly the words came to him. He didn’t have a pen or a postcard handy, but finally he had something to say.
Flying solo is for the birds.
The raven lifted off, circled once, flew toward shore. Tom watched until it disappeared, then looked at his phone. He could get out of LA tonight, and rework his schedule from Phoenix next week. Enough time to get to Tucson and back, and to try.
The envelope arrived among the usual stack. Tom’s cramped handwriting unmistakable on the address. George carried it inside, set it on the kitchen table, made coffee before opening it.
Inside, a single sheet torn from a legal pad, Tom’s words filling margin to margin. George read it twice.
George— Sorry it’s been so long. Don’t know how to say what needs to get out.
Been working more flights than I should. Phoenix to anywhere. Hotel rooms are easier. Nina barely talks to me. Can’t blame her.
You drove all the way to Delia’s funeral. Made everything possible. I should’ve done the same for you and Jennie. Told myself it was work. We both know better. You’ve always been better at this life.
Tom was a restless kid — climbing trees, running off, coming home with scraped knees. George stayed close, watched birds, kept track of his brother.
After Jennie died, Tom just wasn’t around. George wanted to be angry but didn’t have the strength. Grief made him numb for awhile. Now, he was just glad to have his brother back, or at least a longer letter.
Mrs. Hanabusa sat by her window in the common room, as she often did. Hands folded in her lap. Face turned toward the light. Eyes resting gently on the flowering hibiscus outside.
Nina paused in the hallway, watching.
How did she keep such a calm reserve? After the camps, after losing everything, seeing your family degraded. How did she maintain that peace?
She would probably credit her mother, her grandmothers, and their extended friends and family. All gone, except her sister. How does she do it, still?
Mrs. Hanabusa turned her head slightly and smiled.
Nina smiled back, and walked on.
The story above is fiction, but the new Postcard People feature is real life! Meet Christine N. from Switzerland, who posts about her grandmother’s collection.
Like the flash of a red cardinal in the winter snow, both George and Nina suddenly see something that has been there all along.
George woke early in the day on New Year’s Eve. Light snow outside and the question he’d been turning over since Christmas: when to take Emma birding. He called before he could overthink it.
“Tomorrow morning?” Mai answered. “She’ll be ready at dawn.”
They met at Frontenac State Park at first light. Emma hopped out of Mai’s car already dressed for the cold—layers, boots, a hat George recognized as one of her mother’s favorites. Mai waved from the driver’s seat, smiled, pulled away.
“Just us?” George asked.
Emma’s eyes rolled slightly and smirked as she held up his binoculars. She’d already adjusted the strap. The green Audubon field guide was tucked under one arm, a new notebook in her other hand.
“Mom has to get ready for the party. Plus, she said it’s too cold.”
“Fair enough,” George smiled back and nodded toward the trailhead. “Binos up, move slowly, scan and listen. You go first.”
They walked the trail along the frozen river in tandem, as quietly and patiently as he had advised. Not looking for birds exactly, but for movement, for shapes that didn’t fit the pattern of branches and sky. Emma spotted the first cardinal.
“There,” she whispered.
George raised his older binoculars. He had kept them for Jennie on the rare occasion she wanted to come along.
“Tan body, red-orange bill, and a sort-of red crest,” Emma slowly described the bird.
“Good eye. Watch how she moves.”
The bird hopped branch to ground, ground to branch.
“How did you know it was female?” Emma asked.
“Colors and the song notes. Males are showier and louder. Females sing too. They’re just quieter about it.”
Emma opened her notebook.
Female cardinal. Frontenac State Park. New Year’s Day. Feeding on lower branches of sumac. Light song noted.
They found chickadees, a downy woodpecker, juncos, and stopped along the way to record and discuss each bird. Emma’s notes filled two pages. George watched her move through the stark and cold forest—confident, curious, at ease. Mai had been more careful at this age, tentative on the trails. Emma walked as though she belonged here. She did.
