When I traveled to Florida and moved in with my parents for a week following knee replacement surgery for my 82-year-old mother, I got a chance to observe the rhythms of their daily life.
One surprise was the importance of the daily mail.
My parents live on the fourth floor of an oceanside condo, with their mailbox located on the first floor by the elevator. The letter carrier typically arrives early in the afternoon, and shortly after lunch, the mail chat begins.
"Go check the mail."
"I'll bring up the mail while I'm out."
"Anything in the mail?"
I watched with a twinge of guilt. While I'd regularly written to my parents when I went off to college in the '70s, the only time I'd put a stamp on an envelope and addressed it to them in recent years was when I sent cards for their birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day.
But seeing how much the mail meant to them, I resolved to do a better job at filling their mailbox, to make sure that more than junk and bills would be delivered.