The Art of Letter Writing

The other day, I received a strange thing in the mail....... a LETTER! I'm talking about a REAL letter - handwritten on pretty stationary, from a friend out of state that I hadn't heard from in awhile. Now - this friend has email, and a telephone. We've corresponded by email many times, and chatted on the phone for hours in the past.......but this time, she decided to send me an old-fashioned LETTER.

"Old-Fashioned Letter". Just the term seems strange. It wasn't that long ago, when I was a girl, and I had several "pen pals" with whom I regularly exchanged letters. It was always so much fun to open the mailbox and find a letter from one of them. One pen pal, in particular, had this really neat "pencil stationary" that she always used. Another just wrote on notebook paper and always folded it to fit into one of the "smaller" envelopes rather than the "standard letter size". I remember having several stationary pads with corresponding envelopes, and browsing at Hallmark to pick see what was new in the Stationary aisle.

You know - getting an email just doesn't hold the same excitement as receiving a real letter!

Her letter was just a update, along with some new things to share. It was just so much more personal to read her handwriting rather than the sterile type of my email inbox.

Today, I sat down to write her a letter in return. It had been a long time since I'd written a letter. I had to dig a little, but yes, I did manage to find a box of stationary with a pretty flower motif, and some lined matching envelopes. I ended up writing 4 pages - and boy, after the first page, was my hand TIRED! I realized that we really don't WRITE anymore, we type. I had to slow down, and take care to use pretty penmanship. It really didn't take me that long, maybe 15 minutes or so. Both my son and daughter said to me, "Mom, whatcha doing?" "I'm writing a letter"..... "To who?"...... and then "Why would you do that?" Oh boy. I think it's time to ressurect a few "old fashioned letter writing skills" in this household. Sending a card is one thing - writing a real letter is enitirely another.

I've always been of the opinion that gadgets and technology cost us far more than they give in return. Sure, I love my BOSCH, and I appreciate the convenience of my cell phone....... but we have lost the personal touches that real relationships bring. Even in correspondance, reading the letter from my friend, in her hand that I recognized as distinctly hers, brought closeness and relationship to the context.

Besides - am I the only one who dreads the BILLS and JUNKMAIL in the mailbox? Choose someone you care about, and write them a real letter!

Shauna