Rather ironic I'm "writing" about letter writing on my blog, but I recently came across some old letters while cleaning out a storage bin in my garage. I stumbled across letters I'd written to friends as a child.
My first move occurred when I was 3. We moved from Olympia, WA to Springfield, VA. We stayed there until I was 8. I had friends - those on my soccer team, school, and brownies. When I was 8, we moved to Casper, Wyoming - the polar opposite of VA. After leaving, I stayed in touch with one friend, writing letters well into high school. It probably helped that our families were good friends and we took vacations together long after we moved apart. KA and I adopted personas. She was "Queen K the 1st" and I was "Duchess R." We even went as far as signing our letters with terrible flourishing signatures and talked of silly girly things like how awful our school pictures were.
I stayed in Casper until I was in high school, leaving behind another group of friends I was sorry to see go as my family moved to Ohio. I made a homemade address book complete with multiple pages held together with butterfly grommets. I remember collecting people's addresses before I left so that we could stay in touch. I have stacks of letters from those first couple of years I was gone. Lots of puffy glitter pen writing on the envelopes. Letters now more reflected boys and who was now going out with whom, who was flunking out, and who was taking whom to winter formal.
By the time I left Ohio after college, email was just in its infancy and it was so exciting to use this new medium that the letter got fewer and fewer. I did, however, found a couple of "1st" letters (likely the only ones we exchanged with the exception of a couple of people). Until recently. My pal Scout (who is a writer) will write me letters on this great old Remington type writer. Very cool and nostalgic.
I think this is why I get my Christmas cards done early. I love to send and receive cards/letters, even if it's just a few words. I think it's because it reminds me of all the wonderful letter memories I have.
2 comments:
Great post. I love to send and receive letters and cards as well. A lot of people have been scaling back their Christmas cards in recent years because "it costs so much". This bums me out. I love getting cards, particularly with pictures and seeing kids grow from year to year and just catching up if only for a brief moment in time.
Amen to that! When we were overseas, it used to be such fun receiving Christmas cards from friends and seeing peoples' pictures. In so many ways, we were such a nomadic lot - moving from one post to another over the years. Letters tied us together. Thanks for a really fun and interesting post!
Post a Comment