Three Life Sentences
Stamped on me When I was young, being no stranger to feeling comfortable alone, I collected stamps. Before I first crawled through the wardrobe behind the Pevensie children, my windows into worlds beyond and ages ago were stamps. Philately, it was called. What language was that? For whatever reason, my imagination was fired by U.S. Civil War postage. And Lincoln. And Whitman. And civil rights themes. And authors. My childhood stamp album has survived the waves of decluttering that routinely roll through our bungalow and break into the dump, and it sits in a box in the garage, preserved, protected, waiting. I still pause to look at new stamps when I'm at the post office, but an Edmonton Eskimos stamp or an Edmonton Oilers stamp doesn't quite carry the thrill of 4-cent Lincoln words. I hope there are still kids who collect stamps and dream of cold camps in Antietam (without yet knowing how to pronounce Antietam) when rain falls outside. But, for me, these are post-postage ...