Avi has a very long beard. He started growing his beard when he started to become serious finally about his religion, which was about the time that Daniel was born. Having his first child made Avi reflect on his own father, a hard man, with such a big beard. Avi’s earliest memories were of that beard. A father has a beard, he thought back then, and hadn’t shaved it since.
Avi unlocked the door into the narrow lobby and made sure it fell closed behind him. He was a cautious man. He stepped to the mail bosses on the wall, jangling his big key ring from his jacket pocket. It took him a few seconds to get the little key into the little mail box lock. His fingers did not work as good anymore. It had been getting worse. The rain and the cold the last few weeks had made it worse.
Avi had been wearing the same circular pair of eyeglasses for a decade. He bought them just before Daniel’s bar Mitzvah, so he would look nice. So he would look like a father should: Learned, proud. Avi’s own father had worn a similar pair all of his life. Avi had to squint behind the lenses, because they did not work as well as they used to. He squinted tighter and tighter as he sorted through the mail. Ads. Ads. Bills. Bills. A nice glossy flier from the neighborhood Korean church. Then he found the postcard.
Avi studied it closely. It was an idyllic picture of a beach somewhere faraway.
Avi could not remember the last time he had gotten a postcard, much less a postcard with a picture of a beach on it. He had not even seen a beach like that - baked and shimmering gold - since his own father had taken him. Avi had been a boy. A few years later his father would move the family west and Avi had not been back east since.
Avi turned the postcard over and examined the blue handwriting. He recognized immediately the big round swirls of Daniel’s penmanship. It was big and loud just like Daniel’s mother’s had been.
Avi squinted hard and held the postcard very close to his face. He read what it said:
Dearest Father,
Sadly, I will not be joining you in the cheese business after all. I feel that my life has a different purpose.
Despondent, but certain ...
Your loving son,
Daniel
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