It sat on our family room coffee table for months, the little box labelled “Luxury Perfumed Soap”. Unassuming and non-descript, it had become a part of the clutter that often gathered on the various surfaces in our home. It was overlooked until for whatever reason, my mom brought it out to me today and explained what it was.
“These stamps,” she explained, “are your Uncle Ren’s. He collected them growing up. I just asked him if he wants to hang onto them, because otherwise I was going to give them to my co-worker, and he said he doesn’t want them. But he told me the story behind them so now I feel like I can’t give them away.”
My mom explained to me the story that had given a seemingly useless box of stamps a sort of sentimental value that caused her to not be able to part with them. My Nonna, my grandmother on my mom’s side of the family, is an immigrant from Italy. She moved from Italy to Switzerland, then Switzerland to Canada in search of a better life for herself and her children - my uncle Ren, who had been born in Switzerland, and my mom, who was born shortly after they arrived in Canada. Because of her lack of education and with English being her second language, Nonna worked various jobs that required little knowledge or ability to speak English. At one point in her life she was working as a custodian, cleaning office buildings in downtown Vancouver. As she would clean the offices, if she saw a mailing envelope that had been thrown away, she would see if there were any stamps on it that she could salvage. Sometimes she would peel them off carefully, but other times she would rip off and save the entire corner of the envelope.
I imagine these stamps were tiny treasures to my uncle, who cherished them lovingly in this little box. Being immigrants, the family had to be stringent with money. The simple pleasure of collecting used stamps was clearly something that excited my uncle. How different were the times back then. And yet, something about these stamps ignited joy in my heart today as well. Yes, the simplicity of the whole thing was endearing and heartwarming, but more than that, the fact that these stamps had been peeled off of envelopes carefully in an act of love touched me. It also occurred to me that each stamp had a story I would know nothing about – there were stamps from Iraq, Austria, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and more. Who could know from where they came and to whom they were going? Surely not my family or I. And there is a kind of beauty in the unknown stories behind the stamps that strikes me.
What has become of these stamps? Well, my mom was going to give them to her co-worker, but we decided to give her co-worker only the duplicates and keep one of each stamp for ourselves. I tacked all of them into a scrapbook, organized by country. They are so satisfying to look through, the vibrant colours popping against the black pages, all the stamps aligned straight and in an order. The scrapbook will live, along with other family scrapbooks, somewhere in the house. And I’m sure I’ll soon forget about the stamps, which is almost a blessing in itself – it means I will one day get to rediscover and once again experience the simple joy these stamps have brought me. And what a beautiful moment that will be.