Driving her home, George said, “You’re a natural. Your mom was good, too. She could walk so slowly, make no noise at all.”
Emma smiled. “She says I get it from you.”
“Well, I got this for us,” George said as he pulled into the driveway.
He flashed his phone screen to reveal the app he had downloaded, the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds but online and searchable. Right on the front, the very first photo was a male and female pair of Northern Cardinals.
Emma’s eyes lit up. Quietly, she imagined how many they’d find all over Minnesota in the days and weeks and (hopefully) years ahead.
Back home, George leaned out of the window to pick up the mail before driving down the ice-packed drive. He tossed the stack on the seat. On top, a photo of an American Airlines plane. He knew who it was before he turned it over.
Flight delay. Thinking about you and Jennie. Can’t believe they’re both gone. —T
His younger brother, Tom, both of them widowers now. Their wives were gone within months of each other. At times, they both worried they would lose each other, too. Too much pain, way too much.
George had been waiting for Tom to call. He knew that constant work and distance was his way of coping, but how long was too long?
George looked at Tom’s card again, familiar but this time a sudden realization hit him. Tom sends postcards. He’d received at least a half a dozen over the years–all photos of old jets. George had never written back. Not once. He’d been waiting for the phone to ring. Now he remembered the little collection of airplanes in his desk drawer.
He sat down. Pulled a card from his own growing stack, a color photo of a trail like today’s but after the thaw. His message was short, with room for more later.
Got your card. Miss them every day. Miss talking to you. —George
He addressed it to Tom’s apartment in Phoenix, the one he’d moved to after Delia died, and rarely slept in. Stamped it. Put on his coat and walked back out to the mailbox, certain of what he’d been missing.
Nina found Mrs. Hanabusa arranging flowers in the common room—a small practical arrangement, simple stems in a shallow dish.
“For the holiday?” Nina asked.
“My own amusement.” Mrs. Hanabusa adjusted a branch. “Ikebana, flowers carry meaning. Not just pretty, it’s a message.”
“What does this one say?” Nina asked.
Mrs H pointed to the chrysanthemum. “This one means longevity, joy. Used in autumn arrangements and also at funerals. Pomegranate. Internal life, good luck, and natural cycles of life and death.”
Nina watched her work. The precise angles, the negative space.
Mrs. Hanabusa stood up and moved back to considered her creation. “New year. Endurance through winter. Joy waiting to flower. Life coming and going all the time.”
She looked at Nina. “What’s your story?”
Nina placed her postcard on the table and sat down. A cluster of saguaro against a bright blue sky, blank on the other side.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” Nina whispered.
“Ikebana, we don’t fill all the space. We leave room. Leave room,” said Mrs. Hanabusa with some emphasis this time.
Nina thought for a moment, and wrote:
Got your note. Like the saguaro, I’m still here. Hug? —N
Not forgiveness. Not resolution. Presence and a little humor, with some room. She added her father’s address in Phoenix. Stamped it and set it by her keys, knowing that it still might take days to put it in the mail.
The next morning, a third card from Nora arrived—black and white geometric patterns, stark and beautiful. An Inuit quilt made of duck knecks.
Mrs. Hanabusa was at the window again when Nina came in. Nina showed her the card. Mrs. H studied the design, then turned it over to read the back.
Found a noodle shop I love. Made friends at work. Some days are hard, some surprise me by how easily I could stay longer. —N
Mrs. Hanabusa looked up. “She signs just ‘N.’ Like you do.”
Nina blinked. She’d never noticed.
“My sister and I had our own shorthand, too. Still do.” Mrs. Hanabusa handed the card back carefully. “Secret code.”
Nina looked at the card again. The simple N. The years of friendship.
On her way home, she stopped at the blue mailbox on the corner. Pulled out the cactus card she’d written to her father to look at how she’d signed it. Just N.
She dropped it in the slot, heard it fall, and said a humble prayer. What else had she not noticed along the way?
