The funniest thing about this story is that I remembered to send my parents a Christmas card at all.
Better yet, we included school pictures of the boys, key-chain photos of them and a gift card to one of Nana's and Papa's favourite restaurants in their Ontario town.
All of this was a good nine days before Christmas.
I was alarmed when, a few days after Christmas, I went fishing for my "thanks-so-much-for-the-Christmas-present-you-are-our-favourite-son" compliment, only to find that the card hadn't arrived.
For a moment I thought I could detect the "oh-sure-you-did" look on my mom's face when I expressed my incredulity, but I really did send it.
Where could it have gone?! Surely pinched by some unscrupulous Postie who could feel the shape of the gift card inside. I could picture him or her feasting at Swiss Chalet while my poor elderly and frail parents huddled over a dim candle, splitting a can of tuna.
Or something like that.
We gave it another week for the card to arrive. Perhaps it was lost in the mass of Christmas letters. When it didn't, I headed to canadapost.ca. (The great thing about the digital age is that you almost never have to actually deal with real people.)
It wasn't hard to find the section on tracking a lost letter. They ask you all the typical questions: Where are you? Where was the letter going? What was the value?
I was encouraged. They were going to track down this little bit of lost Christmas cheer and reinstate my good-son status.
Then, at the end of the process, I got this:
All my dreams dashed.
So, it was simple: I had been robbed and when I went to my likely robbers for help, they would not.
We held out hope that the letter would arrive or be returned, but as the days and weeks ticked by, that seemed unlikely. So, I set about joking about how a Canada Post worker had eaten my parents' glazed chicken meal. I hoped they were enjoying the dipping sauce as much as my father would have.
Then, last week in our mailbox (we still get home delivery!), there sat our Christmas miracle, nearly two months after it was dropped in the Canada Post mailbox:
Of course, during sober second thought, it's plain to see that the fault was mine.
First, insure your packages when they contain $40 gift cards and priceless family photos. Spend the buck and register the letter.
Second, have someone weigh the danged thing to make sure you have sufficient postage.
Epilogue: My parents are visiting in March. I'll be holding onto their Christmas letter till then so I can present it in person. You can't trust that sort of thing to the mail.
