Stamp album, a precious family heirloom
Print Edition
In my mother’s drawer lies a thick stamp album. The cover is slightly stained and peeling, showing the age of the book, but when opened, the stamps are still as bright as new.
My mother was not a professional collector, but she would carefully collect all the stamps she got and preserve them in this album. The scale of the collection gradually grew as time went by.
Inside this album are environmental stamps, depicting the Earth, with words such as “prevent air pollution and protect forests,” warning people to take a long-term view of development and not to sacrifice the environment for economic construction. I can’t help but speculate that the person who bought this stamp may have been concerned about the environmental protection of her country and was looking forward to the return of greenery to the Earth, so she treasured her wish by putting it on an envelope and sending it to a friend in a distant land, hoping that anyone who saw it would realize the importance of protecting the environment.
In addition to this, my mother also collected a whole set of stamps of the characters of “Dream of the Red Chamber.” Through the delicate brushstrokes, famous scenes are brought to life on the stamps, bringing the charm of the masterpiece back to life through time and space.
The stamps in my mother’s collection also record the changes in society and history. My mother told me that when she was at university, telephones were not yet commonplace and writing letters was the only way to communicate with distant relatives. So she collected the stamps carefully in order to keep a collection of her family’s thoughts.
Nowadays, couriers are gradually replacing ordinary letters, and the parcels only contain courier slips, but no more beautiful stamps. It is difficult to obtain new stamps if you are not collecting intentionally. Those rich, well-designed stamps, even though they have faded into the background of history, still tell their story like an inexhaustible book.
Now, my mother has gifted me with this philatelic book. Holding it, I realize that this precious family heirloom is not only a beloved possession of my mother’s, but also the warmth of a human touch in a modern society that is changing as fast as the summer weather.
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