Please Mr. Postman, Look and See

It happened every afternoon with the sun making its downward trend toward the horizon.  The postman would come down the block, his heavy bag slung over his shoulder giving his body an unnatural  tilt.  I watched out the bedroom window chewing my fingernails. “Please Mr. Postman look and see if there’s a letter, a letter for me.”  My high school sweetheart Jim had left for college leaving me in my Senior year alone and certain he would forget me.  The almost daily letters were an assurance of his loyalty in my young, naive mind.  Should he miss a day I would spend the next 24 hours staring at my ceiling, unable to focus on my homework, my friends, my reading.  Until the next day when a letter would arrive and once again I would be floating with the knowledge that he still cared.  Back and forth from angst to euphoria I spent that final year in High School.  Forty five years later I still have those letters.

I love snail mail.  I love to write and send snail mail and I love to receive snail mail.  I love the feeling I get when I check in my mailbox and there’s a personal letter.  There is something deeply satisfying about opening your mailbox and among the bills and political ads and store magazines and requests for money, you find an envelope with your name and address written in a familiar cursive.  It always brings a smile to my face and a little race to my heart.  I walk back into the house eyeing the envelope getting excited to read it.  I usually put the other mail down and get comfortable somewhere before I open it.  I will sit in my den in my favorite chair, maybe even take the time to brew some tea or pour a glass of wine before I open it.  I try to savor it for as long as possible.  I’ll read it and then read it again.  A few days later I’ll read it again.  

From the time I left home for college and throughout my life my Mom wrote to me once a week.  Sometimes she had very little to say and sometimes it was full of news but it always came by the end of the week. The letter was one of those wonderful predictable things that I never took for granted and of course one of the things I missed most when she passed.  My Mom and her three siblings used to send a round robin letter around.  My Mom would start it and send it to Aunt Mary K, Aunt Mary K would add her letter and send them both to Uncle Phil who would add his letter and send them all to Uncle Leo.  Uncle Leo would add his letter and send them all to my Mom who would then replace her letter with a more recent letter and send them all to Mary K and so it would go.  I have a notebook of those letters and every once in awhile I work my way through them and find out things I never knew were going on in my Aunt’s and Uncle’s lives.  I treasure those letters.  

For some reason emails are not the same.  Even the ones that are nice long newsy emails. There is something about holding a paper letter in your hand and seeing the person’s handwriting which you are so familiar with.  I can hear the person talking as if they are sitting across from me.  I know that the person took the extra time to hunt out a piece of paper and pen, maybe even some pretty stationery, to sit down and write their news and views and thoughts and dreams for me to see.  Good letter writers are hard to find and if you are lucky enough to know one then count your blessings.  

I worry about all of these emails and how they will be lost forever floating around in the metaverse.  Very often when I check the resources in the back of a book about a historical event, they list personal letters that were discovered written by people who lived the event.  Letters written in their own hand, in their own voices that give us a perspective we might not have had.  I own a letter such as this.  It is from my great grandmother Alice Camp to her brothers John and Mark Camp on September 21, 1891.  She tells the particulars of her 4 year old daughter Florence’s death from diphtheria.  It is yellow with age but written in a neat, elegant cursive.  And enclosed with the letter is a lock of Florence’s hair.  There is something about seeing this tragedy unfold as written by Florence’s obviously grief stricken mother.  Holding those yellowed pages and reading the letter I can picture her sitting at her desk crying, trying to put into words her worst nightmare:

“She was conscious all the time but lost her voice so she could only talk in low whispers. Just a while before midnight she asked her papa to hold her. He took her in his arms she looked up at him and said in her low hoarse whisper that I will hear as long as life lasts ‘Papa I wish it was you that was sick.’”

I suspect if this letter had been typed in an email it would not elicit the same kind of emotions and after 132 years would be deep in someone’s old computer, lost and forgotten.

My guess would be that most kids and many young adults don’t even know how to properly address a snail mail letter.  Like many things from times past I’m sure real letters are considered outmoded and time consuming.  After all you have to write them longhand, find a stamp, an envelope, their home address. You have to take them to a mailbox.  Why bother when you can just type out a quick email or text? 

Good question and I’m not sure I have a good answer.  How do you describe one of life’s simple joys to someone who has never had that experience.  It’s like trying to describe to someone how much fun camping is when they have never gone.  Or why all of the work of having a dog is worth the unconditional love and friendship they give back to you.  How do you describe the feeling of pride you get when you sew your own clothes or bake your own bread or the joy of walking in the rain and splashing in puddles.  Life’s simple pleasures, so difficult to explain.  

For me the trip to the mailbox is always an adventure because of the possibility of there being a personal letter.  And for as long as there is someone out there to deliver my letters I will be a snail mail enthusiast, writing them to anyone who will write back, sending them out into the world to maybe some day be discovered by a distant relative of one of my friends who will look up from the letter yellow with age and ask “Who the hell is Laura?"