This key is to our Deloraine post office mailbox. Our Deloraine house, which we owned from 1990 to 2002, had no postal delivery. So from 1990 Sweetheart Vivienne and I rented P O Box 75, paying an annual fee for the privilege. As our Mole Creek house, where we’ve lived since 2002, has no mail delivery either, from 2002 we’ve rented P O Box 181 at the Mole Creek post office. Because it was only a few dollars each year to rent the Deloraine box, we elected to continue with it. For the years I was a trustee of Environment House Trust, the Trust’s mail went there. But after I resigned my trusteeship last 26 July, only junk mail came to it. So yesterday, two days before 31 March when the current rental year ends, I handed in the key. (Whew – what an intro. Are you still with me?)Taking the key off my keyring and sliding it across the counter was a poignant moment. I thought about all the mail I’d collected from that box in the last 20 years: Mountains of work mail. Also private mail that caused me joy, sadness, frustration, anger. Plus bills – incessant, insistent, inevitable bills. Finally junk mail – loads and loads of it. Handing over that key marked the end of an era for me. Funny how in some perverse way I defined myself by P O Box 75 and its contents. Today I awoke a one-mailbox-man. It felt strange.
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