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.
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too.
I love paper and pens and letters too! So much better than an email or even a phone call sometimes. I have letters I have saved from years past. I love looking through them.
I hope you are doing well Rudri. I like your blog. It is a nice way to keep up with you.
I can’t wait to read your first novel. I will gladly pre-purchase, but I want a personally autographed copy!
This reminds me of the thin red and blue par avion envelopes I used to write letters home when I lived abroad. The thickness, the texture, the smell … I loved them. And I, too, keep boxes of old letters. They’re fun to pour over on a rainy day.
It’s so true. Letters are a long-lost art. And they are a pain to write — my hand hurts now when I use a pen too long — but they are so glorious to receive. Your daughter will be lucky…
I don’t know if I got it from you or Dad, but I remember how exciting it was to get a new pen, or use my own stationary (Lisa Frank, to be exact) to write someone a letter.
Maybe it’s knowing that someone took to pen and paper because of you. It’s nostalgia, one that emails or texts can’t replicate.
You know, sisters like to receive letters too! No pressure!
Fabulous idea!
I like your phrase, “ordinary happiness.” Fabulous.
What a lovely post! I remember having pen pals as a young girl and just loving the days when I would get a letter in the mail. Now I make a point to send birthday cards, they aren’t letters, but I make them myself and I think it’s just a nice, warm heartfelt touch.
And I love your idea about writing a letter to your daughter. I hope you are going to mail it! That would be fun.
I remember our letting writing days, fondly. : ) I have them buried in a treasure box somewhere not too close, so I don’t ruin the impact when I happen upon them every now and again : )
oops! i meant letter writing days!