Dearest Readers,
My excited anticipation, as I walk out to get the mail, quickly changes to a sense of sadness and loss. Although my mom left this life 16 years ago, every day I somehow still expect to find one of her weekly letters in my mailbox.
Creatively crafted with love, wit, and humor, her newsy correspondence, in flawless penmanship, was the perfect way to keep connected across the hundreds of miles separating our busy lives. I miss Mom’s letters, but I miss the other letters too.
In high school French class, we were assigned pen pals. My friend Fabrice lived in the outskirts of Paris, and his beautifully written letters, on elegant onion skin stationery, although sometimes difficult to understand (he wrote to me in English and I wrote back to him in French), transported me to a romantic faraway world, so different from my own insubstantial Indiana life.
When I was in college, my younger brother Kevin took to writing regularly, regaling me with stories of his junior high school antics (and the outrageous escapades of our younger brother Mark), even adding an occasional colored-pencil illustration to heighten the hilarious literary experience!
There were many other letters over the years too — college friends, former colleagues, old neighbors, and most memorable, aunts who wrote letters containing a $5 bill, even when I was well into middle age!
Finding an unexpected fiver in an envelope is, at any age, as thrilling as discovering that one last fry in the bottom of the McDonald’s bag!
Phone calls are nice, but still no substitute for keepsakes kept in old shoeboxes on closet shelves, permanent records of relationships brought back to life by the unique cursive of the writer; keepsakes which can be easily, visually revisited time and time again.
But with the passage of time and the advent of first the personal computer and then the smartphone, handwritten letters have given way to the impersonal typed emails and to the even more impersonal, much, MUCH shorter texts.
i think u no wat I mean
There’s simply no comparison.
One can read a book about the Civil War, but nothing, and I mean nothing, more profoundly brings that war to life than seeing copies of handwritten letters soldiers sent to their wives and sweethearts and mothers the night before the battle which claimed their lives.
In his 1876 guide to letter-writing, J. Willis Westlake said, “A letter should be regarded not merely as a medium for the communication of intelligence but also as a work of art.”
In a desperate attempt to teach my three grandsons the art of letter-writing, I have repeatedly given them self-addressed stamped envelopes begging them to send me a letter. Occasionally, they send a drawing of Pokemon or a copy of their soccer schedule, but no letters.
I recently learned — and dear readers, I do hope you are sitting down for this — I learned that OUR SCHOOLS NO LONGER TEACH CURSIVE WRITING!!
Alas!
The quest to bring back the age-old art of letter-writing (for gosh sakes, most of the Holy Bible was written in the form of personal letters!) is doomed. Of all the losses we’ve endured over the last few decades — phone booths from the corner, Ed Sullivan from the TV, Easter bonnets from the church pews, Spam from the grocery shelves — this, the disappearance of the handwritten letter from the mailbox, is surely the most lamentable loss of them all.
And now, I must bid you adieu —
I remain your most humble servant, erstwhile companion, and faithful, albeit letterless, friend,
Linda
Linda E. Kelly is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.