I went to the Mansion with Fate this afternoon to continue our therapy dog training, and I ran into Sylvie, who was marching down the hallway pushing her walker full of papers and letters to write and mail.

Sylvie is almost always busy. She has recovered from her month in nursing care, her back is better. Every time I see Sylvie, I give her some envelopes and letters.

Every time I see Sylvie, she tells me that she needs envelopes and letters. People from all over the country have sent me envelopes and stamps for Sylvie, and she loves them, they turn up in odd places all over the Mansion.

With her permission, we’ve looked through her room and found hundreds of letters and envelopes tucked away behind clothes or underneath letters and books. Sylvie gets a lot of junk mail, and she answers as much of it as she can.

I help her address her letters now, so more of them get to the right zip codes. She reads every letter she gets (and sometimes writes checks to people selling books or jewelry. They don’t get out.

Sylvie is industrious. The daughter of a traveling diplomat in the days after World War II, she has lived all over the world. She lost two lovers to illness and death and still remembers her lost dog crying out in the cavernous Austrian alps. She doesn’t know if he was ever found.

She has spent much of her life in institutions and is deeply religious a faithful follower of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve been to a service with her. Sylvie and I are close, we are always happy to see one another, although we rarely get the time to chat.

She is so very busy.

I’m bringing her some more stamps and envelopes tomorrow. She loves letters, and you can write her c/o Sylvie, The Mansion, 11 S.Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. She considers her pen pals her friends and worries if she doesn’t hear from them.

How are you, Sylvie?, I ask and she complaints that someone has hidden her stamps or stolen them. She can’t talk too long, she says, she is really too busy. She always asks me when I am coming back.