Stamping Around with Mom
David R. Weiss – March 3, 2025

Mom was nothing if not frugal. This was not her most striking trait. I suppose that would be caring or listening. Long before it became a named thing, Mom was “holding space” for each of us in her own unique way. That was her foremost superpower.

But right there in the background was frugality. Making clothes, patching clothes, taking waists in, letting waists out. Fixing meals from scratch, with simple basic ingredients. Hanging the laundry out to dry whenever possible. Washing out and reusing plastic bags until they started to fall apart. And trimming stamps from unused return envelopes.

I’m not sure I realized the extent of this frugality until recently when we were cleaning out a desk drawer in the kitchen and found a little wooden box filled with trimmed stamps and a few decades old altogether unused stamps. Mostly small denomination: 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, 5¢, 10¢, but some as high as 42¢. But all of them firmly glued to the backing of trimmed envelopes.

On Friday I reaped the harvest of that particular frugality.

As you might guess, I have a zillion things on my mind these days, among them the impending radical prostatectomy set for Wednesday morning. “Radical” is such a jarring word. My politics are radical. My theology is radical. But my prostate? Well, the point is it’s coming out—completely. The whole damn thing. That’s what that radical about it.

But my prostate is not what’s had me in a frenzy these past few days.

I have a friend, Philip, who’s in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. (You can read more about his story here: “Philip Vance: Freedom is Calling,” an essay I wrote back in July 2023.) Philip has been fighting for justice ever since he was tried and convicted for murder—and sentenced to life in prison. That all began in 2003, and he’s been trying to clear his name—and regain his life—ever since.

But I’m not writing about Philip today, I’m writing about Mom—and her long-ago trimmed stamps.

See, I was trying to write about Philip. On Thursday he and his attorney filed a new and promising “petition for post-conviction relief.” In his case, it’s a petition for a new evidentiary hearing in the hopes it will finally bring him justice. Which would be freedom.

And, as part of the group of volunteers on the outside who are supporting Philip in this struggle, I’d offered to write an op-ed explaining the petition. In plain English. And compelling prose. In a well-respected Twin Cities online news source. To a waiting public.

I’d spent Thursday night well into Friday morning reading the petition and the accompanying memorandum, as well as the affidavits, other supporting exhibits, and several legal articles explaining some of the key concepts bandied about in the brief. My head was swimming.

So much to digest. How could I even begin to organize my own thoughts with so many of them racing about this way and that? And a very real deadline, demanded both by the timeliness of the issue, but also by my fast-approaching surgery? I needed to get this done by Saturday. But—the question that taunted me: how could I possibly do justice to the complexity of the petition in just 1000 words? And, in counterpoint: for Philip’s sake, how could I not?

This is where the stamps enter.

I walked by the desktop in our living room where the stamps sat in a couple waxed post office envelopes. I’m sure my breathing was shallow and my pulse quick because I could feel the anxiety rising in me. I needed to slow myself down. So I could think. So I could write.

And then the stamps called my name. Inviting me to just soak a few in a bowl of water to loosen the long-dried glue and soften the paper so the stamps could be peeled away. Distraction? Maybe. Procrastination? Who cares!

I put some warm water in a shallow bowl and pulled out a dozen 1¢ stamps, pressing them gently beneath the water. Ten minutes later, as I started carefully peeling them from their paper backing, fingertips and tweezers moving in slow steady motion, I began to feel my heartbeat slow down and my breathing deepen. I could sense stillness beginning to hold space for me.

I placed each damp stamp on a piece of paper towel to dry, then moved it to a plate for more drying. And I started the process again. And again. But in between rounds of “stamping” I paused and listened for my thoughts. And they were there! No longer frenetically circling, but now almost coasting. Still a lot of them, but moving with invitation, so that I could begin to see connections and images and themes. So I could begin to find those 1000 words that would do justice to Philip.

I did this for more than two hours. Not because there were that many stamps, but because I found myself pausing between rounds to capture thoughts and phrases so I could come back to them later.

Eventually I had several dozen stamps … shall we say, liberated. That is my hope for Philip, after all. Liberation, after all those years. I meticulously flattened the dried stamps and clipped them together in small bundles, then slipped them back into their waxed envelope ready for use. True, they won’t amount to much postage. It takes a good handful of 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, or 5¢ stamps to cover the gap from a 73¢ one-ounce stamp to the $1.01 for an additional ounce. Before I know it, all those “liberated” stamps will be gone.

But in the meantime, every time I use a glue stick to affix them to an envelope, I’ll be connecting with Mom all over again. Her whimsical frugality, but also her caring, listening presence. The stillness she held out to others.

And that op-ed piece? Thanks to the slow quiet time I spent soaking stamps, when I finally sat down on Saturday to write, the words flowed fiercely and freely. The confusing complexity met the passionate clarity of my words and an essay worth of Philip’s cause rolled off the same fingertips that had so tenderly parted stamp from paper the day before.

During the afternoon I spent “stamping around with Mom,” somehow, from across the grave, she held space for me and all my muddled thoughts until, in her stillness, they settled themselves into words, sentences, paragraphs with purpose. More than this, though, Mom also held space for Philip. For his story. His long years of anguish and hope. His refusal to settle for less than the truth about himself. His determination that there could be—will be—for him, a future in which the freedom that he still harbors in his heart blooms across the whole of his life.

What are the odds on that? I can just imagine Mom smiling and saying softly, “You can put on a stamp on it.” And I will.

Two notes. I’ve been part of the Free Philip Vance Campaign for about two years now. (1) Once my piece, “Broken Scales: Seeking Justice for Philip Vance,” runs (hopefully!) in MinnPost later this week, I’ll post it to my blog as well. (2) Seeking justice can be costly. Philip needs to raise $50,000 to cover the costs of legal representation for this petition. To date, we have raised over $43,000. To help us get to the finish line, you can donate here: www.gofundme.com/f/Please-support-philip-vance. Thank you!

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.