Letters Unwritten

Missives have gone missing and I want them back!

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Last week, the United States Postal Service announced they're going to raise their first-class letter stamp rate to 58 cents from the current 55 cents. Not a huge amount in the scheme of things, but heck, I'm old enough to remember the days when it cost fifteen cents to mail a letter to someone. 

I’m a sucker for the handwritten letter, and I hate to think of people being put off, more than they already are, from letter-writing.

I love pretty much everything about the experience of receiving, finding, opening, and reading, and even re-reading, a good, old-fashioned, hand-written missive from someone I love, hate, like, admire or lust after. 

For me, there’s nearly nothing better than walking to the mailbox in front of my house, pulling open the little metal door, and finding an envelope with my name scrawled across it. It's beautiful to me, touching when I see my name written with someone else's hand.  I feel a bit of them right there with me when I hold their envelope in my hands.

Of course, love letters are among the best kinds of letters to receive and they absolutely must be preserved — ready and waiting to be read on that hopefully far-off day when you’ve reached the age that love letters no longer arrive with much regularity at all (though I'm hoping that day never, ever comes because, natch, I may be a cynic, but I’m a hopelessly romantic one).

Romance, which requires a bit of separation to reach exquisite heights, has taken a powerful hit with our 24/7 access to each other. There’s no time anymore for that delicious suspension of hours or days, or even weeks, between seeing or hearing from a new or prospective lover – no time to create longing in the heart and mind and body --  because our ubiquitous, incessant use of cell phones, texting, Facebook, email, and tweeting keeps us overly-connected, to the point of ennui.

Where would romance be without Beethoven’s impassioned cri de coeur -- written in a letter: “My angel, my all, my very self …”? 

I’ve written letters where tears plopped down from my eyes and blotched the ink on the page below, rendering a word or two or maybe several scattered over two or three lines — unreadable. But yet, so readable, right? Pretty hard to misread the emotion behind a tear-stained letter.

And, I’ve been known to literally seal my letters with a bright red lipsticked kiss, even spritz them with Chanel No. 5 so that when they arrived days later in my paramour's mailbox, they'd carry the scent of me.

I've written letters I've regretted, of course.  And once, when someone gave me some of my letters back, I cringed at my younger self's ranting and raving and relentless use of exclamation points! (;)

But mostly, years and years of writing letters and postcards -- and receiving them -- has given me, collectively, one of the most profound, precious, and intimate experiences of my life.

When I worked briefly in Paris in the early 1990s, nothing gave me keener insights into myself, my country, and the culture I was experiencing -- than to write weekly letters home to America.  The very act of reminiscence through writing allowed a slow peeling back of layers of my personality, challenging long-held ideologies and biases, and laying the groundwork for the woman I would become.

Over the years, I’ve saved hundreds of old love letters, birthday cards received, and long-winded missives from friends, professors, prison wardens (for real!), and family.  I keep them in lovely boxes and pull them out sometimes to refer to a letter from long past. Re-reading them from time to time, mostly what I observe is the deep questioning of self and others, an understanding that can be uniquely grasped or sought-after, only when putting pen to paper.

I don’t know whether three cents of postage increase will save such a teetering monolith as the USPS, but I do know this:  if the post office ever goes out of business, we'll lose one of the last vestiges of civilized communication and one of our best chances for staying meaningfully connected to, and learning from and about, one another. 

Letter-writing is an art and an act -- an act of commitment to another human being -- a commitment of thought and words and time.

We’ll lose something essential to our future selves and future generations if we stop writing letters:  an archive of loves gained and lost, travels made, trivial and profound observations of life quietly recollected and recorded in a lengthy letter or hastily scribbled on the back of a postcard. 

Writing letters also cultivates the intellect -- promoting generally civil discourse and allowing for the space and time to examine thoughts and emotions, all while encouraging the ability to think and write coherently and well, without relying on the backspace key, or the reduction of wit to the drivel of “LOL.”

Letters interpret the past, exalt the present, and inform the future. 

What contemporary president hasn’t benefited (hopefully) from the wisdom imparted in Abraham Lincoln’s collected letters? 

And there’s hardly a more instructive rite of passage for maturing from adolescence to adulthood than reading Rainier Maria Rilke’s letters to a young military man who, in seeking advice on how to become a poet, was taught instead how to love and “live the questions” of life.  Parents are perhaps the most necessary of letter-writers, but I fear that's not even a thing anymore.

Letters come with lots of words but there's still so much you can "read into" them.  Are they signed with "Love?" Or "Be well," "Your one and only Mother," or "I adore every inch of you?" Do they have doodles in sprinkled amongst the paragraphs? Are there parts scratched out?  What did they mean to say that they thought better of?

A good friend had a penchant for embedding witticisms (or were they barbs?) in my name on the front of his envelopes — like this one:

And a long-ago lover still had more to say after writing a six-page letter to me from London:

You can't do that with email.

Write a letter today.  Pour your thoughts and your heart onto the page.  Seal and stamp the envelope before you can think better of it.  Mail it off and let it work its magic in someone else's brain and heart.

We'll all be better for it.

It might not be the same as writing a letter, but if you like the sentiment of this essay, I invite you to share this post with others via the link below.