Letters

  

I wanted to write before I could write, so I did orally, adding "he said or she said" and descriptions to whatever was happening.

Our mailbox was at the end of a long driveway. Almost everyday my grandmother and I would walk out to get the mail. She did not appreciate the day when I laughed and said, "The little girl said laughingly holding the fat cook's hand." The suggestion from my parents was to continue writing but silently.

Letters flew back and forth when we lived in West Virginia. My grandmother, A.K.A. the fat cook, kept in touch with her friends back in Massachusetts. Each letter's arrival was a cause for celebration.

As a teenager, back home in Massachusetts, my cousin Joanie in NJ was a pen pal and later as an adult I would have an English woman as a pen pal. She wrote on the special baby blue airline paper that cost less to send than a regular envelope.

During summers when I was a teenager, my future husband was a counselor on Cape Cod, which seemed so far away. I answered his twice weekly letters. I couldn't wait for morning deliveries so I went to the post office.

Bunny Clarkson, postal employee and family friend, always had a big smile when he had a letter for me.

When said boy friend became my fiance he was stationed at the Naval School of Music in Washington DC. I bought all different stationary and inks and tried to create works of art in my missives.

We were stationed in Stuttgart Germany, but our mail was sent to an APO address in New York to be forwarded. I treasured letters from my father and college friends. My grandmother kept me updated on my brother and mother plus the soap opera we had watched together. Recipes were included.

Back in the States there was no more need for letters. Mail was bills and catalogues.

Many years later, my daughter and I crossed the Atlantic. I moved to France after she finished a year at a Gymnasium in Germany. We communicated by fax, faster than letters.

In France I still wrote letters to my mother and stepmother. In a rush I sent the wrong letter to the wrong mother. My stepmother was amused, my mother wasn't.

Letters reappeared when I moved permanently to Switzerland, mainly from my best friend's father who acted as a stand-in father throughout my high school years. He described me as "That little girl from Reading who moved to Europe."

Somewhere in the 90s, communication became email. No longer did I have to wait for that precious envelope. Almost every afternoon around 3:00 there would be an email from my best friend. We filled a large notebook with our exchanges sharing as much as we had done when we shared a house. 

Emails do not have to rely on distance. In the 2000s sharing a four-story house, emails could bounce between floors saving steps. 

"How do you feel about going to Marro for lunch?" 

"Great, noon?" 

"Meet you downstairs."

We have archived letters from famous people for scholars to research. That will be lost with the click of a delete key. Sad in a way.

Would I give up email? 

Absolutely not. 

The immediacy, back and forth, is wonderful. But still there is something about getting an envelope with thoughts and ideas. There's something about coming across a letter from years before that carries us back to an earlier emotion. 

I consider myself lucky, I've had both.