Bump bump bump goes the United Airlines plane as we fly across the mid-west and over the Rockies, it is as if the plane is no longer sure what is United, and as for ‘flying the friendly skies’ that went the way of all bombers. We bumped until we didn’t – descending like a glider over the Point Reyes Peninsula, seeing our home stretch of California before heading back to land. 

As we were a week later than planned, there was no time to slowly unpack and settle in before the appointments all lined up. Day one, Doctor in the city, check. Day two, doctor in the country, check. Day three, The Department of Motor Vehicles, check, an Xray here, a medication pick up there and we are check, checked again – now hungry and exhausted. But it is barely late afternoon and as we are a little ways north we gratefully pull up at the Rancho Nicasio Bar and Restaurant which quietly stays open for those like us, coming home too tired and hungry to cook. It’s a small row, really all one building, and looking at it, it is always strange to think that this was going to be the center seat of Marin County. How would the county have emerged if that had happened instead of San Rafael? The bar restaurant is the biggest holding here, tucked beside it is the grocery store that was out of milk, and almost hidden by an overhanging oak tree in the corner is the post office. As we pull up and the boys walk towards the bar door, another car pulls in and smiling through her window is a dear friend that I haven’t seen for a year. She is here to get her mail – at the post office. And I too have letters to post. Another gentleman, whose name I can’t remember, also smiles hello to me, and I am reminded that this is what the postoffice does – weaving a vital thread through the community as folks come and go checking for their mail and on each other, even more than community libraries, they are places of and for community.

Our town, Bolinas – there, said it out-loud – has been without its post office for 666 days and counting. And we are counting, and marking it down, writing letters, going to meetings, in public and in private and hustling, trying to right this wrong. This town, and others around the country like us, little ones, with not too many people, may not be considered worth the time and effort needed to put things right. After all – how many votes are we? Though adding up a few thousand here and a few thousand there could make a difference. Meanwhile our long-suffering nearby neighbors make room for us at their post offices, where we take up space, make the queues longer at their counters, and mingle with their friends. 

As we drive home at dusk through the soft falling rain we can stop rushing. I can take in the twisted limbs, fallen trunks and greening pastures, the trees are shiny with their sparse autumnal beauty. The mud in these fields is not so dense and thick as that of small farms in England. The weather is not so raw, and the cattle are calving well on their own. The roads are glistening as streams cross them in a hurry, there are clusters of mushrooms sitting brazenly on the verges, tempting one to stop and venture into the woodlands. But we carry on home, grateful to have finished our day and be able to light a fire for warmth.

It is in the gratitude of sitting by the fireside that I think of those I have left behind in England for these months of relative comfort. The wars still being waged, erupting like bubbling volcanos, The Ukraine, Gaza – is there anything left of Gaza? and now the rock pulled away from the oppression by the Assad regime in Syria uncovering more cruelty than we know how to absorb. How can it go on? So many of us ‘of a certain age’ turn away in depressed horror and despair. A reader had asked Johnathan Freedland of the Guardian “How do we live in this terrible world?” and he tries – at quite a few column inches – to answer. But it is not easy – It is hard to put your faith in the goodness of our fellow human beings when we read of the horror of cruelty and the greed of those in power.

Catching up on old copies of ‘The Week’ I found a quote from President Barack Obama which seems to help. “At the end of the day, we’re part of a long running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”

So with my paragraph I am sending out a prayer of gratitude for all the good people and things I know are here in our world.

Thank you for those who are trying to bring back our local post office. Thank you to those who are growing our food, caring for each other, those who are helping the sick, the family and friends who are suffering with illness and loss. Thank you to artist friends we know who  have risked so much to bring truth through story into our lives. Thank you.  

This has been A. Letter From A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch

And supported by murchstudio.com