When I began traveling, I started a tradition of sending postcards from whatever country I was in to my grandma.  I would describe my grandma as a real country woman.  She never moved outside a 20 mile radius of where she was born; she married at 16; lived in the same house for 70 years; and made the BEST apple pie and chicken and dumpling ever.  The thing I admired most about her though was just how much she loved her family.  At the age of 97, she passed away this last January.  While I was helping clean out her 1000 sqf. house in Southern Illinois, I found every postcard I had ever sent her.  She saved every last one.  Staring at all those postcards, I felt truly loved.

A few nights ago I decided to go back through those postcards and see what I wrote.  They range from when I was 18 years old on a mission trip to South Africa through my honeymoon to Puerto Rico in 2010.  Reading through them brought back so many good memories of my travels.  They also served as a timeline of my own development – the style of writing changed, the topics that were important changed.  In a way, I felt like getting those postcards was like unearthing my own travel time capsule.

Do you have old journals from your travels?  Blogs you wrote that you haven’t reread in awhile?  Sometimes one of the best ways to stay connected with the world is to remember what we’ve already experienced.

Here are some of my old postcards and the wonderful woman who saved them all.  Love you, Grandma.