George’s gifts get a warm reception, while a note to Nina gives her a chill.
George’s daughter called on Tuesday evening. “The kids loved the postcards, Dad. Emma especially. She wants to start birding… with you.”
George felt a dial turn in his chest. “She does?”
“She’s been asking about your old field guide. The one you used to carry.”
After they hung up, George went right to the closet. Found the guide on a high shelf, spine cracked, pages marked with decades of pencil notes. He’d bought it in 1978. Carried it on weekend drives, on fishing trips, on the slow walks he took with each kid as they got adjusted.
He wiped dust from the cover. Flipped through. His handwriting tracked sightings—dates, locations, weather. A life measured in birds.
Emma would need binoculars, too. His old pair hung on a nail in the garage. He loved these trusty old binos. It would be hard to give them up. Maybe he should buy her a new pair? But George imagined seeing Emma out on the trail in front of him, patiently observing and tracking it all, just as Mai had. It was worth the heartache.
Lily needed art supplies—he remembered Jennie’s watercolor set, still good, stored in the craft closet. Paints and brushes. Clean paper. Save the easel and the satchel for next time.
Always books for Jack, but it was a hard choice. George searched his shelves. He found volumes he’d loved, but they were too intense for Jack right now. Shy and studious, he might like America, Land of Beauty and Splendor, a Reader’s Digest hardback with a handsome leather spine. Good chance he’d help Emma plan her birding trips with it.
By evening, the kitchen table was covered with brown paper and string. Three packages taking shape. The field guide and binoculars for Emma. The watercolor supplies for Lily. A stack of books for Jack.
George wrapped slowly, carefully. He wrote notes and tucked an old Christmas postcard in each one. He’d never been good at gifts. Always second-guessed himself. But these felt right. Things that had mattered to him, passed down. Things they’d actually use. He whispered to himself, “Old is still good.”
Christmas Eve morning, George loaded the packages into his truck. The drive to Wabasha took twenty minutes. The sky was gray, threatening snow.
Mai opened the door, flour on her hands. “Dad! Come in, it’s freezing.”
“Just wanted to drop these off.” George carried the packages inside, set them under the tree.
Emma appeared from the hallway. “Grandpa!”
Jack and Lily followed, voices overlapping. George let himself be pulled into the warm house, the noise, the aromas coming from the oven.
George didn’t look a thing like Santa—tall and thin, no beard, flannel shirt instead of red suit. But standing there with his grandchildren around him, he felt jolly. This was better than he’d imagined. Better than the quiet house and the empty days, anyway. Being a grandfather mattered more than anything now.
“Can we open them?” Lily asked.
“Christmas morning,” Mai said. “Dad, stay for coffee?”
George stayed for an hour. Drank coffee. Watched the kids. Drove home through the light snow feeling content, maybe even peaceful.
Nina pulled the stack of stuff from her mailbox. Bills. A grocery store circular, and two postcards.
The first showed another Native textile—bold linear patterns in red, black, and cream with intense cross icons. Nora’s careful script on the back.
Hā lō. The words don’t come easily but people are kind. Cool and cloudy. I am floating in a haze between two languages and all the sights and sounds. —N
Nina flipped over the second card and took in a sharp breath. A generic Delta airplane photo. The handwriting slanted left, pressed hard into the faded card stock.
Layover. Thinking of you. -Dad
She hadn’t heard from her father in eight months. Not since he flew in for the funeral and left the next day.
Nina stood in the mailroom holding both cards. Nora’s textile and her father’s cardboard shrug. She whispered, “Merry Christmas, Dad,” and slipped them both into her bag.
Mrs. Hanabusa was by her window when Nina arrived for her shift. The older woman smiled. “You have mail.”
“How did you know?”
“The look you get.”
Nina pulled out Nora’s card. Showed her the textile pattern.
