Wendi {at random}

I have always had a thing for mail – a fetish, if you will. I love mail. I love to smell it, rummage through the envelopes and slice them open with a paring knife, stack it up in neat little piles and sit back and ogle it. When I was a kid, I’d wait by the front steps for Mail Man Fred just praying I’d get a package of Dr. Seuss books. To this day, my heart beats a little faster whenever I check the mailbox. I’m not choosy; all kinds of mail does this to me – junk mail, magazines, letters and cards, and catalogs. Oh, yes, I do love those catalogs.

These days, especially around Christmas, catalogs come pouring into my mailbox. Beautiful ones like Anthropologie and Pottery Barn. Boring ones like Cabelas and Camping World. Fun ones from Lego and cheap ones from Oriental Trading. In spite of all this glossy, smelly print, though, there’s been a huge hole in the catalog section of my heart ever since Sears stopped sending their Wishbook to customers years and years ago.

As kids, my sister and I just knew Santa Claus got all of our toys from Sears. From the day the Wishbook was delivered till Christmas, we’d race home from school eager to circle and dog ear the pages and examine the toys we wanted – oh, needed! That catalog was our link to the greater beyond, as we had no toy stores in our tiny mountain town. In our minds, the Sears Wishbook WAS a toy store, and it was located directly at the North Pole.

My own children have no idea what it’s like to not see a toy till the Christmas catalog was delivered. They don’t know how to wait and wait, circle and bend pages, and wait some more. They see everything they want on TV, the commercials ingrained in their little heads so that they wake up singing their jingles. My boys recognize the toys as soon as they hit the shelves at Target. They even know Toys R Us and mall stores charge more for the same toy than Wal Mart does. They’re a lot savvier than I was when it comes to toy shopping.

It’s sad, though, that the toy magic that surrounded me as a child has vanished with the Wishbook. Do kids have any reason to wait by the mailbox these days? Do they know how to circle and dog-ear and surreptitiously leave an opened catalog on the kitchen counter? Is there still a division of Sears at the North Pole?

Regardless, the Christmas Wishbook is no more. That special magic of a long time ago will never arrive in a heavy catalog again. I’ll have to find another way to capture some magic and weave it into my postal dreams. Perhaps I’ll go home today and find an elf sitting in my mailbox.