Whenever the mailman comes and Y hears it she’ll run to the door to see what fell on the mat “Is it for me?” Mostly not, as 3 year olds usually don’t receive invoices, letters from the tax office, or direct mail advertising. Sometimes it really is for her though, a letter from grandma, a card from one of her nieces, or this time a bona fide international across-the-ocean handwritten letter from Peter and Oliver. We received it on May 1st, and the date on the letter as well as the postmark suggest we are living through interesting times. Peter wrote the letter on April 8th, the stamps got their mark stamped on the 14th. So it took at least 17 days to get here.
That’s much slower than usual. The difference is the absence of passenger flights during this pandemic. Passenger flights carry lots of cargo and mail usually. At 13knots (24km/h an online calculator tells me) it would take 10 days or so by boat.
It was certainly snail mail, and might have come with a cargo plane.
Maybe it was sail mail, and came by actual boat like it is 1920.
Either way Y was very happy to receive the letter, recognising her name on the envelope.
I wrote the letter on Wednesday the 8th and put it in the mail that day, after mail pickup. So it would have gone into the mails on the 9th. Friday and Monday were both federal (and thus post office) holidays, which explains the April 14th cancellation, which would have happened in Halifax. After that, snails, sails, planes, who knows!