The Letter

 

You know how I write my kids or my grandkids usually a letter every month at least I try and I do pretty good. For some reason I've latched onto this concept of how important it is to write letters, keep a journal document this space you hold in life. If I were to leave a legacy to my offspring it would be the materials I've written down either by my own hand, typed or dictated with Dragon. More importantly I've felt that it's important to convey to my grandkids the importance of the US mail services. Even as expensive as stamps are becoming it still a great deal as far as sending written communication. The written letter is an artifact, something left behind once written, easily destroyed usually but surprisingly a piece of paper couldn't do her many traumas and still display markings. I'm always amazed when I find something that my mother or my father has written and I take the time to sit down and read it again and realize these are the exact thoughts there thinking at the moment they put them down with a typed or laboriously handwritten in pencil on a small personal notebook.

I find writing a letter even to grandkids as well as regular kids is like throwing the proverbial note in a bottle out onto the ocean and just see what happens. Of course the chances of ever seen not bottle come back to you with another note from somebody who would found the bottle is pretty infinitesimal. So I'm always shocked (and I really shouldn't be) when I opened my mailbox and see a letter addressed to me from some little person or at least younger person younger than me. It just amazes me. Even this week I got a text for my daughter indicating that my grandson Asher had written a letter in response to a letter I sent him. I was delighted Bridget was so excited that I should have a letter she could not wait for me to receive the document in the mail. She sent me a picture of the letter The letter was darling. So I knew the letter was coming and I knew exactly what the letter said but I couldn't wait to receive the document, to open up my mailbox pull the letter out and then nonchalantly wave it in front of the faces of the other seniors who just gotten insurance and funeral plan advertisement. I had senior “gold”! Some kid or one had thought enough about me as a person to sit down and write a letter – –Sounds like part of the lyrics from a Rod Stewart melody. I was getting a little worried when I had not gotten the letter in a couple days after the conversation with my daughter. I was beginning to wonder if she had forgotten to mail the document. I'm going to reply now in the next day or so and I plan to insert a couple of interesting looking forever stamps. I like to choose my stamps which means a trip to the post office and see what they have in the big envelope or folder of current stamps. I don't know if Asher will feel empowered when he gets five stamps that he knows that he can put on the envelope and send is very thoughts out into the world which will stay in the world until that piece of paper is no more …