In the recesses of my closet sits an old Birkenstock shoe box full of letters: updates from a best friend, love letters from my husband-to-be, simple notes from my dad–one note addressed to “OK Slave” that must have been sent during those years I attended the University of Oklahoma. (I dared to leave the state of Texas. It did not go unnoticed.)
These letters are precious, sometimes more so than photos, because they go beyond a snapshot in time. From handwritten script, a personality is revealed, an intimacy declared, a relationship honored in the time spent to find the paper, choose the pen, seal the envelope, and post the stamp.
I still write letters, though not half as often as I used to. I have fallen into the digital tailspin and gone lazy with text messages, emails, and Facebook posts. But certain situations call for old-fashioned correspondence. A new friend of an older generation doesn’t use email; a family member has gone off the digital grid for a time; a box of good stationary holds irresistible appeal. I sit down. I choose the pen. I start with the date. It is morning, I say, or afternoon. I am on break between work and kids. And I fill the page with nonsense or goodness or maybe too much. Give a writer a pen and she won’t stop talking. But Alena Hall (in “9 Reasons Not to Abandon the Art of the Handwritten Letter”) explains why such correspondence is critical:
Long after [letters] are written and sent (and even after their senders and receivers are gone), letters and postcards remain to be read, appreciated and preserved. Whether displayed on museum shelves honoring famous historical figures or saved in a scrapbook between two old friends, letters protect the memories of lives lived in a way that technological communication cannot.
Even the memories of daily minutiae become treasured down the line.
Those tiny notes from my Dad? They often ended with the same message:
Thanks for your card. It was perfect timing, a good note for a bad day.
Email is quickly lost in an inbox full of business and promos and calendar invites. A letter, though, when placed in a box on the top shelf of a closet is easily found. Instantly remembered. Read and re-read. And forever held dear.
Spread some love. #SendALetter.
Love Always. It’s 1988, the year you graduate high school, the summer your best friend (of all time) turns 16, the months when you’re supposed to ride the Texas highways together to the mall, the movies, the parking lot parties, the two of you in your little white hatchback with the windows down and George Michael pouring from the radio. The car filled with the excitement and ambitions of teenagers on the cusp of life. Instead, you drive her to the airport and say a tearful goodbye at the gate as she and her family board a plane headed to South Korea for a year.
nonexistent, cell phones are for the fancy, and long distance phone calls cost dollars a minute. Air mail is your only option. You drive from the airport to work, sit down at your desk, and immediately start scribbling on the tissue-thin paper. You write almost every day, keep the postman busy in the exchange of envelopes thick with angst, news of changing bodies, nerves as you set off for college, and mothers.
And letters, along with diaries or anything of written record between family or close friends, are the inspiration for the upcoming Anthology co-edited by Lisa Rivero (Hidden Timber Books) and myself.
