coupons

Since I first left home, I've been getting coupons in the mail--not the shopping inserts, but clippings tucked inside cards and letters from family. From my mother, I receive coupons for favorite cereals and "nice" soaps. From my grandmother, cat food coupons. Occasionally, an aunt will join in, for something moderately pricey that she thinks I might need. Originally, I was baffled by this, since my college food service made me use "points" to shop at the little grocery store and my household shopping trips were always unexpected and urgent. Even after I got into a household routine, the coupons mostly sat on my desk unused. I'm rarely successful when I try to use coupons, so these little inserts in my greeting cards were just odd features of family mail.

Elwood used to get care packages from his grandmother in college, stuffed with candy and chocolate and all the other foodstuffs that warm a college boy's heart. After his first few months and the beginning of the "freshman fifteen", he told her that he would prefer not to get the candy because he had resolved to only eat healthy things, "like Pop-tarts". It was an old family joke, and he tells me that she sent him coupons for Pop-tarts for years thereafter. Now I can imagine the women of my family (and his) leafing through the mail circulars, finding an ad for that little something that reminds them of us, and tucking it into the next letter.

I live for mail these days. Lately, I don't even care if it has a fancy stamp or not; it's just nice to get a little news from a friend or a package from Amazon. (How much do I love the online shopping? So much.) So last week I get another card from my mother, this time with a coupon for soy milk. I've been dairy-free since we figured out that it made Bonzo less spitty, and though I don't love the soy milk I need SOMETHING on my cereal. I was really charmed. Now I'm on my way to the grocery store and can't quite find it, but that doesn't matter. It already saved me.