A Few Words on Letter Writing
If you were to glance at my writing desk, which is usually cluttered with books, papers, notebooks, and various writing utensils, the first thing that you'd probably notice is my manual typewriter.
Yes, I own a typewriter. Specifically, it's a Smith-Corona Galaxie XII.
I bought it several years ago off of eBay (before they got hacked, and I pulled everything I had off there), for one reason: to write letters to my older brother.
When my brother initially left for college, I started writing him letters to keep in touch. Initially, I used a Smith-Corona Portable, but the poor thing was so old and rundown that I couldn't type a straight sentence on it. So I upgraded. We had smart phones by this time, but texting him seemed so boring. And I don't like talking on the phone. (I've heard recordings of my voice, and I don't like what I sound like). Besides, I wanted to do something a little weird and a little different. Thus, I wrote letters. Usually, the letters weren't about anything extraordinary, maybe that week's events, but taking the time to set those words down on paper, to make them tangible was something my brother came to appreciate. As far as I know, he still has all the letters I wrote to him during that time.
This practice continued when he spent two years in Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps. Because of the time difference and the less-than-stellar cell service he could get in-country, It was easier to mail him letters. They usually were slipped into the car packages my folks sent him, accompanying such necessities as coffee, chocolate, bags of rice, and little packets of water flavoring.
I can't quite recall who I first heard this from (it may have been Orson Scott Card or David McCullough), but with the invention of the telephone, and more specifically, the cheapness of long distance calling, came the death knell of letter-writing. Since people could simply pick up a receiver and speak to whomever they wanted (provided they had their number), humanity lost a treasure trove of correspondence that gave insight into the minds of other people. For whatever reason, this realization saddened me.
Even after my brother left college and returned from the Peace Corps, I retained the bug to keep writing letters. Concurrently to the time I was writing letters to my brother, I also wrote letters to my Godmother, a person who comes from the time before cheap long distance who appreciated it. I have a local friend here in St. Louis who acts as a pen pal to me intermittently. Currently, my longest running correspondence is with a dear friend I have in Milwaukee, who I write to once a month at minimum.
What I've realized from personally reviving this craft is that people really enjoy receiving letters in the mail, and they appreciate them. Just as my brother came to appreciate the letters I wrote to him, so have all my other recipients. There is something about the tactile experience of holding a piece of paper, onto which someone has written, be it by hand or via a typewriter, words that people enjoy. It shows effort. It shows that, whatever the contents of the message, the words were important enough to communicate them via non-digital, ephemeral means. It shows that you care.
The reality of this came home to me recently.
About three months ago, one of my Uncles passed away. He was suffering from cancer, and even though a new treatment he'd just begun to undergo had shown promise to help him, his body was too weak to continue and the end arrived.
His wife, my aunt, was devastated. Her partner in life for decades was gone, and for the first time ever, she found herself living on her own, which was a real shock on its own.
I knew that there was nothing I could do to help her emotionally. Grief is said to be the price we pay for love, and it takes all of us an individual amount of time to pay that debt. So I decided to do the only thing I could do: write her some words of comfort The day after the funeral, I sat down and wrote (hand-wrote in this case, thinking the more personal touch was required) her a long letter about grief despite my limited life experience. I mailed it to her along with a copy of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, hoping his words might make up for any failures of mine.
The next time I saw her, she told me that not only had the book been helping her (she admitted that she'd occasionally needed to advise a dictionary), but that receiving and reading my letter had helped her as well.
An unexpected text is one thing, but getting a letter in the mail (that you can't accidentally delete), shows that you've made the effort because you care about the person. Letters aren't just a casually tossed off message. They're compact care packages.
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| It looks like this, but the color scheme is somewhat different. |
I bought it several years ago off of eBay (before they got hacked, and I pulled everything I had off there), for one reason: to write letters to my older brother.
When my brother initially left for college, I started writing him letters to keep in touch. Initially, I used a Smith-Corona Portable, but the poor thing was so old and rundown that I couldn't type a straight sentence on it. So I upgraded. We had smart phones by this time, but texting him seemed so boring. And I don't like talking on the phone. (I've heard recordings of my voice, and I don't like what I sound like). Besides, I wanted to do something a little weird and a little different. Thus, I wrote letters. Usually, the letters weren't about anything extraordinary, maybe that week's events, but taking the time to set those words down on paper, to make them tangible was something my brother came to appreciate. As far as I know, he still has all the letters I wrote to him during that time.
This practice continued when he spent two years in Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps. Because of the time difference and the less-than-stellar cell service he could get in-country, It was easier to mail him letters. They usually were slipped into the car packages my folks sent him, accompanying such necessities as coffee, chocolate, bags of rice, and little packets of water flavoring.
I can't quite recall who I first heard this from (it may have been Orson Scott Card or David McCullough), but with the invention of the telephone, and more specifically, the cheapness of long distance calling, came the death knell of letter-writing. Since people could simply pick up a receiver and speak to whomever they wanted (provided they had their number), humanity lost a treasure trove of correspondence that gave insight into the minds of other people. For whatever reason, this realization saddened me.
Even after my brother left college and returned from the Peace Corps, I retained the bug to keep writing letters. Concurrently to the time I was writing letters to my brother, I also wrote letters to my Godmother, a person who comes from the time before cheap long distance who appreciated it. I have a local friend here in St. Louis who acts as a pen pal to me intermittently. Currently, my longest running correspondence is with a dear friend I have in Milwaukee, who I write to once a month at minimum.
What I've realized from personally reviving this craft is that people really enjoy receiving letters in the mail, and they appreciate them. Just as my brother came to appreciate the letters I wrote to him, so have all my other recipients. There is something about the tactile experience of holding a piece of paper, onto which someone has written, be it by hand or via a typewriter, words that people enjoy. It shows effort. It shows that, whatever the contents of the message, the words were important enough to communicate them via non-digital, ephemeral means. It shows that you care.
The reality of this came home to me recently.
About three months ago, one of my Uncles passed away. He was suffering from cancer, and even though a new treatment he'd just begun to undergo had shown promise to help him, his body was too weak to continue and the end arrived.
His wife, my aunt, was devastated. Her partner in life for decades was gone, and for the first time ever, she found herself living on her own, which was a real shock on its own.
I knew that there was nothing I could do to help her emotionally. Grief is said to be the price we pay for love, and it takes all of us an individual amount of time to pay that debt. So I decided to do the only thing I could do: write her some words of comfort The day after the funeral, I sat down and wrote (hand-wrote in this case, thinking the more personal touch was required) her a long letter about grief despite my limited life experience. I mailed it to her along with a copy of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, hoping his words might make up for any failures of mine.
The next time I saw her, she told me that not only had the book been helping her (she admitted that she'd occasionally needed to advise a dictionary), but that receiving and reading my letter had helped her as well.
An unexpected text is one thing, but getting a letter in the mail (that you can't accidentally delete), shows that you've made the effort because you care about the person. Letters aren't just a casually tossed off message. They're compact care packages.
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