Trina Machacek: Letters and shivers

I enjoy getting my mail. There is something so, well magical about getting mail. Even at 68 cents per letter, it’s a good deal. You can send a letter from where you are to anywhere in this big ole country for a mere 68 cents.

This summer the Pony Express Foundation is doing a re-ride of the Pony Express route. For five bucks you can write a letter and have it come across country on the Pony Express. How cool is that?

Well of course I signed up and will be getting an official stamped Pony Express letter sometime later this summer. It must have been a huge leap in the 1860s to get a letter in mere days from Missouri to California.

But. Yes, an express “but.” Makes me wonder what they did with the letters that were from Missouri to say, Salt Lake City. Did they have to go to California then back track to Utah? Yes, I am that person that sometimes askes one too many questions.

But today is not about the Pony Express. No. I want to ask this. What letters do you get in the mail that make you get that bone chilling, shiver up the spine, “Oh no now what?” feeling as you go through your mail?

There are the ones that in the upper left had corner announced IRS! Did you just shiver? I did. I also get that when I see something from an insurance company. Medical or auto or house. They all make me think, “Oh noooooo. What have I done now?” Or “Crumb, what’s this going to cost me?”

Some letters we all get just have a way to make me feel guilty. Worry that I have done something, sometime, in some way wrong. Knowing I have crossed a line I was not supposed to cross or taken a discount under the radar doesn’t seem to sit right.

There is always a gulp and shiver at what I possibly did wrong or what “they” want now. Oh, how about getting a letter from a lawyer? Or a court? Yikers. Guilt comes easily to me. I always think I must have done something wrong.

Didn’t dot an “I,” cross a “T,” or signed on the wrong line. Missed a deadline or added wrong in my check book and am overdrawn. Again! I wonder if everyone has that guilt. Condemning myself before I even know what the charge is.

It never failed that when I would work in the yard, or do laundry, or clean the house or finish feeding the lambs and chickens. I would just finish some work and just as I would sit down on the couch to catch my breath, in would come my other half!

There I was – sitting. Like I had been there all morning, sitting watching TV, eating bon bons. He never had to say a word, my gilt was so embedded in me that I would jump up like I was caught mid bon-bon.

Caught doing what, I don’t know, just caught at something — or worse yet not doing something. Or even worse yet, doing nothing... Guilt is alive and well in us all. Where I live, we do not get mail delivered to our homes.

We all have a post office or rural route box where our mail is deposited. The boxes in the post office are small and there is a little window in the door. Sometimes you can see if you have something waiting for you, but for the most part you have to use a key, open the box and get any and all surprises waiting for you in there.

At a glance, if I pick up my mail more than once a week, I can see the return addresses on the letters in there. To this day my heart leaps when I see handwritten return addresses. Of course, the occasional IRS return address magically grows little beads of sweat on my brow too.

Does human nature have a lot to do with guilt? It seems to run the gamut, this guilt thing. In some ways maybe guilt keeps us on the straight and narrow road. More than once, I have been given too much change when I bought something.

Knowing that those few pennies or dollars might not be much to me, but the poor clerk who would have to possibly make up the deficit was working to make money, not pay for a mistake that I would profit from?

That guilt makes me go back and do the right thing. That feeling, the opposite of guilt, is pride. Not button busting pride that you wear for all to see. Just inside pride that leaves that little warm dot in your soul.

Trina Machacek lives in Diamond Valley north of Eureka. Email itybytrina@yahoo.com.