Mail Bonding

I got another one a week ago.  It was a postcard with a picture of a road sign that read, “Kangaroos Next 50km”.

N, my seven year old niece, has sent me a postcard from Australia— her present home for the last three years.  This time, she proudly writes that she wrote the message all by herself. 

Time does fly by so fast these days.  When we first started to correspond to each other, N would mail me her colorful drawings from far off Tanzania and  my sister would add a note to explain what the drawing was all about.   

I would respond back with drawings of my own—usually in stick form.  

 Then she started to express herself in words.  She would tell my sister what she wanted to say; my sister would write it down; and, N would copy the message in her own unique penmanship. 

Recently, I have included some stickers and stripes of ribbon and lace in my letters to her to make for an interesting surprise. But it is just a matter of time before the novelty of these little mail inserts wear out.  It was time to put on the creative thinking cap.

Passing through a book store, I came across several postcards featuring tourist destinations.  I know that this will be of little interest to a seven year old.  Instead, I picked up a bundle of flash cards depicting trees that grow in the Philippines. Instantly, I found a good way of spicing up my correspondence with N.   I have decided to use these flash cards as my postcards to N.  For each tree featured, I decided  to come up with an anecdote involving that particular tree in my life. 

I am hoping to broaden N’s knowledge of the Philippines one tree at a time. And should she come across such a tree, I hope she will smile and remember the stories I wrote to her.

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For my first “tree postcard”, I chose the one depicting the Kamagong or Mabolo.   

Let me share with you what I wrote:

My dearest N,

We used to live in a district called Mabolo.  But I never saw a Mabolo tree until I visited your house. Your mother had planted  some of them along the side of your property. What a nice coincidence.

Love,

Tita J

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It’s funny how an emotion can suddenly take hold of us by what we come across.  A name, an object, a song, a scent, a taste. Now when I hear the word Mabolo, I am immediately transported to where I happily grew up.  For the longest time, it was a quiet residential district where we lived close to the Carmelite sisters  and the San Carlos Seminarians. There was a small sugar mill at the corner and not too far behind our house was a pharmaceutical company producing liniment and medicinal soap. My parents had a small poultry, some dogs, goats, ducks and a couple of pigs in our backyard.  There were no neighbors then who complained.  As children, we would play all day in our garden and in the backyard where we looked into the animals.  It was a simple time in a happy place.

I remember how my mother would call us all in for our afternoon snack.  Hungrily, we devoured the giant hot cakes as big as dinner plates that  my mother would prepare from scratch.  The boxed version was still a long way off in the future.

Do you want to know what happiness taste like?  Try my mother’s hot cake recipe.  It's a favorite of N.  Click here for my mother's  HOT CAKE RECIPE.