Dr. Gail Beck

There is nothing quite like getting a letter in the mail. Do you remember about twenty years ago when you would receive a letter from overseas? It would arrive in a light almost weightless envelope, covered with Par Avion/Airmail stickers. Depending on the sender and their familiarity with North American address conventions, it inevitably contained one or two errors, despite that all information had been meticulously copied.

Well, below there is a picture of a letter I received last week. It reminded me of one of those letters from many years ago. I remember receiving such letters from my friends from Royal Victoria College, the women’s residence at McGill University. My friends would write on summer break, and continued to write after we had graduated. Sometimes the letters were handwritten, filled with news, but, at other times, the envelopes contained formal invitations to weddings or announcements of honours.

This letter from Thailand started out looking very personal and I originally thought it might be a birthday card from my good friend who lives in Bangkok. So many Thai greetings are adorned with yellow or yellow flowers. It is a lucky colour and represents the King of Thailand so, all in all, this was an auspicious card.

Opening it eagerly, anxious to see what was written to me, I saw what the card contained and began to laugh. As you can see from the image below, the reason for my beautiful card is still not apparent to me, although I can see that it contains the symbol of the Thai Medical Women’s Association. It doesn’t usually take so long to decipher a letter, but I will scan this and send it off to my Thai friends for a translation. I cannot wait to know what it says!

I am certain this is a very special message and I hope that everyone gets one just like it sometime. This greeting made me feel important and we all need this from time to time.