What the Plow Did to the Mailbox

Mom and Dad at their 60th Wedding Anniversary

Day 10 --  During the last snowstorm, the town snowplow destroyed my parents' mailbox.  Snapped the sucker right in half - a bloodless decapitation of the most civilized sort.    I saw it yesterday when Connor and I stopped by the house to inspect the severity of the damage.  My mother was pretty upset and my dad was beside himself with anxiety -- how would the mail be delivered?

To most people, a broken mailbox would be an inconvenience, albeit a fairly high one on the annoyance meter.  But to my parents?  It was a catastrophe.  While the delivery of the food from Meals on Wheels clearly occupies first place, the arrival of the mail is a close runner-up in the activities which highlight my father's days.  At 88 years old, he suffers from Alzheimer's and under my mother's watchful eye, he doesn't get to go outside by himself very much.  The trip to the mailbox is a very big deal -- a brief release from the penitentiary so to speak.   Slowly, purposefully, he shuffles out to the street almost every day to retrieve the mail.   In that moment when he clasps the assortment of envelopes and junk mail flyers and carefully pulls everything out of the aluminum box, all is right with the world once again.  He is in charge.  That is, of course, until he is back in the house and my mother takes the mail from his hands, sorts out the bills, and gives the rest of it back to him to read in his chair in the corner.

"You have to call the town hall," I tell my mother yesterday after Connor and I come back inside.  "It's their fault and usually they are pretty good about fixing the mailboxes.  At least in my town they are."

She looks at me, surprised.  "Really?"

"Yeah," I answer.  "Really."

So today, I call to remind her to contact the Public Works department.  In our conversation, she doesn't make any sense and is having trouble explaining what is going on at their house.  At the moment of my call, she has just arrived home from a doctor's appointment and her friend who has stayed with my father, has just left.  When she finally settles down, my mother tells me the broken mailbox situation is clearly agitating my dad.  "He got up early today," she says, "and put on his Sunday clothes.  When I asked him why he was all dressed up, he said he wanted to go to the town hall."   As I speak to her, she cups her hand over the phone's mouthpiece.  I hear her muffled voice as she yells to my father.  "Are you going outside?!  Oh. Oh. Please don't go outside."  She comes back on the phone and in a staged whisper says, "he is going outside."

Apparently, he had already gone out several times to check if the mail deliverer had put the mail in the makeshift set-up that Connor and I had made when we were there yesterday.  It had been freezing cold outside and Connor had left his winter jacket in school so as we huddled around the broken mailbox, we had to think fast. After a few moments of brainstorming, we shoveled the snow into a large pile and then stuck the top part of the decapitated mailbox into the snowbank.   We both agreed that it was a rather brilliant solution and nearly deluded ourselves with our high level of intelligence.  But my father was never one for half-assed production jobs.  Even in his current state of dementia, he saw through our design and he knew it wasn't right.

After a few minutes of conversation, I sigh.  I tell my mother that I will call the town hall.  I can tell she is not convinced she has the ability to persuade them to help her even though I assure her she has an excellent case.   I can practically feel her relief through the phone line.

When I get home, I call the woman at the Public Town Works department. She listens patiently and then assures me that she will have someone go out and check out the damage as soon as possible.  "If they decide the mailbox was broken because of the plow, they will fix it," she says.  I am listening carefully and I begin to sort through her logic.  I am thinking, what?!!   It snowed, the plow came, and the mailbox (which my brother and dad had recently sunk into about five feet of concrete) suddenly snapped in half.  Really?  There is possibly another reason for its demise?  Like maybe my 88 year old dad, in a fit of senior citizen anger, suddenly took a whack at it with his walking cane?  Really?!  But, with great self-discipline, I keep my skepticism in check so as not to alienate the woman who is actually being quite nice on the phone.

When I call my mother back to give her the news, she is quite grateful.  I tell her that I was very clear about my dad's obsession with the mail and his current medical condition.  Always quick with the compliment she says, "thank you so much for calling them for me.  I guess this is one of those times when it's a good thing to be someone who talks alot."   I am fairly certain there is a personal dig in there but I am on a roll with keeping my thoughts to myself.  I choose to ignore her sarcasm.  I know that deep down she is happy to have information she can use to calm my father.

As for the mailbox, I remain hopeful.  Just call me Chatty Cathy Pollyanna.