Shawn L. Bird

The Pear Tree offers us a meme and invites us to write this week on this image:

I was a child who loved communicating, and I loved letters.  From the time I was about ten I had pen pals.  My first communications from Finland came when I was assigned a pen pal from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts International Post Box.  I was matched with Kirsi who lived in Seinäjoki on the Western side of Finland.  After thirty years, Kirsi and I still write each other, and amusingly, our married names are the same (except hers is in Finnish, of course).  I have had opportunity to visit with her and her family twice.  Her sister was an exchange student in Canada for a year, and visited us a few times during her year.

I write most people by email these days, but I still  try to send a few snail mail letters every month.  There is something so wonderful about finding a personal note in your mail box, like a happy greeting among the boring bills!  I appreciate the extra effort required to write by hand, find a stamp, and make a trip to a mail box.  I know that other people do, too.  I like pulling out the calligraphy pens to make the envelope beautiful, knowing that on the letter’s journey it will bring a smile to many people.

I have trouble parting with my letters from old friends, though.  I have stacks of them around the house, in big envelopes, in bundles tied with string, left under piles of research.  Some special letters are numbered, set into plastic sleeves and stored in binders.  They become research, or at least that what I say to counter the accusations of obsession and anal retentive organizing!  Christmas cards are particularly hard, and I haven’t my mother’s knack of recycling them as gift tags in following years.

A letter is a little message from the past.  One Christmas, I was tidying up when I found a Christmas card under some papers on my sideboard.  I opened it up and had a little cry.  It was a lovely greeting from a childhood neighbour with whom I had visited daily as a girl, and with whom I remained in touch for the rest of my life.  She had passed on two years previously, and this card was like a little message from heaven from my dear Mrs. Hewlett.

Take some time to write a snail mail letter to someone today.  They’ll love it!