When I was a teenager, I considered postcards as simply a way to share travels until I1my grandmother's postcard album(专册).
It was a dark gray album, where most of the postcards had pictures that did not reflect a holiday or a travel destination. Instead, the notes were2invitations to a dinner party or a walk the next day.
"Why do these postcards3you to come to tea?" I asked my grandmother. "Because this is how we communicated before we had a4," she said. "I would post a postcard in the morning mail, and a friend would5it that afternoon. 6she would post a reply that arrived in my mail the next morning."
I was surprised. Life without a phone sounded like something out of the world. Connecting by postcards seemed as7as using a carrier pigeon(信鸽). I had forgotten about my grandmother's postcards until lockdowns(封锁) prevented our trips to seeing our three granddaughters. Remembering my grandmother's album, I bought several sets of8and every few weeks, I'd write notes and mail them. The girls sometimes responded with brief thank-you texts.
Then one day I opened my mailbox and spotted three hand-addressed envelopes. They were from my granddaughters, each9me for the postcards. The notes expressed their dissatisfaction with the pandemic(流行病) and described how my10had comforted them.
