Letters

I was a woman of letters in my youth. Evidence of this fact remains even today in my garage where a large cardboard box labeled “Letters” sits in a corner awaiting its destiny, probably incineration. Most of these letters are part of a voluminous correspondence I had with my friend Cydnie over the course of many years beginning in 1971. We poured our hearts and souls into these letters, and neither of us ever threw any away, so certain were we of their sentimental value and enduring significance. In a breathtaking moment of 1980s narcissism we even conjured up the illusion that they contained enough material for an epic coming-of-age novel about two women of our generation. I was to be the archivist and scribe who would piece together whatever narrative they provided, and Cyd actually returned the ones I wrote to her so that I would have the complete set. Monte saw this merely as a transfer of clutter from her garage to ours. He has thus far proven correct.

In any case, it will certainly take a few more years before I can read these letters without wincing. I am sure I come across as melodramatic and self-absorbed, forever torn between the lure of a life of my own and the needs and expectations of my family, and perennially paralyzed by questions whose answers seem so obvious now. But the voices of these letters are real, both my own and Cyd's, and thus I keep postponing their destruction.

And it isn’t just the voices. It is also the feel of the envelopes, some of them thick with folded notebook pages crammed inside, others already yellowed and soft, some with carefully wrought cursive writing, some typed with an IBM Selectric and bearing the return address of a long-defunct business on East Wacker Drive, and all of them posted with beautiful stamps whose very few cents sufficed to send them far and wide.

I have other piles of letters here and there: a tidy stack from my father to his brother written during the war; random words from friends that I deemed worth hanging onto; everything my sister ever wrote to me before email came and rendered into digital bits the last few years of our communication. How I wish we hadn't switched so readily in favor of a more daily if cursory sort of contact. I liked that familiar left-handed writing of hers, always a little messy, and I liked the little note cards she chose, and the simple surprise of finding a letter in the mailbox, followed swiftly by the pleasure of opening it, usually standing right there at the box. I did not know it would all be so suddenly and irretrievably gone.

The convenience of email has usurped the more time-consuming hands-on labor of love that was the writing of a letter. I’m not complaining, though. (Or am I?) After all, email is direct, spontaneous, free of paper and postage, and has certainly put millions of people back in touch. I’m just a bit reactionary and romantic at times.  Yes, sometimes I sigh for a letter.I had been thinking along these lines already when I had an exchange with the poet Dan Gerber on the topic, and I think his comment is worth sharing here. It began when I apologized to him (in an email) for the wordiness of my email, which needed only to have been a simple answer to a question but included tangential quotes, a bit of philosophizing, and my usual meandering. I felt self-conscious about it afterwards, probably because of Monte’s frequent admonition that I do not grasp the intended purpose of email, i.e., quick dispatches of information. One of Monte’s principles: Busy people appreciate brevity.

“I’d say your husband might be right if people still wrote letters,” Gerber responded. “I think we will lose so much of our sense of what went on inside people without the record of their letters, which are, perhaps, my favorite reading. So I guess we have to allow emails their reach to compensate for this dying art.”So now we have the poet’s take on this.

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine is about to leave for a summer-long escape in a trailer that she and her husband will park on some property of theirs in rural Pennsylvania. There will be no computer, just an emergency cell phone number and a weekly trip to the post office. “What will we do?” I asked.

“How about we write letters?” was her reply, “Just like the old days.” In fact, I have a few letters from this friend too that date back a good thirty years – many husbands, cities, and lifetimes ago.  I hope that I will set aside some time with pen in hand to share my heart this summer.

A letter is fun to get, after all. And it keeps. But having fallen out of the habit, I am remembering the care, initiative, and follow-through required for the writing and the sending, and I am a little daunted by it. It takes a decision, a pause, a sustained focus. A real letter is composed in a way that email precludes.In the meantime, although it is a poor substitute, I like to think that this blog is at least a little like a letter -- an ongoing letter to friends that I have met and some that I have not met. That's what I am striving for anyway.  I have been wondering lately what happens to the blog after I am gone. How long does it hang here? Where does it go? My extreme lack of techni-ness renders the whole thing a vast mystery. One thing is certain. There will be nothing to hold onto.

At least it won’t be cluttering up anyone’s garage.