Somehow my collection of postcards managed to escape the downsizing purge.
Until, that is, towards the end of January when I found out about International Correspondence Writing Month. Aha, I thought, now’s the time! Sending one postcard a day for the month of February would make a nice little dent in my stash of cards.
My postcards are full of memories of course. Dozens from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna from a summer spent in my father’s family home in the Vienna Woods about 50 years ago! I insisted on going to watch the horses and riders rehearse every morning. A box from when I worked in Bogotà, Colombia in the ’70s. Another box full – two – from ten years of working my way around the world. I’m not sure I ever left a gallery or exhibition or stately home and garden without postcards!
I’ve never been a good postcard writer. You’d think it would be easy to fill such a small space, but I just sit and stare at that little white square. Maybe that’s why I have so many.
I managed to send eleven before I burned out on my February project. A postcard a day was too intense and took too much time away from writing my novel. To be fair to myself, there were also major distractions because of family health issues.
Mulling over old memories was fun of course. What I especially enjoyed was how certain postcards would suggest a friend who might enjoy receiving it. Old friends who maybe had shared the occasion when I bought the card, who I hadn’t seen in years. More recent friends because I knew they’d be interested in the image on the card. And thinking of one friend naturally leads to thinking of another…
I’ll try again next February. If I could manage every day of the month, it might only take me fourteen or fifteen years to empty the boxes!
Susi Lovell 
Hello Susi. So glad your writing has reappeared for me. A truly lovely surprise. I’d be very happy to receive a postcard from you any day.
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Thank you Susan. I’d love to send you a postcard – just need your mailing address. Can you PM it to me? Plus three words to help guide my choice of card!!!
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I’m reminded of Nancy’s postcard story exercise at Kenyon. How baffling that was for me at first. By her third workshop, though, I’d figured it out and got a very good story that is part of my second novel.
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I LOVED that exercise. I got a published story out of it – then Caroline had me rewrite it for my collection. I think it was one of my best. It’s with the rest of the collection that’s now at the bottom of a big cardboard box!
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I have a collection from when I was a child, which I guess makes them vintage too. 😄
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Haha! Mine too…scary thought! I suppose that means we too are vint… no, no, let’s not go there!
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That topic is best avoided 😄
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Postcards are awesome! I have a bunch of them from my Grandparents…many during wartime, and wonderful vintage postcards from different states. Somehow, I just love them all, and it’s hard to part with them. I made a beautiful wall hanging with three really amazing vintage postcards from CA. Now to figure what to do with the rest.
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Vintage postcards are wonderful. I had a phase of hunting for them at flea markets, but yours are special as they’re from your Grandparents. Great idea to make a wall hanging. That way you can enjoy them often rather than just when you remember to get out the box to look through them.
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