Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Handwritten Letters

Yesterday in the GD forum, when stating my goals for the week, I wrote one of goals as: A hand-written letter to a friend.

Nikola~Thankful Library Lady answered me in "Re: Goals"  :
“I so miss handwritten letters! I had one childhood friend who never was interested in computers. We wrote each other every few months. She passed two years ago. I cherish the letters that I held on to.”

Although I couldn’t answer Nik back in the GD forum, I so appreciate her feelings on the subject, and what she said made me think on the virtues of handwritten mail.

It is true, when someone passes away, one of the most cherished things we have are their letters. Try leaving back your e-mails or text-messaging, when even the e-mail addies change! Not that I don’t appreciate all those. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here on the internet writing this blog entry.

Coming back to hand-written mail, sending a letter is the next best thing to meeting a friend face to face. Moreover, this meeting is preserved as long as the receiver wants to hold on to it, for through the ages, people have expressed their thoughts, their feelings, their gossip, their altercations, their insults, or their gratitude through hand-written letters.

Those born after the seventies will never know the times when all, or practically all, communication depended on letters. Letter writing, at one time or another, was considered a talent. Those who wanted to send impressionable letters asked others for help. But those are not the types of letters I want to talk about, but rather the personal ones where the expression of language reflected the writer’s normal everyday speech.

After my grandmother passed away, I found a whole box of letters she had kept. Some were from her first beau, all tied up with a pink ribbon. Others ranged from friendliness and special occasion greetings to hostility through mail. Most of the letters were from people whose existence I never knew about.

In my much younger days, I met people who had fallen in love through thousands of letters sent between them. When my cousin broke up with her out-of-town boyfriend, my uncle had to bring heaven and earth together to get back her racy love letters, in case their content could be used against her or they could fall into wrong hands and compromise her happiness later on in her life.

During my jr. high years, I had penpals around my age from other countries, with whom I communicated through hand-written mail. At that age, even earlier, I learned that something tangible from my world traveled to theirs and vice versa.

This tangible component is created when the pen and fingers touch the stationery and leave thoughts, ideas and feelings on it. Afterwards, the saliva seals the envelope. (As an aside, after watching the Seinfeld episode in which George’s fiancée dies of envelope-glue poisoning, I have been using a drop of water in a dish. )

Then the letter goes in the mail, taking with it something palpable from the sender’s life. When the letter arrives its destination, it is carried inside as a highly honored, invited quest.

When we write personal letters, we feel free to use stereotyped phrases and sound words that imitate speech or special phrases that we share with special people who will be the receivers, our words reflecting the purity of personal expression and spirit of the occasion when there is an occasion.

After having said all that, because I hate talking on the phone and texting passes me by, I admit to reverting to e-mail whenever I can because it is so much easier and I can write faster.

But fortunately for me, I have four friends left, old-timers who reject the computers and internet and barely allow phone calls. One of them is in US about 1300 miles from me; the other three live overseas. None of them mind it when my handwriting goes askew and the lines in my letter either slant high up or way down, as I could never write on a straight line on an unlined paper.

I am grateful for these friends because, now in my old age, I find that a handwritten letter has a million times the emotional value of any e-mail.