Call me old fashioned, but I still love writing letters

I’m a letter writer. Like my mother before me and her mother before her, I regularly put pen to paper. I know this makes me unusual: most Americans haven't written a personal letter in years. The practice may eventually succumb to generational attrition, but it won’t die with me.

On a recent visit to a Jane Austen exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum, I pored over many original letters that were central to understanding her life and work. In her time, letters were read aloud, passed along and preserved. I’m sad for tomorrow’s historians who won’t have the private words of today’s luminaries to sift through in 100 years.

Of absolutely no interest to historians (but fun for me nonetheless) is a trove of letters I recently unearthed from my own past. My childhood friends and I wrote to each other during the summer of 1983, after seventh grade. Too old for camp but too young to have jobs, we were bored and killed time by writing each other on everything from lined notebook paper to juvenile Snoopy stationery. Reading these letters is like traveling back in time to meet my adolescent self. Our missives echo the timeless elements of letter writing found in Austen’s correspondence.

We followed traditional form, beginning with a salutation:
Dear Laura,
Hi, how’s life in the world, our galaxy, the universe (which, by the way, I think does end)?
We talked about friends we’d seen, and what conversation transpired:
Just after I saw you that day at the mall, I also saw David Chen at the mall. I only said hi to him.
As accomplished young ladies, we inquired about each other’s mastery of the pianoforte:
How is Bach’s Invention #8 coming along?
Because drawing was among our many talents, my friend Pei Pei included a sketch in her letter with very specific instructions:
Don’t you love the picture? Send it to Kim, then tell her to send it to Dawn, telling her to send it to Amy, telling her to send it back to Irene.   

While these letters were being exchanged, we lived in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio — all within a few square miles of each other. Why did we write them? I suspect I was the instigator, since I also wrote regularly to my grandmother. My friends probably wrote back because I insisted they do so (nearly every letter I received also included an emphatic command to “write back soon!”).  Since our home phones were affixed to very public kitchen walls within earshot of siblings and parents, letters were our only means of private communication. Nearly 40 years later, holding these teenage missives in my middle-aged hands is thrilling. And bittersweet.

Today my primary pen pal is Mark, who lives in New Orleans. I met Mark when we both lived in Richmond, Virginia, over 20 years ago; he was my husband’s colleague and our neighbor. Mark is a proud Luddite who has never been tempted by the false freedom of a cell phone or the convenience of an email address, so he writes letters. He began writing to my husband after we moved away, but my husband isn’t a letter writer (bless his heart). I couldn’t stand looking at Mark’s unanswered letters, so I wrote him back. It felt like scratching an itch.

Receiving and sending letters is like dancing, each partner taking turns in a reliable rhythm across time and distance.

Now when a bundle drops through my mail slot and lands with a light thud on the floor, I often find a letter from him among the junk mail, bills, and Valupak coupons. We write about everything: politics (we hate it, but can’t look away), books (we are both heavy library users who like nonfiction), and vacations we’re planning (Mark to his favorite spot on the Jersey Shore, and me to my Michigan cottage). We commiserate about how money is corrupting college athletics, we gossip about neighbors, we describe holiday menus. We frequently compliment each other’s stationery.

Receiving and sending letters is like dancing, each partner taking turns in a reliable rhythm across time and distance. When I get a letter from Mark, I sit down in my sunny chair by the window to open it and I see what else is in the envelope (we also send each other articles, political cartoons and business cards from restaurants we like). I usually respond within a day or two. We’ve been corresponding like this for nearly two decades.

When everything in life is fast, purposely slowing down feels downright rebellious. Finding pen and paper, sealing the envelope, maintaining a supply of stamps — it all takes time. Time is valuable currency, and when I use it to send a letter — and a friend uses it to reply — we let each other know we care. We are worth it. It’s quite possible I am a closet Luddite myself.

I’m the only person in my family who receives personal letters these days, and I wonder if my children will ever know the delight of receiving snail mail from their contemporaries, or from anyone other than me. I did send letters to my youngest daughter while she was in college — before finals and around holidays, just short notes of encouragement. I didn’t expect replies – I was just planting seeds that might take root and grow into an appreciation for letter writing someday in the future. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of parents. I also hoped she’d pause her busy life for a minute to read them and smile, knowing I was thinking of her.

She recently graduated and while I was helping her sort through her belongings and move out, I noticed a bulletin board. It was covered with letters — my letters — carefully arranged with colored pins.

She had saved them. Though she didn’t write back, she spent her own precious time saving, organizing, and displaying my letters, centering my standard valediction in her line of sight every day.

I love you lots.
I love you lots.
I love you lots.

It’s not the same as writing back, but it warmed my heart and felt like an important step. She may become a letter writer after all.