November 23, 2022

Postcards to the Future

A few weeks ago, we received a postcard from our friends Paul and Kate who live in Vancouver. I will admit that I did not read the note on it very carefully (the image on the front was a diagram of the respiratory system?), but it read something along the lines of that they’d written the card at a street festival “where they mail postcards to the future.”

Which was kind of remarkable, I guess, but then aren’t all postcards letters to the future after all?

The salient part for me, however, was the way the postcard concluded: “…and we will eventually be there, in the future with you!” Because we haven’t seen Kate and Paul since 2019, but this month they’ve finally returned to Ontario for a whirlwind visit, and we’ve been lucky enough to be part of it, which is what I’d so been looking forward to when I received this postcard at the beginning of November.

Tonight we all sat together in my living room eating Thai food, celebrating Stuart’s birthday, Kate and Paul, and our friend Erin, and 3 year-old Clara whom we last saw as a baby, and her little brother Gabriel, who has just learned to climb stairs, and who we’ve been overjoyed to be meeting for the very first time.

“Oh, I got your postcard!” I exclaimed suddenly, remembering. Kate and Paul were both confused. They hadn’t sent us a postcard. “No, you know. The one from the street festival? Where you were sending a message into the future.” They had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s on my fridge!” I insisted. “Here, I’ll show you.”

I went to get it…and realized the most important thing I’d missed when looking at it before. The date at the top: June 23, 2018. The people at the street festival really weren’t kidding about the future thing. I realized too that the note was only signed from Kate and Paul, because Clara and Gabriel didn’t exist then. We hadn’t had a pandemic then. None of us had had any idea of what was coming. And yet.

“…and we will eventually be there in the future with you.” A line that might have hit very differently if this letter had arrived at any other moment during the last few years. But it was a promise.

What are the odds of this very postcard to the future arriving on the cusp of the first time we’ve all been together in so long?

But here we are. I feel so lucky. And looking forward to what other wondrous things the future has in store.