May 8, 2008 issue
Mother’s Day Is Sunday
Stumped for a Gift?—Think About Writing Her a Letter
Story by Kathleen McFadden
When was the last time you wrote someone a letter—an actual letter on paper that you write with a pen, put in an envelope and then drop in a mailbox?
When was the last time you received a letter? These days, it’s hard to imagine getting anything in your mailbox other than bills, sales circulars, credit card offers and your latest Netflix movie.
But back in the day—and it wasn’t all that long ago—folks didn’t have cell phones, instant messenger or email. Long distance was wicked expensive, and so to keep in touch with distant friends and family, lots of people actually wrote letters to them. Even better, the recipients of those letters wrote back.
Checking the mail was fun in those days because the day’s delivery might just contain a long, newsy letter that you could enjoy at your leisure and reread whenever you wanted.
While most of those epistolary efforts were far from literary masterpieces and won’t be collected in books for others to enjoy—unlike the letters of famous folk such as Abraham Lincoln, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway—they without doubt demonstrated a higher level of literacy and thought than today’s cell phone text messages.
Written communication suffered when it became instant communication, subject to abbreviations of all sorts, grammatical deficiencies and remarkable spelling variations. And receiving an email or text message just doesn’t carry the same thrill as receiving a real letter.
Letters gave people an opportunity to slow down, to reflect, to share and to establish strong bonds. These days, letters are more personal than ever because they take effort and time and because so few people write them any longer. Letters are a way to reach out and connect in our increasingly disconnected world.
This Mother’s Day, why not help revive the lost art of the letter by writing your mom? Depending on her age, she may remember the days when letters were just as likely to come with the daily mail as the junk you throw away. Regardless of her age, though, she’ll be delighted that you took the effort to write. And he beauty of writing your mom is that you don’t have to worry about being embarrassed—she’ll be thrilled no matter what.
To get started, pick up some nice stationery—believe it or not, nice papers for letter writing are still available—and when you sit down to write, use a decent pen. Take the time to make your writing legible; penmanship is another art that’s rapidly disappearing.
Your letter topics can include what’s going on in your life, your memories and your relationship with your mom. You can use the letter as an opportunity to explore your feelings—about the world, your relationships or yourself.
You can ramble. Your sentences don’t have to be error free. It’s connection you’re after, not perfection.
Who knows? You may find that you like writing letters—it’s a form of journaling after all, and journaling is good for the soul—and want to keep it up.
Your mom will think that decision is a dandy one, and she may even reciprocate and write you back.
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