NEEDLING

Three days ago, the postman left a little pink slip in my mailbox telling me he’d tried to deliver a package but that I hadn’t been at home and that he would try again the following day. The little pink slip also said that if I wasn’t going to be home once again then I could come over to the post office and pick it up myself.

Yesterday morning I got up before sun-up after a sleepless night.

I knew several things about this particular package. I knew that it came from France, that my friend Claire had sent it, and I knew that it contained, or at least at its departure from Paris, that it contained among other things one bottle of wine.

All this made me quite anxious to get a hold of this package as quickly as possible, as the package was already several days late in arrival, and Claire, who had posted said package from Paris, was getting anxious as well, which is why she finally broke down and told me she had not only included a bottle of wine in the package, but that she had written it on the label itself that there was a bottle of wine inside the package. After several days of the package not arriving and making absolutely no signs of doing so, she broke down and told me about the bottle of wine, which she would have preferred to keep secret so as to really up the surprise element upon my receiving of said package, opening it, and SURPRISE, there is a bottle of wine.

I want to make clear that I thoroughly enjoy surprises, but that I’m also a bit of a cheat. And when I’m aware of the fact that there is a surprise coming my way, I will do everything in my power to find out what the surprise is. Which of course makes no sense since I enjoy surprises. But that is part of my nature. If I know something is coming my way, that said something is going to be a pleasurable surprise, then for some reason I must find out what said something surprise IS. When Claire told me she was putting a package of surprises together and would be sending it across the big pound, I kept asking her email after email what it was she was including inside the package. When that went absolutely nowhere, that Claire would absolutely not tell me the contents of said package, then I started asking her when was it that I would receive the package. After one of these particular emails where I ended my letter with: AND MY PACKAGE!!! As in, where is it? Claire finally broke down from my array of impatience and told me that the package had not only been sent but that I should have received it by now, that she had specifically asked and purchased the fast delivery service. (Include your own personal snide remark here about both the French and the American postal services.)

The package was several days late, and Claire was getting anxious on the other side of the Atlantic. I could picture her walking back and forth in her Parisian flat wondering what could have happened to the package, where could it have gone... maybe it had fallen from the airplane and drowned somewhere between Greenland and Nova Scotia? From my Austin home I pictured Claire in her Parisian flat and I started sending her a daily report on how the package was not arriving and not giving any signs of wanting to arrive. My tactics clearly worked, as Claire broke down a little more and told me of one of the elements she had included inside the package. A good bottle of French wine. Could the package have gotten itself snatched at the border by a wino guardian of the peace? Could it have been mistaken for a terrorist’s trick of invasion of the continent via the contents of a good bottle of red? A Gargantuan epic in the making? Would the package arrive with or without the bottle?

My impatience was now turning on me, backfiring and I was starting to get nervous. My friend Claire knows me pretty well, and she not only knows how much I enjoy a good bottle of wine, she also knows how much I enjoy some good cheese to go with said bottle of wine. Good cheese being either outrageously expensive or absolutely inexistent in this country – pasteurized cheese is dead cheese and is very bad for you, whatever the FDA says... and whatever happened to freedom of choice? Aren’t I adult enough to choose whether I want / need pasteurized or non-pasteurized cheese? Pregnant women should not eat non-pasteurized cheese, matter fact, they probably shouldn’t eat any cheese at all, but does that mean I cannot have any non-pasteurized cheese myself? I’m never going to be a pregnant woman, however hard I try, yet as far as the FDA is concerned I cannot eat, purchase, produce, or even dream of non-pasteurized cheese... I think that’s unfair, but I digress... – I was starting to think that maybe Claire had also included a piece of cheese, like possibly a St. Nectaire fermier, or a good Camembert made from whole milk straight from one of those luscious black & white Normandy cows... and then I knew for a fact that said package was never arriving, not only that but my old paranoiac fear of authority, especially the immigration and border kind, – I grew up as an illegal alien in West Texas – were reappearing in my psyche. Were the Patriotic Police on their way to my home? Would they send me on a one way ticket to Guantanamo for a piece of cheese and a bottle of wine? What if Claire had also included a book written in French? We all know how the current administration loves all things French... a plot against Amerika in the making!

I could see the package inside a see-through plastic casing in a severe room lit with neon. The guardian of the peace dressed in whites, wearing a special mask over his nose, and a spandex hair net slowly unwrapping the package, cutting the tape and the label off with precise surgery tools. The package inside the plastic casing and the guardian of the peace working from outside the casing with those funky arm and hand sleeves built into the wall of the see-through casing... you know, like they have in every b-rated science movie with fake doctors and fake scientists trying to save the world from a bacterial infection. I could see the contents of the package being inspected, the cheese being mistaken for a new biological weapon of mass destruction, the book in French being taken as an insult against Amerikan Freedom... et cetera... all this to say that my imagination was starting to play tricks on me... and the package was not arriving.

