Pen to Page

  Who knew that an unremarkable Tuesday evening could be so enjoyable?  Last night after dinner, Mom, Little Sister, and I curled up in a great big bed with mugs full of warm mint chocolate chip pudding to watch an old film.  The best part of the evening, however, was the chance it gave me sit and catch up on a few letters that were waiting to be written.

  Surely, there aren't many things in life better than pouring your heart into a few old-fashioned letters.  It's one of those things that makes me sigh and ask myself, Why don't I do this more?  Forgive me for sounding a little like your grandmother (more on that later), but what is sweeter or more cherished than a handwritten note? 

  My affair with correspondence began long ago. As children, my grandmother required my sisters and I to promptly send handwritten thank-you notes after every gift we received from her. (No thank you note meant no present on the next special occasion - not an empty threat.)  And because my grandmother lives far, far away, these thank-you notes slowly morphed into chronicles of what was happening in life.  Thus, my letter-writing proficiency was born.

  The story continues after I completed the third grade. At the time, I lived in northern Italy and there I met some of the my sweetest friends.  When we moved away from one another that summer, we began a long catalogue of mail back and forth. Those girls are still some of my closest friends, and I fully believe that the letters we wrote kept us together. I still have the notes we sent to one another, kept in a box positively bursting with evidence and mementos of one my greatest friendships.

  Throughout most of that post-filled time, I revered being a sender of letters.  I loved filling a blank page with flowing cursive, stamping the envelope, running out to the mailbox before the postman arrived.  It was only in the past year- my first year at college- that I truly learned of the joy that being a receiver of letters brings. While I was away at school, Little Sister faithfully wrote me letters throughout the entire year.  I learned, from her, to appreciate the tangibility of letters- vessels of home that could be held, loved, taped to the wall. 

  And so it is an accumulation of these occurrences that has made me the letter-writing advocate that I am today.  Fortunately for me, many friends are spending their summers working at camps and are in need of new pen pals.

  
 It looks like I'll be needing to stop by the post office to pick up a few more stamps.