INDIANAPOLIS — Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled the latest COVID-19 rescue package, which includes $25 billion to save the U.S. Postal Service.
Without the money, the postal service will run out of funds by September. The House voted to approve the package on May 15, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sees no reason to act quickly — if ever. President Donald Trump has threatened to veto any new bill, and in his feud with Jeff Bezos, owner of both Amazon and The Washington Post, demands the postal service jump its rates by 30%.
The postal service package is a tiny fraction of the $3 trillion relief bill, but attention is focusing on it. There are fears that disruption of postal service at a time when many, maybe even most, people will cast their ballots through the mail could have catastrophic consequences for democracy. And right now, many people check their mail boxes daily for checks — from the recent relief authorized by Congress as well as Social Security and pensions — that they need to make ends meet.
The postal service — mandated in the Constitution — is hampered by a federal law that requires it to prepay pensions as well as by a precipitous drop in mail volume. Due to the pandemic, it’s dropped 30 percent over a year ago.
I’ve seen some people shrug and say a private company could take over the job. Perhaps. But would a private company drive down your rural road, for the cost of stamp, just to see if you have a letter or bill in your box, waiting to be picked up for delivery?
Does a delivery man from FedEx or UPS know you? Our mailman, who goes by “Big Mc,” knows us by name, and is beloved. Got a package too big for the mailbox? He brings it, along with that day’s mail, to your door — the back door, where would-be thieves don’t see it.
It’s the potential loss of the mail service that has reminded me of the power of written letters — the postmark and stamp that freezes them in time, the handwriting that you instantly recognize without seeing the signature, the conversation of things small at the time but which convey so much.
Recently, I came across letters my mother wrote me years ago. Due to her stroke, I haven’t heard her voice beyond a few words in 22 years. Her hand can’t hold a pen nor sign her name. But she was there, sitting next to me, as I re-read her words.
“Did you know your mother could ramble on and on? I really didn’t. I have nothing to include in this letter so just kept scribbling, Miss you – Mom.”
In another, sent when I was in college, she chastises me for spending too much. I didn’t need a Harry Potter magical “howler” letter to hear the tongue-lashing she gave me.
In another drawer, I found one of two letters I have that her father wrote to her in 1945, when she was in nurse’s training. I never knew him, as he died when I was an infant. But I meet him in his words that seem as relevant during this pandemic as it did in wartime, as he wrote about food shortages at the grocery he ran.
“I won’t have to worry about cutting meat tomorrow as I haven’t got any but I guess we will live through it some way,” he wrote to the girl he called his pal. “We will have to keep our chin up and make the best of it.”
In my basement, I have boxes of letters my mother-in-law saved — letters to her parents, letters to her children, letters to me, and most poignantly letters written during World War II to and from the man she would marry.
“Honey, I could almost hug the oaf sitting next to me, I want you in my arms so much,” he wrote her in one.
In another, he writes about phoning her. “Dear, our three-minute conversations are episodes that I always will remember.”
I’m sure he remembered every word. But it’s letters, more than recollections of phone calls, that bring back not only our own memories, but paint such a vivid picture of people before we knew and loved them, and people we never knew but love. No FaceTime call, no Facebook post, no email or text will ever be the same.
So now I’ll do what I haven’t done in years: Write my children letters and know that in two or three days, the mail carrier will deliver my love to them.
Mary Beth Schneider is an editor at TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalists.
