I bought it at an antique store in Hopkins, Minnesota and carried it back to France with me. You know it’s valuable when I allow it space in my ever overpacked suitcase. 

It’s from a time when people still wrote letters. When desk objects were given beauty along with function. On the right is a tiny scale for the weight of the words, and the left a circular housing for the precious stamps that carry them. Of course I don’t need the scale. I have a pretty good idea of the weight of the words. At least I hope the receiver knows — knows that I could have just sent a text, an email, but instead thumbed through all of my cards, along with the thoughts of this person, picked out the one that fit the situation, borrowed my husband’s best pen, wrote in cursive (like nobody’s taught anymore), signed it, meant it, sealed it with wax, and walked it to the post office. And isn’t it just as important that I know? 

My little antique scale can’t weigh all that, but it does remind me to keep doing it. Yes, I have an Apple Pencil, an iPad. I love modern technology. It is connecting us today. But I keep reminders around me — that there is more. The more of photographs printed. Books with spines. Jams without preservatives. Art with actual signatures. And I make the connections with heart and hand. And the joy that it brings, that I carry so easily, daily, makes me smile, because it actually weighs nothing at all.