Wednesday Writings

I enjoy being able to speak to far-flung family or friends through the telephone or Skype or email, but sometimes I miss actual letters I can hold in my hands. It’s rare for me to get a personal letter in the old, metal mailbox in front of my house but a few years ago, it was the highlight of my day.

I like to collect copies of old letters. The other day,  I came across an interesting letter from a distant relative in Chico, California. She had written it in 1948 to a relative in Georgia. The stamp on the envelope cost her three cents. She wrote about daily happenings and the relatives who lived nearby. One of the things she mentioned was her chickens. Right there in the town of Chico, she kept chickens who, she said, ate her table scraps.

Among my pictures are some that are probably more than a hundred years old. These letters and pictures are tangible parts of history and I love being able to pick them up and hold them in my hands. Nowadays, most of my pictures are digital and reside somewhere in my computer. I can print them off, true, but I don’t usually do that. So many things nowadays are “virtual”. They exist yet they don’t. (By the way, what happened to that word, virtual? Long years ago, I thought it lent emphasis to a statement; as in, “She ate virtually all of the pie.” I guess that was another of my wrong-headed ideas.)

The faces of people who lived long ago and their handwriting on yellowing papers are bits of history. They are records of how people lived, what they thought, where they went, if they felt well, if the crops were good or they were planning a trip. They spoke of yearning to see home folks and asked that their loved ones keep in touch. They mentioned many things that would never happen today, like raising chickens within the city limits.

Why can’t we keep alive the habit of writing letters?  Are we too busy?Labor-saving devices were supposed to free us up to have more time, but has that happened? I’m in favor of writing letters, cards, and keeping journals in cursive handwriting on paper that I can see, feel, hear, and even smell. Sure, times are changing and we have to change too, to a certain extent. But, I miss the warmth of letters on paper. I think it would be nice to take along some old practices as we surge forward into more and more time-saving ways to communicate. After all, what would we do if the computer crashed? Could we actually put pen to paper and write?