I love letters. I have a big box of them in my attic from my parents and grandparents, sisters and friends.
I remember the excitement of finding a personally addressed envelope in my mailbox at college and the joy of finding one in the perpetually locked mailbox at my apartment in Italy where we had to fish them out with a wire coat hanger. They came in thin red and blue edged air mail envelopes and business sized envelopes and homemade envelopes folded from magazine pages.
I don’t get many letters these days. I don’t write that many either. But recently, I’ve been reading letters for research, and it reminded me how much I love letters, how different they are from Facebook posts or even usually email. So I wrote a letter about the weather and memories and what I’m reading and dreams.
I wrote to a friend who shared some writing with me last fall during my Abundance retreat. I love what I learned about the texture of her days from that shared writing. I want to know and share that texture.
I want to know how you feel when you look at your brand new baby or at your big one who’s starting to drive. I want to know what the piles of snow (or the flowers starting to bloom) look like outside your window. I want to know I’m not alone (you aren’t either).
I want to swap the old stories and remember who we were (are we still those people?). I want to share new ones and see who we are now and what our lives look like—not the holiday card round up, but the day to day life.
As I wrote my letter, the sky was winter white. When I went out, I was excited to wear shoes instead of boots and surprised that I didn’t need a coat. As I drove home, though, snow spit and swirled. It’s a confused time of year.
That energy I talked about last week is flowing, but sometimes I can’t figure out the direction. But tonight for a moment, I didn’t need a direction. For a moment
, both my girls snuggled in beside me, clean and in jammies, and I read to them from Farmer Boy, a book I read over and over all through my childhood. They were cranky, we were running late for bed, but for that moment we were still and shared that story.
Write a Letter. Share a piece of your story. Take few minutes to write a letter to a friend. Share something about your life, your day to day, your dreams.
What’s going on in your life today?
You don’t have to write me a letter, but share in comments a moment or detail that stuck with you today.
Thank you for the reminder of the joy of letters. Writing letters and receiving them both beig great joy. When I write letters, I share a special place with the person I am writing. There are old memories, thoughts of what they will be interested in reading. It is a deeper sharing than a few words or even a sentence online. That and the satisfaction of the words forming as my pen scratches across the page.
My college years were full of letters–some longer than the papers I was there to write. They got me through the homesick early days. I don’t take the time to write very often, but take your post as encouragement to make time to communicate with dear friends in a time-honored way. Thank you.
Today, I pulled on my muck boots to feed the chickens and ended up in our far field. The horses ran to the fence to greet me and the sky was that color blue that only happens in Autumn and Spring. I paused in that moment to breathe. Notice the muddy grass under me. The cool chill in the air. The starlings chirping so loudly it startles the dog. Hundreds raising then to swoop into another part of the cornfield across the street. I can’t see that. It just sounds like that, and I envision it. From 41 years of seeing them rise together, like a dark cloud, and twist and amaze. I never tire of watching hundreds of starlings together. They enchant me, making me feel like I’m hearing a delicious secret, a seduction. And yet, I hadn’t seen them at all. Just the blue sky and mud.
I hope that writing with pen & paper continues to be a cherished act and does not become a lost art. It keeps us a bit more connected to ourselves, each other and the spirit that can only be moved through a hand that is curled around a pen.
I have been visiting my parents. I am struck lately by the distance between their age and my children’s ages and how they seem to have such a beautiful connection to each other as the distractions of the day-to-day don’t overwhelm either age group as much as it does my own. They all dance to their own rhythm and they come together in ways that I will not fully understand until I am blessed with my own grandbabies. For now, I will tip my head down to work, keep them all well fed, happy, but I still benefit greatly from the love that comes radiating off of the interactions between these two sweet generations.
Love all these responses (now I’m going to write another letter)
Beautiful post, Sara. I share your love of letter-writing, and I will write a real live letter today. Thanks so much! — Traci
I have a friend that sends cards for all of the holidays (except maybe Groundhog Day) and she always writes a long note that takes up most of the open space on the card, inside and out. Her penmanship should be made into a font! It is always such a pleasure to receive them and I feel the love she puts into them.
I think I’ll go write her a letter about how much I appreciate her and the care she puts into the cards she sends and share some other tidbits.
Thanks for the inspiration, Sara!
Sara, I have so wanted to do this. I just wrote it down to take a box of note cards on my trip with my monkeys so we can all write letters. There is a love letter site that I used to contribute – you would write random love letters and leave them in places for people to find. I soooo need to get back to that. 🙂
Thank you for what you do.
Selena
Selena, I love that you’re thinking of getting your kids in on it (and leaving letters for people to find).