The Art of Letter Writing

     Letter writing is a lost art.  Years back, before people had smart phones, Email, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, they composed letters, long, elaborate letters that went on for pages, telling the latest news, professing love, discussing current events, pondering or planning for the future.  Some folks wrote in cursive, some printed, or they typed, but most importantly, they invested a good deal of time communicating with someone they deemed important, be it a family member, their betrothed, a pen pal, or a friend.  Parents wrote to their sons in the service.  Young women wrote to their boyfriends in college.  Men, young and old, wrote love letters, painting a picture with words of a blissful life they hoped to share with that special someone.  School children sent letters to servicemen overseas to lift their spirits.  Some people, myself included, mailed hand written letters to the editor of a local newspaper to voice an opinion on pertinent topics.

     As a child, I loved to write letters.  Shopping for pretty stationary was one of my favorite pastimes, and filling those pages and sending them off to my pen pals filled me with nearly as much joy as receiving their replies.  I have just a couple of those letters of mine, written when I was twelve, that I sent to my parents when they were away on vacation.  Reading them amuses me.  In my mind I  imagine my folks chuckling at my silliness, and at my compulsion to send them two letters when they were only away for a week. 
     I found a letter that my brother wrote to my folks when he was in the service.  It was written on the fine tissue paper that was popular at the time, and was sent in an Air Mail envelope.  Do they even have them any more?  I gave that letter to my nephew, as I imagined he would appreciate having a glimpse of his dad in his pre-marriage/pre-children youth.  

     I save significant text messages and voice mail messages that my sons send me.  I cherish them, but it's not quite the same as a letter..  A text message or a voice mail message is not a tangible thing-I do not have their hand written words on a piece of paper that I can mold to my heart.  I delight in following hand written recipes of my mom's and reading hand written poetry that my dad composed for her.  I have witnessed and experienced how a person of  few words can blossom when they put pen to paper.  My dad was like that.  A quiet man, he was never a conversationalist.  But he could express his devotion to my mother with the sweetest words and rhymes.  I am like him in that way.   

     I recently watched a documentary on Gloria Vanderbilt, the original poor little rich girl.  In it, she revealed a number of her treasures,  some of which might surprise you.  The treasure pertinent to this post is a collection of letters about five inches thick, in chronological order, tied neatly and tightly with string, and enclosed in a plastic case for safe keeping.  She had found them at a flea market, and was compelled to buy them.  She has never read them, and doesn't anticipate ever reading them, yet she imagines them to be love letters, and she ponders what may be written in them. (Aren't some things better when left to the imagination?)  After seeing this documentary, you guessed it, I was on a mission to find a collection of letters at the next flea market I attended.  I was not disappointed, as I purchased a bagful of assorted letters at a local flea market for just $7.00, a real bargain I might add.  However, unlike Ms. Vanderbilt, I could not resist the urge to read them.  It was a strange feeling, actually, as I initially felt I was invading that couple's privacy.  After I'd read a few however, I became invested in the characters, and I was essentially reading non-fiction.  I actually find it quite sad, as their descendants did not elect to keep the letters.   I console myself by imagining that they had someone who runs estate sales clean out an attic, and perhaps never even knew they existed.  Many of the letters were written in the 1950s, beginning in the year I was born.  The time period lent a certain significance for me, as it gave me a glimpse into what people were experiencing at that time.  They were letters from a man who was very much in love with a young widow.  He was clearly smitten by her, and they did eventually marry.  One thing he wrote, not romantic, really struck me.  He expressed a concern that went something like this: what might happen if the invention of a genius might fall into the hands of someone with the ethics of a moron, this in approximately 1957.  I know the world is and always was a scary place.  However,  I tend to look at the past through rose colored glasses, imagining that people were nicer, and that bad things did not happen.  Of course I realize these ideas are pure fantasy, but reading about past events in a history book is more abstract.  This letter was personal, and therefore more real.  Anyway, I have about thirty five letters, all in chronological order, and I plan to read them all.  There is a plastic case and a pretty pink ribbon awaiting them, and I will put them on display once I am done. As for me, I intend to resurrect my love of letter writing.  I have some friends who are relocating, and I am now on a mission to buy some feminine and ultra pretty stationary, and pen them letters as if it were the 1960's.  Nostalgia, take me away!