To My Email

In 1996, I made a pact with a friend: if we agree to email each other, we must still write letters that we fold, stuff into envelopes, seal, add a stamp and drop in an actual mailbox. The letter would show up 3 or 4 days later in the other person’s mailbox next to the gas bill. Three weeks later, there’s a reply. We agreed to keep the paper letters coming.

 

We never wrote another one.

Before email, any day could bring a letter. Gamaw writes to tell me the azaleas bloomed. Robert signs everything “Moon Man.” Brian sends a poem. My sister in Germany writes on thin, light blue airmail paper. The way she writes her numbers, you would think she grew up European. My niece is starting 4th grade. She walks the hills to school. Any day, I would grab the mail and there could be a letter. Any day could get better.

Sometimes I would write a letter for days. I had stationary; eventually, I moved to unlined so I could get more in. I wrote front and back. Over the years, my handwriting got smaller, sharper, less bubbly. Serious.

Now, I’m only interested in mail around my birthday.

Don’t mourn this. Don’t mourn the death of the handwritten letter unless you miss paintings on cave walls. Don’t bemoan it unless you prefer to live your life at a speed that doesn’t exist anymore. Don’t shake your hands in the air with a what-is-this-world-coming-to expression unless you prefer your home mailbox stuffed with ads for credit cards and oil changes and catalogues the size of phone books from Sears.

As much as I loved those letters--and I have saved many of them--I cannot say we are worse for not having them. It’s a loss, to be sure. We’ve lost so much. Traveling across country by train. Phone booths. Party lines. Hand grinders for coffee beans and stove top percolators. Ice boxes.

We can’t look back. We can’t wish for the way things were. We can’t live our old lives again. We have all moved on. We know it’s better. It’s progress.

The kids are sure, anyway.