How My Mother's Postcards Forged Connections Across Generations

"I'm going around the world," my mother told me breathlessly. "On Friday."

It was a year after my father had died, six months before their 50th anniversary. She was 76 and about to bravely board a 100-day cruise trip. The only boat she'd previously boarded was the Staten Island Ferry. I was worried: who would look after her?

"I need to get away," she announced — from her grief. "It's very convenient since it docks back in Fort Lauderdale. Close to my apartment."

She was sailing away to Honolulu, then onto Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Egypt, Mediterranean ports — and then a leisurely glide back across the Atlantic.

It felt unsettling to be so far apart without our frequent phone calls, reassuring her that I was there for her even though Dad wasn't. It was 1987, long before e-mail. The only way I could check her progress and remain in touch across the Pacific Ocean was following the itinerary map she'd sent me.

And then, her postcards began to arrive in my mailbox.

Since we left Frisco, we saw nothing but black clouds. This morning I saw a magnificent sunrise and beautiful pink clouds, she wrote. When I undress, I never pull the curtains because the only thing I see is water, water, water. Such a big ocean …. When the ship finally docked, I went to the window and exclaimed, 'Land!' Anyone seeing me would think I'd flipped my lid.

It was as if I were on the trip with her — even though by the time I received her postcard from Honolulu, she was on her way to Brisbane. Each postcard brought me onboard with her, and I cherished her joy of exploration.

I walked four laps around the ship — I've learned not to call it a boat, she wrote. Four laps equals one mile, which I hope compensates for the five desserts I ate.

I was thrilled and bittersweet to read about her sense of discovery. It must have been similar to the way she'd felt after sending me to college, 600 miles away, knowing I'd never return the same.

We're in the South Pacific, because it's the first day we saw sun and 75 degrees, she wrote next. The boat rocks like crazy. We walk like drunks. I've arranged to take an overland trip in China. I don't know how you're gonna keep me down on the farm.

Her next postcard was from New Zealand: Waves fifteen feet high, ocean 24,000 feet deep, she declared.

Eight days passed: no word. Two cards from Sydney made me sigh with relief, even though she was moving farther away.

I felt uneasy, the way I was when my daughter first began walking to school in sixth grade. Initially, I followed her ten-block route from the opposite sidewalk. Although I couldn't closely watch over Mom as she traversed the world, I had a permanent record of her adventures.

Like most of us, I don't write many letters anymore, but I'll never give up postcards. When I travel, I love to go into foreign post offices, testing out my limited language and feeling connected to people in faraway places. Even the stamps I buy are a lesson in art and history, bringing me back to enjoying my father's stamp collection with him. Sometimes my postcards arrive home after I do, but it's always a joy to see a text from my grown daughter, saying, I just got your postcard!

Texting is immediate and impermanent. Instagram Stories evaporate in 24 hours. But postcards are irreplaceable memories and enduring records of our lives. They date back nearly 200 years. Collecting vintage postcards is known as deltiology — the third largest hobby after stamps and coins. Personal postcards enable us to keep in touch and know that we're thinking about each other in just six economical sentences — longer than a Tweet and shorter than the commitment of a letter.

During Mom's round the world trip, I wrote back to her at every port with news of her seven grandchildren and the stock market ups and downs. She'd respond:

In China, all we kept hearing about were the Ming, Tang, Han Dynasties, some from 200 A.D., B.C., etc. Finally learned to eat with chopsticks!

In India, she was nearly arrested. She and her mates had picked up viruses and Mom was chugging cough syrup. Before leaving the ship for a land trip to the Taj Mahal, she asked a waiter for lemons and a knife so she could sip hot potions to soothe her chest.

At the airport, an official noticed the knife. Authorities searched her and her baggage again.

I thought I'd end up in jail, she wrote. Finally, I said, 'Take the G-d D- knife. I don't want it.'

And then: UNBELIEVABLE! Cried when I saw the Taj.

The more she voyaged, the more she proved she could take care of herself on her own.

Picture a sheet of ice without a ripple — that's what the Indian Ocean looks like today. I've been on a camel ride, an elephant ride, petted the sacred cows. Wish you could have been here with me.

Sailing through Italy, she started speaking Italian. Magnifico!" was the way she described Michelangelo's David and each gelato she ate. A rivo derche, she signed off.

When she became a landlubber again and we finally hugged in person, she recited Robert Louis Stevenson's last words: "Home is the sailor, home from the sea/And the hunter home from the hill." She'd never been to college because she had to work to support her family right out of high school, but her postcards demonstrated how much she'd learned in three months.

When my daughter was in ninth grade, I started encouraging her to send home postcards when she embarked on a school language trip to Paris. In college, she returned to the City of Light to study abroad. We'd never been apart for five months, which felt endless. But I was able to share her new faraway life with her messages on the back of photos of cobblestoned streets and flaky croissants. She expanded her mail to both grandmothers, such a small effort to make them feel happy and noticed. They hung her postcards on their refrigerators.

My daughter fell in love with travel at a much younger age than my mother. On every trip throughout her twenties, she sent me multiple postcards. My young girl, who used to complain about traipsing through museums, was now describing Impressionist paintings like an art historian.

Today, my mother's round-the-world postcards are ensconced in a box in my closet. Whenever I take them out, I read her old-fashioned script and remember how she blossomed from a mourning widow into a sophisticated, independent traveler. She's no longer here with me, but her postcard memoir is forever.

Candy Schulman’s award-winning essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Salon and elsewhere, including anthologies. She is working on a memoir about mothers and daughters. She teaches writing at the New School in New York City. Read More