What I Learned from My Mother and the U.S. Postal Service

Let me tell you about my mother. For twenty-five years, five, sometimes six, days a week, she drove the same fifty miles, following the main roads and back roads of her mail route, which included some five hundred households.

She left home before six in the morning, dropping my sisters and me off with one babysitter or another—unless my father had a later shift at the grocery store, where he worked as a clerk—until we were old enough to stay home and wait for the bus by ourselves.

In the course of her career, which also included a dozen earlier years on other routes, she drove an old postal jeep that she’d bought for a song, as rural letter carriers were often responsible for providing their own delivery vehicles. It was the boxy kind you’d imagine as a Matchbox toy, or that Norman Rockwell might paint. Its steering wheel was on the passenger side, making deliveries easier and safer, but it wasn’t designed for the era of online shopping, so later she switched to a regular minivan.

That had plenty of room for packages but required her to straddle the front seat, stretching her left hand out to hold the steering wheel while delivering mail from the passenger window with her right. She told me it was only ever a problem when she was nine months pregnant, which she was three times; each time, she delivered the mail until she went into labor, though the last time, with my younger sister, her best friend did the driving during her final week, because her belly was too big to fit beside the center console.

What I Learned from My Mother and the U.S. Postal Service

The job of a mail carrier is multifaceted and challenging, but that work unites the people of this country.