Dear Krista-Lee and Martin

Several years ago, back when leaving your home wifi open for the neighbours to share, was de rigueur, I opened our front door one day to find a box of chocolates and a thank you note from a tenant who’d moved out of the building next door and wanted to thank us for the loan of the bandwidth for the years she’d been resident there. It was a thoughtful gesture, much-appreciated.

And, alas, rare in this day.

In recent years, originally to profit from having a letterpress that can print “thank you” cards, and then, encouraged onward by the genuine upswell of warmth that came every time I mailed one, I’ve become a regular sender of the real handwritten thank you. It’s something that I love doing, and the physicality of it renders digital communication soulless by comparison.

Since the rise of Facebook, Twitter et al, and the resultant decamping of web-based conversation into the walled gardens, it can feel eerily quiet around these here parts; I intuit that there are people reading, from time to time, but it’s become mostly a faith-based exercise.

Which is why it was such a pleasant thing to receive a thank you card in the mail–a lovely thank you card, handwritten, with the imagery explained–from readers Krista-Lee and Martin, away from the Island for 6 years and soon to return.

Thank you, Krista-Lee and Martin, for your kindness. I’d mail you back a thank-you-thank-you, but I worry you’re already loading the U-Haul. And about the recursion.

So I’ll buy you a coffee at the Farmers’ Market once you’re settled home.