Forever Penned

The about section on her hinge profile prompted the response to, “What’s the dorkiest thing about you?” Her response, “I collect stamps. I love writing letters, handwritten letters, and sending mail. Greeting cards. I’m obsessed with cards, so much I have a box full of blank cards for any and every occasion that I don’t want to write in and ruin, and they’re too good to send anyone for fear that I won’t find one just like it after it’s gone. I do send some if you’re special enough though.” It is a dorky quality she possesses, but she’s proud of it.

Here she is on a dating app, begrudgingly embracing technology that has replaced the old-fashioned caller and courting experience with an instant swipe right if you like the image and prompt responses on a screen. The screen of your phone. The phone that was once used for calling and conversing, listening and talking with others instead of scrolling and swiping. Another long-lost skill that’s been replaced by technology. She’s grounded by her grandparents, suppose it is from them she acquired her appreciation for old-fashioned, sometimes forgotten skills. Skills like handwriting letters, sending mail with stamps, communicating in the present, calling and courting. Call her an old-soul, but she has a genuine modern-day affinity for practicing such archaic skills.

When she was a child, she received letters and cards in the mail from her grandmother who lived across the state. Sometimes approaching a holiday, those envelopes contained stickers for the season. Or a two-dollar bill if it were February, her birthday month. The young girl would plaster a hand-written note on stationary with the very stickers sent and address an envelope back to her grandmother and pick an artistic stamp, something other than the traditional flag. Forever stamps were not available at that time yet.  There’s just something stimulating about receiving and sending mail when you’re young. When you’re old too. Seeing your name on an envelope with a Miss. before the first name. So fancy, so classy and so special. Proper manners encouraged by her mother, enforced by the same grandmother also ensured that any gift received was met with a hand-written thank you card. It was then that she began her collection of cards and stamps, and she began practicing the admirable habit of hand-written notes, not just for thank-yous but for any occasion.

Long before she was even a thought, in the late 1940’s, her other grandparents met each other at a military dance. Her papa was in the military, and her grandma was a shy only child who worked at the military hospital. Some old-fashioned courting, and later lots of necessary letter writing piqued their interests enough to sustain months and years away from each other living in different cities, but deeply getting to know each other on paper, and ultimately ending up getting married, having kids, and then grandkids. Her sister is the prized-keeper of these infamous handwritten relics back and forth between the two young lovers. It’s challenging trying to decipher the traditional, classic-cursive-slanted penmanship that’s slightly faded on the sheets of softened worn paper. However, their inquiries, love and passion for one another has not faded, nor goes unnoticed when handling the aged paper eighty years after their original exchange. Handwritten letters – a necessary skill in the 1940’s for getting to know one another, express emotions and adoration for each other, and their intentions of spending forever together, signed with a sincerely or my heart is all yours. A skill since replaced by phone calls, faxes, emails, texts, snapchats and facetimes, and the click of a send button. How will the grandchildren of tomorrow be able to look back, touch, feel, witness the love shared between two individuals, when the only modern-day modes of such exchange are filtered snapchats, facetimes and emoji-filled texts?

She’s always been a bit of a free-spirt, wanderer, an adventurer with dreams of filling a classroom wall with postcards of places traveled to throughout her career when she finally retires from software sales to teaching. She’s purchased stamps from other countries, sends herself and others postcards from cities she’s visited. Her flight attendant sister follows suit with the sending of the postcards as she occasionally receives one from the airport cities she’s traveled to. While she has a rather large, never ending collection of stationaries, thank you cards and greeting cards, she still manages to buy two of the same sometimes, allowing her to part ways with one sending it to a lucky recipient from time to time.

She has not ever lived in the same city as her best friend from college since college. Between the two you could produce a tv series chronicling their friendship based on the cards and letters they’ve written to each other over the last twenty-so years. The tv series would highlight bad dating stories, funny kid stories, family updates, celebratory exchanges, favorite foods and recipes, and the eagerness to try new restaurants wherever whenever they’d rendezvous again. Every episode would likely include wine. Her most-favorite gift she received from that friend was when she moved across country for the second time. Her friend handed her seven cards all addressed for separate occasions: For when you’re feeling hungover. For when you’re feeling sad. For when you want to hear something funny. For when you want to celebrate. For when… She almost felt guilty about the growing stack of cards she never sends because of the thoughtfulness of her friend; a card for every occasion in the new city she’d move to. She’d know no one, but she’d have inspiring or encouraging words on demand for any occasion.  It took her six years to open all the cards – she savored every single one and still has them. She’s moved multiple places throughout her life and every time she packs, she’ll find handwritten cards stashed away in drawers, in a purse, in her desk, or tucked between the pages of a stale book on a shelf – her favorite card hiding spot. The good ones go there so not only to be opened upon receipt, but to be stumbled upon during tumultuous times, in need of a break from packing heavy boxes full of books as she prepares for a new chapter, another move.

So, she wears her dorkiness proud. Perhaps it’s the permanently inked example of love, care, gratitude, intrigue, and friendship written on her heart from her grandparents, her sister and her friends that fuels her desire to continue writing letters and mailing cards. The excitement of seeing your name on an envelope, with a wave of ink over the stamp. Something other than coupons or bills stuffed in a mailbox that brings joy and a smile to the receiver. Opening the envelope to see what’s inside, to read the words written, and the ability to read it repeatedly. Because of this, she continues to practice the technology replaced skill, so that her unborn grandchildren can one day experience the very memories she’s been blessed to live by sending and receiving handwritten letters and cards filled with intrigue, emotions, compliments, love and forever remembered stories recalled.