Mrs. Hanabusa took it carefully. Studied the bold lines, the sacred geometry. “Another one, but this is different, more dramatic.” She tilted it toward the light from outside and a mischievous grin washed across her calm visage. “My grandmother would have liked getting these back, too.”
Nina hesitated, then showed her the second card with the plane.
Mrs. Hanabusa looked at it, then at Nina, then waited.
“My father,” Nina said. “He’s a pilot. He sends almost the same card every time.”
Mrs. Hanabusa was quiet for another long moment. “My father came back from the camps different. Smaller and afraid. He couldn’t talk about what he’d lost. Some people need distance to be ok.” She paused. “But, that is not ok for you.”
“No,” Nina said. “It’s not.”
Nina looked at the card again. Thinking of you. Three words. A lifetime of absence compressed into a layover.
“I don’t know what to do with them,” she admitted.
“Keep it. Keep all of them, and figure out how to write back.”
Nina slipped both cards into her pocket. Nora’s textile and the latest of her father’s terminal attempts. Both efforts in their own ways, she had to agree.
Mrs. Hanabusa watched her. “These cards from your friend—they matter to me too, you know. Seeing which patterns she chooses next. What she wants you to know about her trip. That’s a kind of gift. Your friend is keeping her promise.”
“She said she’d send them all,” Nina said.
“Good,” Mrs. Hanabusa said. “You can show me each one.”
Time to Reconnect?
Though the story is fiction, a vintage postcard is still a great way to stay in touch. Browse our selection.
A magic carpet takes us to a far away photo show, and a beach scene brings back old memories.
Nina found Mrs. Hanabusa in the common room sorting groceries into cloth bags. The postcard was still in Nina’s hand—a Navajo textile in geometric patterns, black and white against red wool.
“Let me help,” Nina said, taking two bags.
Mrs. Hanabusa glanced at the card. “From your friend? The one who went to Taipei?”
“She just arrived.” Nina turned the card over.
Made it. Everything moves faster here. First night was a photo exhibit on Mt Nunhu. Already miss the slow mornings. —N
Funny, Nina had received Nora’s text with images from the show that night, long before the postcard arrived in her mailbox here in Tucson.
They walked to Mrs. Hanabusa’s room. Nina set the bags on the small counter. Mrs. H studied the postcard, her finger tracing the pattern.
“My grandparents had one like this. Hung in their house on the flower farm.” She paused. “My grandmother found it at a trading post in the twenties. She said the geometry reminded her of Japanese family crests. Clean lines. She hung it in the room where they did arrangements.”
Mrs. H’s voice stayed quiet, remembering. “After the war, when we came back from the camps, the farm was gone. But a neighbor had saved some things. The rug was one of them. Grandmother cried when she saw it. I was small, maybe seven. I didn’t understand then what it meant to get something back.”
She opened a drawer, pulled out a small wooden box. Inside lay perhaps a dozen postcards, all showing Ikebana arrangements with low, horizontal compositions in shallow containers. Pink and red cosmos rising from a white porcelain vase. Allium gigantium’s perfect spheres balanced with small lantana blooms. A giant monstera leaf with a canna lily and a white chrysanthemum.
Mrs. Hanabusa handed Nina the stack of cards. She flipped through slowly, admiring each floral design.
“My sister sent these from Osaka. Our grandmother taught the traditional way. These are more like her arrangements, traditional but made new.”
Mrs. H pointed to the one with the iris. Nina looked closer. The composition was deliberate. Bold strokes against a spare background.
“Your friend will send you more postcards?”
“She promised,” Nina replied.
“Good,” Mrs. H smiled. “We get bored without friends.”
George had haunted thrift stores his whole life. Mostly he looked for tools—socket wrenches, levels, hand planes that still had their blades. Things he could use or restore.
Now he looked for postcards too.
The Goodwill in Red Wing had a basket of them near the register. Fifty cents each. He sorted through slowly. Tourist shots of the Badlands. A faded view of the State Capitol. Then he found a few good ones.
