Magic New York
May. 3rd, 2011 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushneror: My mother is going to get her card on time after all.
The loveliest thing happened yesterday! Our 1909 building on Riverside Drive (yes, that's really it in my icon, shown in a sketch from the 1920s) has a massive old marble lobby, complete with a bank of locked mailboxes for each apartment along one wall, and - right next to our front door! - a big brass mailbox for outgoing mail (which the doorman polishes every day), complete with eagle . . . and glass chute where the other floors used to send down theirs to be mailed, though I'm not sure it still works. Mail there is picked up by the postman every day when he comes to deliver the mail to all the apartments in their boxes.
Our regular mailman, John (with whom, as you may imagine, I've cultivated a warm, personal relationship!), is pretty predictable, with a mid-afternoon pickup/delivery - but often there are subs, and sometimes he comes early when he wants a shorter afternoon. Such was the case yesterday afternoon, I guess, when I stuck my slippered feet out the front door into the lobby, waving the square envelope I hoped my mom in Cleveland would get by Saturday (to make up for the fact that I utterly forgot last year!) . . . .
Sorry, said the doorman, Stoycho, with his melancholic Balkan shrug; mailman come early today.
I went back in, counting on my fingers to figure out whether I had to beg Delia to run up to the corner to the regular mailbox.... Naw; if I popped it in the brass box, it would get picked up Tuesday afternoon, still plenty of time.
So I opened the door to drop it in - and:
Wait! said Stoycho. Give to him! For Lo! There was John. He come back . . . Must have heard you.
Well, I guess he must've. Or something.
What are the odds?
The loveliest thing happened yesterday! Our 1909 building on Riverside Drive (yes, that's really it in my icon, shown in a sketch from the 1920s) has a massive old marble lobby, complete with a bank of locked mailboxes for each apartment along one wall, and - right next to our front door! - a big brass mailbox for outgoing mail (which the doorman polishes every day), complete with eagle . . . and glass chute where the other floors used to send down theirs to be mailed, though I'm not sure it still works. Mail there is picked up by the postman every day when he comes to deliver the mail to all the apartments in their boxes.
Our regular mailman, John (with whom, as you may imagine, I've cultivated a warm, personal relationship!), is pretty predictable, with a mid-afternoon pickup/delivery - but often there are subs, and sometimes he comes early when he wants a shorter afternoon. Such was the case yesterday afternoon, I guess, when I stuck my slippered feet out the front door into the lobby, waving the square envelope I hoped my mom in Cleveland would get by Saturday (to make up for the fact that I utterly forgot last year!) . . . .
Sorry, said the doorman, Stoycho, with his melancholic Balkan shrug; mailman come early today.
I went back in, counting on my fingers to figure out whether I had to beg Delia to run up to the corner to the regular mailbox.... Naw; if I popped it in the brass box, it would get picked up Tuesday afternoon, still plenty of time.
So I opened the door to drop it in - and:
Wait! said Stoycho. Give to him! For Lo! There was John. He come back . . . Must have heard you.
Well, I guess he must've. Or something.
What are the odds?