Today is my 40th birthday. I commemorated my milestone birthday by writing letters to 40 people who impacted my life. Some of those included God, family, high school friends, law school buddies, former teachers, writers, Tori Amos, Anne Lamott, and a letter to myself. This endeavor created an opportunity to revisit various times from my life. A time capsule written in the form of letters.
My love for letters started as a young girl. I remember running down our paved cement driveway, opening the mailbox, and grabbing a stack full of envelopes. In the middle of an array of white, a light-blue thin aerogramme raised it hand. I knew my mother had received a letter from home, from her father and mother in India. As soon as the letter touched her hand, she retreated to a corner in our living room, reading the words over and over again.
There is something so tangible about reading a loved one’s words. While writing my own letters, I realized a letter is more that words on paper. I know that every time my mom read a letter from her parents it carried the smells of her home as she touched the same paper that her parents had in their hands only days ago.
So, today, as my birthday wish, I want each one of you to write a letter to one person. Let them know how you feel, how he or she impacted you, and why that has made a difference in your life.
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.
Love love love love love this. I will do so in honor of your birthday. OH AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! May it be filled with the things and people you love, today and in the years ahead. xoxo
Dear Rudri,
Firstly, Happy Birthday! I choose to write me letter to you, and thank you for writing your blog, as I really appreciate your voice and feel the love for your children and for life resonant through your words. I have appreciated your experiences in losing your father, as this has been my task this past year, and I would encourage you to keep writing and trusting your voice, but only if you feel like it. We all keep talking about being present, appreciating the moment, being authentic in our feelings and our uncertainty. Perhaps we are all connecting in some strange evolving consciousness of voices mirroring, echoing, caring , learning and growing? Perhaps our common thread is not “writing,” so much as love: realizing how we are loved, particularly by parents, even if that is a mystery that plays out differently for all of us, some laced with more hurt, some with more of the nurturance we strive to provide our own children, and even more particularly the bond of the love for our children that creates kindredness and community across age, time and geography.
I hope this year brings you much joy and great fortune. Happy Happy B-Day!
Happy Birthday! 🙂
Dear Rudri,
I hope your birthday was as awesome as you are. I love your post and the sentiments here.
It remindes me how my father saved my grandmother’s letters until the day he died. When I saw them one day , I asked him about them and his answer was that they will go with him to his grave. Words from our loved ones are so much in our life. Thank you this morning for reminding me. xo
And I did mean reminds… 🙂
What a wonderful way to honor your day, and a very happy birthday to you! (I’m pondering that letter… So many good people have come into my life in recent years… How to choose?)
xo
Happy birthday, Rudri! What a lovely idea!!!!!
Happy belated birthday, Rudri! And what a wonderful thing that you did. I too loved letters as a little girl, and wrote and kept many of them. We didn’t even have internet in college, so my college days were also marked by many trips a day to our mailboxes, hoping for the arrival of letters from friends from other schools. Now it’s email and blogging, which is not a bad thing, but I do miss the feel of paper and the sight of handwriting in ink. Yesterday my son showed me a handwritten story he had written for school which he had also folded up. Unfolding the crinkly pages brought back memories of unfolding letters.
I too need to think about whom I will write to. The obvious choice is my son, but there are so many people whom I have never expressed myself to.
I hope you have a wonderful year, Rudri.
Great idea! Happy birthday, Rudri!!