When the pink slip appeared in my mail box, I was excited, but also worried. I had worked myself up a little too much, and when I noticed that the pink slip asked me to pick up my package not at my neighborhood post office, but at the main post office down town, I really started to get worried. Had they opened the package and decided the contents were some sort of affront against good White Protestant Amerika? Was it a trap to bring me in and question me on my affiliation to some kind of underground non-pasteurized cheese subculture? Were they going to lock me up?

I got up two hours before the post office opened and left my house forty five minutes in advance. I stopped by a coffee shop. I didn’t want their coffee, really. I just wanted to use some of those extra minutes I had. For once, it didn’t take hardly any time. The coffee people were fast and efficient. There was no line, nobody at the counter paying by check. Nothing to slow me down. Three people at the counter for once. All of them there to make sure I got my coffee the fastest possible.

I arrived with thirty minutes to spare. I waited, telling myself that everything would go just fine, that there was nothing to worry about... I walked back and forth in the post office lobby, the part of the post office which stays open 24 hours a day where all the PO boxes are... I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Two minutes before nine, I rang the special doorbell next to the special blue door for special Saturday package pick-ups.

“Good morning,” I said... with a big innocent smile getting ready for anything they might throw at me.
“Hi. You here for a package?” This woman said to me completely disinterested.
“Now you ask’em for the slip...” a man standing next to her was dictating her what to do. She was a trainee. I had given her the pink slip before they could ask for it.
“You got some I.D.?”
“Sure... the name’s right but the address is wrong,” I said.

I barely had time to finish my sentence that they’d given me my I.D. back and slammed the door in my nose. So there I was staring at the blue door for a little more than five minutes with absolutely no explication from the postal workers. What were they doing in there? Was it that difficult to go get a package and bring it back to me? Why were they taking so long? Where they spying on me via some cameras to see what my reactions were at being left alone waiting? I kept smiling, trying to look as calm as possible, just in case they had cameras.

The door opened again. The guy training the woman didn’t look at me. She was holding my package, which looked as if it had gone through some rough transport. It was all taped up with black and see-through tape, it was banged up pretty good. I didn’t even want to start imagining its trip across the big pound.

“Now you scan the package,” said the man to the woman. Said package was refusing to scan, so that took a while. “Then you scan the slip.”

Finally the woman looked up at me and acknowledged my presence. “He needs to sign,” the man said to the woman. But I was already signing the pink slip before she could react. She held on to the package, then he held on to it for a little while. They kept exchanging the package between themselves, as if they didn’t want to give it up. All this time they weren’t paying any mind to me. I was just trying to keep my innocent smile on, not wanting to cause any trouble just in case, figuring they’d eventually have to give it to me.

“Thank you,” I said when I finally got a hold of the package. “Is that it?”
“Now you do this and that...” the man was saying to the woman shutting the door in my face.

“You have a good day,” I said, relieved that everything had gone smoothly, that no guardian of the peace had emerged from some secret door to drag me into their b-rated world of cloak and daggers.

I drove home feeling I had won some secret battle nobody new about against the oppressors. I kept looking at the package on the passenger seat as if it was possibly a sick child. Or an old friend fallen asleep after a long voyage. And I was wondering if everything would be alright. It didn’t look so good.

When I got home I carefully cut the tape and the cardboard box. There was a letter from Claire on top of a pillow, the very same pillow which had previously lived on Claire’s couch and on which I had often set my head after a hard night’s drinking. Next to the letter was a Diplome d’Ivrogne (a Drinking Degree, or a Drunkard’s Degree). I lifted the pillow after reading Claire’s wonderful letter, written in circles, and after studying my new honorary degree – of which I’m very proud – and discovered the now famous bottle wrapped in a bright orange, red and green scarf. It was unharmed, in one piece, still protecting its delightful contents. I dug in slowly, taking my time, succeeding against my inherent impatience, wanting to enjoy each element of the package completely before moving on to the following.

(The package made me very happy. Claire surprised me with almost everything in it. Every element was perfect and proved how well she knows me. I realize I wrote this entry as somewhat of a story, which builds, builds, and builds some more... and then I just stopped... but that’s life, that how it often works in my life. Though it might sound anticlimactic in writing – and it certainly is – the fact of the matter is that it isn’t, because the contents of the package will keep bringing fun and laughs and pleasure for a long time to come... Thank you Claire.)