LETTERS (A-Z April Blog Challenge)

I love to write letters.  Long hand, cursive, lengthy letters.  And I love receiving them.  Only a delivery of flowers gets my heart racing more than finding a letter in the mailbox.  (The letters are rare, and the flowers rarer still which makes them all the more special!)

In elementary school I had a few teachers who started pen-pal programs, and although they all eventually petered out, I never lost the love of writing to someone and waiting for their reply.  In high school, I became good friends with an exchange student from Australia.  We were basically inseparable for the year she was here and I envisioned a lifelong pen-pal at last.  However, she moved a few times after returning to Australia and I lost the address chain.  Thirty years later, I still feel a measure of sadness of losing that tie with her. 

Just a couple of my letter binders.

My parents lived in Florida for ten years, and mom and I had a remarkable letter writing run.  They moved back to Grand Island, our letter writing stopped, but I saved all her letters in a binder.  When she and my dad passed in 2009, and I went through their things, I found all my letters to her.  They are now in the binder together, our chronological communication over ten years right there in black and white for me to read whenever I want.  There’s an intimacy to letters, sometimes even more than a conversation and I hear her voice as I reread them.  A lasting gift she never knew she was giving me.

Along with all of the letters I’d written her, I found a draft of every single letter that she wrote me.  Then I found drafts to other people and realized that she wrote drafts for basically everything she wrote – whether a letter to the editor, a note card to a friend or a full length letter.  When I compared her drafts to my letters, I found they were basically word for word to the ;etter I’d received.  Very rarely did she change anything, but it showed me how much each word meant to her and she wanted to be sure her words properly expressed what she was trying to convey. 

A few of my dad's letters.

Another binder holds 19 letters over a six week time span that my dad wrote to my mom while he was at trade school two months before they got married.  He missed her terribly and over the six weeks, poured out his heart and a young man’s desire for his beloved.  They are a tender reflection of the love and yes, passion that a child doesn’t often get to glimpse of their parents.  When I found the letters in an old hope chest I was storing for mom I sent them to her unread.  She sent them back and said she wanted me to have them and that maybe someday; they would be useful to craft into a story.  I still blush when I read my father’s writing, but am honored to be trusted with them and someday will do them justice. 

Years ago when Abram started college, I started writing him.  It’s nice to sit down and just chat away with pen and paper about how my day has been, what’s happening on the home front or share an idea I have for my writing.  So every few weeks, he gets a few pages of my thoughts and other odds and ends. And now that he’s out of college, the letters continue and probably will until I can’t write anymore.

I know the list of ways to communicate today - the internet and email and instant messaging and blogging and a handful of ways I don’t even know about I’m sure – is growing rapidly.  But for me, nothing counters the relaxation, intimacy and connection I derive from putting pen to paper. It’s basic. It’s black and white. And it’s lasting.