“Dad saved some letters. I thought you could have yours back, if you want them,” said my brother, as we had an open-air church-served lunch on the farm after the funeral. Reading them brought back memories of my own life, but also of our relationship, a captured moment in time. I have met people who have packets of letters, even boxes of letters, from the past. How lucky they are, i have thought, to have those original documents of family. Time moves on and with email and text, personal letters in general are few, and cards have dwindled. But it's quick and easy to send a postcard! Now that I'm many miles from my grandchildren, I make sure to send them postcards regularly. I'm told their mothers are saving them, for which I'm grateful and hopeful - my love for them will be remembered that way. I choose the card for where I've been, sure, but more for the image that may reflect an interest of the child. Carefully, each is dated and the place of origin noted.

For years I’ve been buying the affordable art of mass-produced postcards and stashing them. Each postcard memoir captures a time, place, and the time-space my head was in when I bought the card. As we were downsizing for our recent move, I wrote and mailed many of these. Each post card had a personal message, plus a quotation appropriate to the art and the recipient and my message. Writing postcards brings memories to the surface of places and of states of mind.

“The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.”
― Mary E. Pearson, The Miles Between

Oddly, when going through my trunk of momentos, I did find letters and postcards. They were from old beaus, sent from many places in the States and around the world. Nostalgia hit for a moment; those men are remembered now as they were then. I hadn't thought of then in years and some I struggled to remember. Their postcards brought them back to life. Then there are the postcards, every year, from Chuck, who was my stepfather for many years. I cherish these and look forward to his yearly photo and account of where he's been lately. Conversely, I know I am not forgotten but live in someone's memory, too!

Memories of Choice

How to make the choice when the postcard rack confronts you? Sometimes the post cards were free, so cool that they must have been printed by the business in hopes of free marketing when the senders mailed them, much like branded t-shirts are walking billboards when worn. So I have three from the House of Brews in Atlanta, showing their coat of arms.

Sometimes the post cards show a landscape or scene that’s readily identifiable, with the idea of sharing a little of the senders’ experience. These are postcards memoirs. One of my postcards has a bubble encasing a piece of the Berlin Wall, but I’m afraid it will never reach its destination. Too special to send?

And sometimes the post cards are of art, either from a museum or a photo of a maker. So I have a pop-art rendition of the Mona Lisa in pink from New York; a welder in full gear from the Arco Santi living experiment in Arizona, Carl Sandburg’s portrait, and a sketch of windmill works from the Museummolen in Schermerhorn. But again, do I dare mail the card showing Audrey Flack’s Egyptian Rocket Goddess, a 41” tall bronze statuette? It will take fortune and Lady Luck to find the right quotation for that card.

Postcards as Art

Meanwhile, the memories that post cards bring attract artists’ commentary. I bought one of the “Postcards from the Inside” series at a Paducah, KY gallery by Michael (the Mud Poet) Terra. The hangable ceramic post card reads, “Every one of these gray hairs has a story, and if you’re not careful, I might tell them to you.” It serves as inspiration as I wait for the next story to pop up in my email or in a phone call, a person calling to say, “Can you help save a life story?” Yes. The memoirs I help produce with Perfect Memoirs are longer than postcards, shorter than lives.

When I visited Asheville, North Carolina’s amazing Momentum Gallery, I was taken by two small pieces by Greg Sand: Correspondence and Likeness. With a pile of postcards waiting for the right moment on my desk, I stopped to look at these two. And yes, I collect beautiful and quirky stamps, too!’

If you are a postcard saver, what ideas do you have to turn your postcards into new, useful art-functional or inspirational? Will you pass them on, digitize them, create a mobile, paper a wall? Or finally, put that card in the mail to decorate someone else’s refrigerator or office cubicle, however briefly.

You can create memory and art, a brief postcard memoir.