There are things that I take for granted living in the US — like mail delivery. I get that there are tons of people who live in rural areas who have to jump through similar hoops to get mail, but for this city dweller, mail is supposed to be dropped off at my house or at least on my front porch. For the past year mail that comes to me (let’s be honest — packages, I don’t get physical letters too often) is routed to Josh’s work and he has to haul all the boxes from his building at the back of the base to my waiting car in the parking lot where he has pre-arranged for a ride home. Or he unboxes it all and tucks everything into different pockets in his backpack and bikes it home to me. Let’s just say he was super excited when 24 large cans of cat food arrived along with the 40lb bag of dog food.
I am fortunate that Josh really doesn’t care about getting a family’s worth of mail delivery at his desk. He cheerfully shuttles home diapers, grapeseed oil, cat and dog toys, clothes and shoes and anything else my heart desires without complaint. At the beginning, when we were one of the first families here, one of the Marines in charge of picking up the unit mail from the post office said, “Wow sir! That’s a lot of boxes! Why do you have so much stuff?” He replied, “I have 4 kids to buy clothes and toys for — this is nothing.”
For some families though, the mail delivery issue is a source of conflict. Wife is waiting on a package that has arrived, but husband keeps forgetting to bring it home. Husband gets annoyed with the amount of packages he has to handle. Husband travels for work so wife can’t get mail for a few weeks unless she wants to try and gain admission to the secure building and ask someone to go check the mail for her. Wife orders a gift for the husband, but there’s no way to keep it a surprise when it ends up being delivered to his desk. I’m sure the same problems exist in families where the wife is the active duty member and the husband is waiting for his mail, but I’m generalizing based on the majority.
But this week? I’ve got mail.
The base just installed post office boxes for families that would like to avoid all the above described mail delivery problems and now I feel like I’m back at Westmont College. Spinning the little wheel back and forth until the lock clicks free, peering into the the dark narrow space, hoping to see a piece of paper saying that I have a package. Today I did have a package and the guy at the window was very excited because I was the very first person to test the new system. Yay me! I got a package! And then it turned out to be sunglasses for Josh. Boo.
I better start ordering.
