Let's Return to Writing Letters

The post office languishes in a slough of debt.

My Uncle Abe collected Plate blocks of commemorative stamps. Those were stamps still attached to the white margin of the original sheet—and they included the serial number "of the printing plate used to print that sheet." He gave me twelve Plate blocks for my birthday—one for every year. Each block was ensconced in a see through envelope.

For my eleventh birthday I had received a Minkus World Stamp album, a package of 1000 stamp hinges, a tweezers—sometimes called tongs, a perforation gauge, and a book that helped with stamp identification. My uncle gave me a drawstring bag of 500 unidentified world stamps—most still attached to paper. The bag came from the Jamestown Stamp Company. I spent hours identifying stamps—checking an atlas.

Now you peel your stamp— and stick it on an envelope, that is if you mail a letter.

It's not nostalgia to think that something important has or is in the process of disappearing. I love reading the letters of writers.


Flannery O'Connor wrote to Winifred McCarthy: "There is a moment in every great story in which the presence of grace can be felt as it waits to be accepted or rejected, even though the reader may not recognize this moment."

Writing a letter to someone is not the same as texting or emailing. There's a chance to visit with the other person, a sense of the personal, an organic connection. Choosing paper—whether it's formal or a yellow pad, selecting a pen and matching it to the paper enhance the writing. The moment I take the pen in my hand and begin to write I can see the other person and visualize the letter being opened.

At one point I corresponded with ten friends. Now that list has dwindled.

Irene owned a bookstore and our conversations often revolved around books. We shared newly discovered books, quoted lines that spoke to us, and how our lives intersected with fiction.

Lynn went back to school to earn an MFA in poetry. Our infrequent letters that year were filled with poetry we liked and the power of women poets. Lynn wondered about the audacity of the degree, "What will I do after I finish?" We critiqued each other's poems.

Jean and I first met when we lived in the same development. Her husband was an opera aficionado and Jean loved singing in choirs. When she moved to Chicago,Joey her youngest, was in the sixth grade and Matt, her eldest, was entering high school. Our letters usually were about children—and only two or three letters a year. One always at Christmas. I still recall the letter I received one fall—months after Joey graduated college. Jean wrote first of the wonderful memories she had and Joey had of the time we all cooked crabs in my house. She then went on to say that she was writing the letter with the weight of unbearable sadness—Joey had taken his own life. I read that letter over and over and then sat down to write Jean. Over the years our letters have continued—now but once a year.

Anna, my next door neighbor for seven years, first moved to England and then to North Carolina. I still have the postcards that came from England—with a letters worth of writing in the small space left for messages. Our letters were filled with books and biblical discussions. Now the letters are less frequent—and they are filled with the stories of her grandchildren. In a recent letter she wrote about her granddaughters' involvement with missionary work in Africa and South America. We don't always agree, but we're still writing.

Marian and I worked at the same school and for a time we were walking segments of the Appalachian trail. When her husband's job called for a move to the Netherlands we became letter writers—and I added to my postcard collection since Marian traveled a good deal. I have a glass box filed with postcards. And people didn't just write—having a great time! Marian and I shared tales of walks—mine were closer to home. Once I recall writing five pages all about a walk around Walden Pond— and I did quote Thoreau.

Writing a letter is like visiting a friend—it can be leisurely.

"A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend."
—Emily Dickinson