Hi. My name is Maria and I am passionate about postcards.
Remember postcards? Once upon a time a postcard was the perfect way to chronicle a summer vacation, a study abroad, or a weekend getaway. It was a photo diary -- the front of the card showed the location, and the back offered a brief description of the sights.
It was a way of sharing one part of the world with someone living in another part of the world, and the wanderlust in me fueled my postcard collection. I have hundreds of them.
I loved sending postcards, receiving postcards, and buying postcards as souvenirs.
When we first took our sons to Italy, the boys used postcards to keep a travel journal. Every day they selected a postcard, filled it out, and mailed it to themselves. The best part was that once they returned home the postcards arrived, one at a time, from all the places we had visited.
Yesterday I was going through my postcard collection from all over the world--Belgium, Jerusalem, Moscow, Chicago, Korea, Brazil, Germany, France. And Italy (of course). I loved the memories each postcard evoked, and I loved the stories behind some of them. Here are a few that stand out ...
1- The Edelweiss
In my book I tell the story of my almost Italian boyfriend (I say "almost" because we left Italy to come back to the States just when he told me he liked me). Anyway, we corresponded for a while, mainly with postcards. I especially loved this postcard, sent from the Dolomites where he was training to become an alpino ... a member of the Italian Army Infantry Corps. He was writing the postcard in the dark because it was snowing heavily and the elctricity kept going out. On the front of the postcard are two real edelweiss, the white flower with star-staped petals which grows in the Alps. Some people associate edelweiss with the song from The Sound of Music, but edelweiss always reminds me of this postcard.
2- The Address
While postcards are always about where they are from, I also like where they are sent. Take this postcard from my Nonna. Notice the address? She sent it to me while I was a student at The University of Georgia. (Sidenote: at UGA one wall of my dorm room was plastered with postcards.)
Here is another example. This postcard was from my sister who was in Italy (our high school graduation gift was a trip to Italy, and that summer it was Laura's turn). What is interesting is, again, the address. She sent it to me while I was studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain. Two sisters spending the summer abroad in Europe, sending postcards to each other.
3- Postcard from a priest
I was always amazed that our parish priest took the time to purchase, address, and then mail a postcard to our family from Oberammergau, Germany where he had gone to see the Passion Play that is performed once every ten years. (For you locals, the priest was Fr. DiFrancesco.)
4- Postcards that Come Back
When my grandparents on my father's side passed away, my father returned to me a postcard I had sent them from a mission trip to Haiti. I was touched they had kept my postcard all those years.
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