When I was 8, I started getting anonymous notes in the mail every week. They were all stamped and addressed to me, and they all said random things. My parents got uncomfortable with it and insisted on taking them.
20 years later, I found the stack tucked under a rusted hammer in my dad’s old toolbox. We were cleaning out the garage after he passed. Cancer.
Fast and mean. The kind where one day he was standing at the grill holding a beer, and a month later he couldn’t swallow soup. I was the only child.
No siblings to split the grief with. Just me and my mom, shuffling through boxes that smelled like sawdust and Old Spice, trying to figure out what to keep. She was sitting on an old lawn chair, blinking slow, like she was somewhere else.
Grief does that—it cuts you in half. I lifted the lid off his red metal toolbox, mostly looking for a screwdriver. Instead, there was a plastic bag tucked under the tray.
The kind people use to keep things dry in floods. Inside: 46 envelopes. All addressed to me.
Same handwriting. Same messy capital letters. I froze.
My stomach turned like I was 8 again. I hadn’t thought about the letters in years, honestly. Just one of those weird childhood things you mentally file under “Adults Handled It.” I remembered the first one clearly—it had a drawing of a dragon with a speech bubble that said, “Never let your flame go out.” No return address.
Just a bright red stamp with a smiley face drawn in pen. After a few came, my parents stopped letting me open them. Said it was probably a weirdo.
My dad made a big show of calling the post office, and then I never saw them again. I assumed they stopped. They didn’t.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and started reading. My hands shook. The handwriting was scratchy and big, like someone trying to print in block letters with a thick pen.
The messages were weird—but kind of beautiful. One said, “Some people bloom in the shade. Stay where you are.”
Another: “You don’t need to be loud to be strong.
Whisper if you want.”
Some had tiny drawings. A bear with an umbrella. A lemon with sunglasses.
One had a single pressed daisy inside. I was eight again, but also thirty. Holding something that felt like it had been waiting for me to grow up.
I showed Mom the bag. Her eyes widened, and then she looked away. “You found those?” she said, like it wasn’t a surprise.
“You knew they kept coming?”
She nodded slowly. “Your father kept them. Every single one.
He didn’t want to scare you.”
“But why not tell me when I got older? This is… it’s not creepy. It’s beautiful.”
She wiped her cheek with her sleeve.
“He meant to. I think he just… forgot how to bring it up.”
We sat in silence for a bit. The kind of silence that doesn’t ask for anything.
That night I took the letters home and laid them out on my living room floor. I read every single one. There was no clear pattern.
Some were silly. Others poetic. One said, “When your shoelaces come undone, it doesn’t mean you’re falling apart.”
I laughed.
Then I cried. Then I laughed again. I couldn’t sleep.
The mystery buzzed in my bones. Who would send these? And why stop when I turned nine?
I looked at the postmarks. They were all from a town about 90 minutes away—Delmor. A place I’d never even been to.
I did a quick search and saw it was small. One diner, a bait shop, and a post office that looked like it hadn’t been painted since 1962. I decided to go.
I told myself it was closure. But really, I think I wanted something beautiful to make sense. I wanted it to mean something.
The town was sleepy, like the kind of place where people still left their doors unlocked. I went straight to the post office. An older man with thick glasses sat behind the counter.
I showed him one of the envelopes. He adjusted his glasses and nodded. “Yeah.
These came through here. I remember that stamp.”
My heart jumped. “Do you know who sent them?”
He scratched his beard.
“Well, we don’t keep sender logs unless it’s a package. But those came every week. Same woman.
Red coat. Always paid cash. Quiet.
Kinda reminded me of a school librarian.”
My stomach flipped. “Did she say anything?”
He smiled faintly. “Just ‘Have a nice day.’ But she always tapped the counter twice before leaving.”
I had nothing to go on.
No name. No address. Just a woman in a red coat who tapped the counter.
I drove around the town, unsure what I was even looking for. I stopped at the diner for coffee. The waitress was in her sixties, with a faded tattoo of a moon on her wrist.
“Do you know a woman who wears a red coat?” I asked. “Sorta looks like a librarian?”
She squinted at me. “You mean Ms.
Kavinsky?”
I leaned in. “Maybe? Does she live nearby?”
“Used to.
She passed a few years ago. Stroke, I think. Lived alone.
No family, far as I know.”
My heart sank. So that was it. Mystery solved—but not really.
“What did she do?” I asked. “Taught second grade for years. Sweet lady.
Used to write little notes to kids and leave ’em in their lockers. The kind that made you feel seen.”
I just stared at her. “She ever mention me?” I asked, fully knowing how stupid it sounded.
The woman looked at me carefully. “What’s your name?”
“Arman.”
She blinked. “She had a notebook she carried everywhere.
Wrote down names. Quotes. Stuff she’d overheard or dreamed up.
Maybe your name’s in there.”
My chest tightened. “Do you know where her stuff went?”
The waitress shook her head. “I don’t.
But there was this yard sale when she passed. A guy named Curtis bought a bunch of her things. Old typewriters and books.
He runs the antiques place on Main.”
I was in my car before she finished her sentence. Curtis was in his seventies, wore suspenders, and smelled like pipe smoke. When I told him about Ms.
Kavinsky and the letters, he scratched his head. “Yeah, I got a few boxes of her stuff in the back. Never got around to going through it.”
We went into a dusty back room.
He pulled out a bin labeled “KAVINSKY.” I held my breath. Inside were notebooks. Hundreds of pages, most handwritten.
Some typed. One was labeled “The Quiet Ones.”
I flipped it open. On the first page:
“Arman S.—Age 8.
Quiet. Watches people’s shoes. Picks dandelions and keeps them in his pocket.”
I had to sit down.
She’d seen me. Somehow. Somewhere.
Each page was like a snapshot of a kid. Hopes. Fears.
Quirks. Curtis patted my shoulder. “She always said kindness shouldn’t need an audience.”
I took the notebook home with me.
I read it cover to cover. I wasn’t the only one she wrote to. There were dozens of names.
Some crossed out. Some starred. The letters were her secret project.
A kind of invisible encouragement. She mailed them to kids who looked lonely. Who didn’t get picked for tag.
Who flinched when someone raised their voice. I found myself crying again. But it felt… clean.
Like rain after smoke. For weeks I couldn’t shake it. Then, something strange happened.
At the school where I worked—I’m a speech therapist—a shy third-grader named Asher started hanging around after class. He didn’t say much. Just looked at his shoes a lot.
Reminded me of me. I started writing. Just a few lines.
In a blank card. “Your brain is a garden. Let it grow messy.”
“Whispers still count as words.”
I didn’t sign them.
Just left them in his cubby. The next week, he smiled at me for the first time. Now I send out one letter a week.
Anonymous. Always with a silly drawing. Always with a heart tucked behind the weirdness.
It’s my way of paying forward the kindness that found me when I didn’t know I needed it. Some mysteries don’t get solved neatly. But some hearts get passed down like heirlooms.
Ms. Kavinsky never saw the way her notes stuck to the ribs of a lonely boy for two decades. But maybe that’s the point.
Not every act of love has to echo loudly to matter. Sometimes, the quiet ones shape the world, one envelope at a time. If this story moved you, please like and share—it might land in the right hands.
