The Bookmark
Photo: The author’s grand-daughter Freya, with the peripatetic bookmark
The Bookmark
By Tamara Levine
A little hope can go a long way. Larry and I had finally made up our minds to leave 37 Craig St. where we’d lived for 42 years. We had loved our century-old house, but with three storeys, laundry in the basement and no walk-in shower, it was not a house to get old in. We bought a condo in March, put the house up for sale and hoped for the best. Asher and Genevieve, a young couple with three little girls, would live there now. We divested, wept and packed. We arranged for our mail to be redirected and moved at the end of August.
In July, our eight-year-old granddaughter Freya was hopeful but a bit nervous about going to sleepover camp for two weeks. Freya wears her heart on her sleeve, letting us know when she feels excluded and why she is jealous of her otherwise adored big sister Vida. But Vida would be at camp too, and Freya sort of knew what to expect after her week there the previous summer.
Vida and Freya, in pigtails and baseball caps turned backwards, hugged their mom and dad goodbye and boarded the yellow school bus for camp, duffle bags and knapsacks overflowing. Inside each knapsack was a pack of stamped, pre-addressed “Hello from Camp” retro-style postcards to send to their parents and grandparents. Grandparents were instructed to send letters before the kids left for camp, so they’d get mail soon after they arrived.
The week before the kids were leaving, Larry and I dutifully sent letters stuffed with shiny colourful stickers to camp. We never heard from Vida, although she swears she wrote to us. We received one postcard from Freya. The kids had a blast at camp. Then they spent a week with us at the cottage before we put on the last push toward the big move.
The new owners at Craig St. let us know if mail for us arrived there. When I heard from Asher in October that we had a letter, I stopped by the house. The envelope was addressed in beautiful handwriting to Bubbe and Papa, which is what Vida and Freya call us. There was a return address in Kanata but no name.
I sat in the car in front of the old house and opened the envelope. A note in the same flowing script read “I found the enclosed postcard in a library book that I borrowed. Seeing that it was being used as a bookmark, I assume it is a cherished item, maybe a postcard from a grandchild to papa? Great decorations on the card. Best wishes!” Inside the note was Freya’s postcard, replete with stickers, dated July 16. In pink lettering, it read “Dear Bubbe and Papa. I miss you a lot. I can’t wait to go the cottage. From Freya.”
I was stunned. Why did Freya’s postcard take three months to reach us? Where had it been delivered in the first place? Who had used it as a bookmark in a library book? What was the book they and the mystery sender had been reading? But mostly I was overwhelmed by the kindness of the person who found the postcard, took the time and effort to salvage it, write a note, put a stamp on an envelope and mail it to a complete stranger.
A few weeks later, I wrote to the nameless sender: “To the kind person who found my granddaughter’s postcard in a library book and took the time and effort to put it in the mail to us along with a beautiful note. Freya, age 8, sent us the postcard in July from her summer camp. It had the right address. Why it didn’t arrive at our house last summer remains a mystery. So does how it became a bookmark in a book at the Ottawa Public Library. Another twist is that we moved out of our house in August, so we might never have received your letter. Thankfully, the new owners told us about it. We were thrilled to receive it along with Freya’s missive. Freya was too! Please know how touched we were by your thoughtful gesture at a time when we are all in need of kindness.”
It was a tough year. Wars raged on. Despots were elected. Climate catastrophe wreaked havoc. Closer to home, the move from our house was physically exhausting and an emotional upheaval from which we were still recovering. But as the sun dappled the plants through our new bay window, a little kindness brought a welcome ray of hope.
Tamara Levine is a former long-time Glebe resident.