A View from the wing…

I’m happy to share with you this guest blog, written by my wife and wingmate, about finding angels and wingmen in the unlikeliest of places.

Imagining how the US Postal Service even begins to organize, manage and distribute all of its millions of letters, packages and boxes and actually sees to their accurate delivery is for me akin to understanding how airplanes fly. I know there is a science to it, but I figure there must be some divine intervention at play as well. And so, as I made my way to my town’s Post Office with a package for my daughter addressed to some strange sounding place in Kathmandu, Nepal, my confidence level wasn’t high.

At the counter the harried clerk asked me the destination of the package as she gave me the customs form and instructed me on how to fill it out. “What’s in the box?” she queried. I made a mental list: Airborne and Pepto Bismol, shampoo and lotion, probiotics and vitamin D, anything from the drug store that might keep her safe and healthy, there was her favorite childhood storybook in case a sad and lonely night ever surfaced, a pair of earrings, and some games and toys for the children she is working with in an orphanage in Kathmandu. And cards, birthday cards from me and my husband, “I miss you cards” and little love notes. “What’s in the box?” she asked again. “My heart”, I blurted out. The clerk, the harried, busy, overworked, clerk, stopped and peered at me over her glasses. “Is she your only one” she asked, I replied” Well, I have two step- kids as well”. She looked at me squarely. “So she’s your heart.”

This woman behind the counter, this stranger proceeded to tell me how she was an only child, an only daughter and when her mother was sick and dying she stopped everything to care for her round the clock. “I didn’t care about anything else, “she said, “the job, my routine, my life, nothing mattered but being able to care for my mother”. In awe, I replied, “She was so blessed to have you.” She smiled, “I was blessed to have her.”

She took my box then and taped and re-taped the seams, she covered the address so it wouldn’t smear, she marveled at the faraway journey my daughter was on. I asked her, “What are the chances this package will make it to her?” having been made doubtful by my on- line investigation of the Nepalese mail system. “I’d say 85%”, she offered, “but we are going to have faith and believe it will make it”.

So, there is a package out there moving toward a faraway place, held aloft by the USPS, the hands of strangers, airplanes, delivery trucks, and magic and faith. Kind of how we walk through life, how we send our kids out there into the universe. Just like that package, we tape it carefully, insure it fully, track its journey online as far as we can, and then pray. Pray that the box doesn’t break, doesn’t get lost or into the wrong hands. That it makes it to where it is heading, helped along by unlikely angels, who are all around us, even disguised as postal workers at the local post office.