An Post’s current marketing campaign – inviting us to write a letter to our future selves, that they will then return in 12 month’s time – got me thinking, and searching.

It’s been a long time since I looked at the letters my long-dead Dad wrote to me, and I wondered where I had put them. Finally finding them in an old wooden box at the back of the wardrobe in the box room, the outside was covered in dust, but the inside was smothered in love.

There’s a lifetime of memories in that worn wooden time-machine – first curls, small shoes and, inexplicably, a cast of my daughter’s once-broken arm, graffitied with the names of her classmates.

Written in a hand as familiar to me as my own, Dad’s letters aren’t wrapped in ribbon, but kept inside a plastic folder to keep the fragile pages safe and dry. Posted at a time when we lived in different countries to each other, they are, as Robert Browning might say, ‘Home thoughts from abroad’.

I set them aside to read later, knowing once I started reading, nothing would get done.

Returning to the task set by An Post, I made myself comfortable at the small desk in my bedroom, rollerball pen in one hand, steaming mug of coffee in the other, as I thought about what to write.

It’s an important letter, the blurb says, ‘a gift from today’s you to future you’, and I offered up a quick prayer that I’ll be here to receive it, that I will have survived another turn around the sun.

I started by scribbling down a few notes about what I’m reading, what I’m listening to on the radio, and what, or who, is bringing joy, or sadness, to my days.

With the drill downstairs reminding me the builders, currently working on our home, are still here, I penned a wish that they’ll be a distant memory by the time the letter comes back. They’ve been here so long I know how many sugars they take in their coffee, and what their favourite biscuits are (chocolate digestives, in case you’re interested). The dogs will miss the treats they’ve taken to bringing in their deep overall pockets.

I started by scribbling down a few notes about what I’m reading, what I’m listening to on the radio, and what, or who, is bringing joy, or sadness, to my days.

‘What’s something you never want to forget?’ the ad asked, so I included a list of my passwords, because I’m sure to have forgotten most of them by this time next year. I thought it might also be useful to remind myself where I hide my jewellery box when I go on holiday. That is, if I can find it, last year’s hiding place was, well let’s just say, extremely effective!

Honouring the opportunity to ‘hold yourself to account’ I’m going to ask future me if I’ve cleaned out under the stairs, or sorted through those boxes of old photographs in the attic. Although I could probably tell you the answer to that before I ever put pen to paper.

I made a list of the worries that wake me in the wee, small hours of the night, too. Wondering, as I did, how many will even be specks of dust in my eye in a years time. Very few I suspect.

‘A year can change everything’, the An Post leaflet concluded, and I hope they’re right, as I slipped a copy of the newspaper into the envelope.

Hoping, that in 365 days when my correspondence returns and lands on my doormat, today’s big black headlines of battles and bloodshed, and tariffs and trade wars, will be merely a postscript in this letter from the past.

With the envelope sealed, I brewed myself a fresh cup of coffee and, fulfilling the promise I had made to myself earlier, settled down to read Dad’s letters. Finding more of him there than I ever do in his faded, framed image on the bookcase. Seeing him in every stroke of the pen, hearing his voice echo within the margins.

I re-read Dad’s words to the future me, the one that he never lived long enough to know, yet who carries him with her always.