A real photo postcard showing Lake Pepin framed by trees, “Father of Waters” etched in careful script. The water stretched wide and calm, clouds massed above the bluffs.
A color card of Minneapolis Public Library, the old red brick building with its round tower and arched windows. George remembered when they torn it down in 1951.
A chrome card showing a white horse leaning over a fence, red barn and farmhouse in the background.
And then—George stopped. Sugar Loaf Mountain near Winona. A beach scene, families on the sand, kids on playground equipment, swimmers in the water. The mountain rising behind them.
He was transported to that very day. Their family had been right there, doing exactly that. The kids running between the beach and the playground. The particular blue of the water. How his wife had packed sandwiches that got sand in them and nobody cared.
George bought all four cards. Two dollars total. At home he examined them under the desk lamp before he got to thinking about each message.
He wrote to Emma:
Found this real photo from Lake Pepin. “Father of Waters” they called it. Your wanderlust comes honestly—this river goes all the way to the Gulf. Love, Grandpa
To Jack:
Get to the good old libraries while you can. This one is gone already! Love, Grandpa
To Lily:
See how the fence posts get smaller as they go back? That’s tricky to draw! Give it a try. Love, Grandpa
He paused at the fourth card, and let out a small sigh. Sugar Loaf Mountain, seems like another lifetime. Finally, he wrote:
This one is for you, kiddo. Reminds me of you and the guys and Mom. Fun times! Love, Dad
George added addresses and stamps. Put on his coat and walked to the mailbox, a short stretch of the legs that he now enjoyed. A chickadee called from the pine tree across the street—its clear two-note song cutting through the cold afternoon air.
Nina makes a long distance deal with a dear friend, and George finds a new use for old memories.
Nina arrived early at the coffee shop near campus in Tempe. The drive up from Tucson was faster than she expected. Nora slid into the booth at 9am sharp. “You’re glowing,” Nina said.
“Nerves.” Nora grinned. “Two years in Taipei, three weeks to learn Mandarin.”
They ordered. Nina nudged a package across the table. She’d wrapped the book of postcards the night before, Navajo Textiles, each page a detachable card with a different striking design. Almost too good to take apart.
Nora opened it and smiled. “These are perfect. They will remind me where I came from. And, we can keep them! I’ll send them back to you.”
She flipped through the cards. “My grandmother did this. Sent us postcards from every trip. Maybe that’s why I love to travel.”
“I want to hear all about it,” Nina said. “Something to look forward to in the mailbox.”
“Deal.”
They talked until Nora had to leave for meetings. Nina hugged her friend outside, watched her disappear into the parking garage. On the drive back to Tucson, she thought about when she might travel again. Someday.
In Minnesota, George came across a box of old stationery while cleaning out a drawer in the office. He’d been ignoring this stuff too long, but it had to be done. He was surprised to find a bunch of notecards and envelopes, postcards from their own travels, even some stamps. Jennie must have tucked them away years ago, then forgotten.
He shuffled through the stack, smiled, and thought about their grandchildren.
Emma, sixteen, newly licensed, texting him sunset photos. Jack, thirteen, reading everything, and his own library growing. Lily, nine, from whom he routinely received animal drawings in manila envelopes.
He wrote to Emma first:
Found this sunset and thought of you – keep your eyes on the horizon! Love, Grandpa
Then, to Jack:
You can find a library in every place. Hope you go some day, and your collection grows. Love, Grandpa
Finally, to Lily, though his hand was aching:
For my favorite artist: a cat to inspire your next drawing. Keep sending pictures. Love, Grandpa
He addressed the cards and peeled the Forever stamps from their yellowed backing. The afternoon sun was glinting off the glassy surface of the snow as George walked down the drive and out to the mailbox. These should get there before Christmas, he thought. Next he’d knock the icicles off the eves over the porch steps, then make dinner.
The Posted Past 