I love pens. I love paper.  I love handwriting. The combination of different sizes and shapes of letters on paper is ordinary happiness for me.

In the last ten years, though, I haven’t received one letter. Not one. It is certainly the era of  Hallmark moments. We pick up cards at the local grocery store, with the perfect message, and sign our name to it. With the evolution of technology, the advent of e-mail and text messages, it is easy to understand why letter writing has become a lost art.

People are busy. I get that. They don’t have “time” to write a letter to someone. Even if they did, what would they write? Isn’t it easier to just press the send button the keyboard? I understand that too.

But there is something so much more tangible about a letter. I remember as a young girl, I would run down to our mailbox and let my mom know that there was a letter from India from her father and mother. The light blue aerogramme paper, the smells of my mom’s home, and my grandfather’s familiar and neat letters would be on the front. At the end of the letter, he would write a little snippet to me. It would be a couple of lines, but I felt special. I know it was so much more for my Mom. She could hold something that her parents had touched, especially since they were halfway around the world. My mom has kept some of those letters, sometimes reading them in quiet corners around her house. She can read those letters anytime, her father and mother’s thoughts, reminiscing about things she only knows.

I’m pulling out my pens and my paper today. And you know what? I am going to write that letter to my daughter today.