I learn first to recognize the stars and stripes flag. Then I can read the 'U' and the 'S.' Then I read the whole 'United States.'

I am five and working with my father on his father's stamp collection on a summer night at the dining room table. There are tens of thousands that we must sort through and make piles and find in the book and attach with a hinge, that, once licked, is sticky. I am allowed to lick them. We celebrate each find.

We soak them to remove old envelopes and place them between sheets of wax paper so that they dry straight.

Lisa is too young to help. I feel grown-up.

"Look Daddy, United States!" I say.

"Good. Put it in the pile," he answers

A year later, Lisa is old enough. At Sears, we each get our own Stamp Collection books. Lisa gets U.S. now. I graduate to The World. We go to Sears in the evenings and sift through the bins and find stamps we need.

She is looking for a purple 3 cent Lady Liberty stamp.

I am looking for red German stamps with swatstickas and eagles on them.

Every week we get tiny wax envelopes in the mail from the Jamestown Stamp Co.. We decide which ones we want and send the rest back. We run to the mailbox on Tuesdays to see what has arrived.

My father wants me to know that Poste Italiane is Italy. My mother shows me that Polska is Poland. I make entire books of those countries, because they came on letters and postcards from family there.

I learn that Sverige is Sweden, and Norge is Norway, and Helvetia is Switzerland: All far off places with beautiful stamps. France is Republique Francaise. Suid Afrika means South Africa. Bayern is Bavaria. Osserrreich is Austria. Magyar is Hungary. I know how to recognize Japan with the Buddha.

I learn history, too. Deutches Reich was old Germany. New Germany was DDR. Ceylon became Sri Lanka.

All of the stamp collections become mine when I move away. I have the legacies of both grandfathers who were both avid gatherers. They fit, the books and boxes and bags of stamps, in two large bins. I decide to start going through them, to organize them and marry the collections.

At thirty-five, I am still separating them into pages and piles and envelopes, I make special piles of certain countries: always Italia and Polska. Tonight I separate Republica Dominicana and Peru, too. I handle them with tweezers, these delicate pieces of everyone's history.

I know my Italian grandfather worked for the Post Office for years, and had everyone on his route in the tall buildings of Manhattan, saving their stamps for him. They were international companies who received mail from all over the world. There are still bags of airmail envelopes to cut up.

It's easy to see the year that my Polish grandfather died, because the 1968 and 1969 stamps haven't been soaked yet. They are jumbled into a huge brown envelope that is brittle with age. Others have been soaked, but not sorted. There are postcards and even a few carefully typed letters to him. In a discolored waxy, crackling envelope there is something metal: his dog tags from World War Two.

I wish I could read even a little Polish.

****

Mrs. Blackberries went to her friend Sophia's birthday party.

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