Writing letters

I can't remember the last time I wrote a letter. Not an e-mail message, or even a thank you note, but an actual, honest-to-goodness letter. One hand written on pretty notepaper and mailed in an envelope, telling someone I haven't seen in a while about recent events and catching them up on family news.

(I can't remember the last time I got one, either.)

My ten-year-old daughter has hooked up with a few pen pals this summer, daughters of other MomWriters who expressed an interest in exchanging letters, and she's having a ball with it! At first she was disappointed that these pen pals were not of the electronic variety, but when she received her first snail mail letter, she did a 180.

She now runs out to get the mail every day. She's so excited when she sees her name on envelopes postmarked in Virginia, California or even just a bit downstate here in New York. As soon as she finishes reading a letter, she sits down, writes her response, addresses and stamps the envelope and brings it out to the mailbox, popping up the red flag so the mail lady knows to stop to pick it up.

I'm just as thrilled as my daughter about this whole turn of events. I get to relive part of my childhood vicariously through her. :-)

I had several pen pals as a kid. Through some school program (I think), I had pen pals in Georgia, England and Germany. I loved writing to them, asking them questions about their lives, learning about their families, friends and schools. And they were just as curious about me.

My cousin and I also used to write volumes to each other. Each letter was never less than ten pages...front and back. We'd decorate the envelopes so the mailing address was barely discernible. The post office must have loved handling our letters. :-)

After my aunt died a few years ago, my cousin was clearing her old home to make way for its new owners. Behind the refrigerator she found one of the letters I had mailed to her so many years before. "I laughed so hard, I cried," she wrote in a note she sent to me along with the old letter. "Can you believe how much we found to write about? Funny thing is, I remember ALL of this as if we wrote these yesterday."

I remember it all, too. And it still makes me smile.

I hope my daughter gets to experience "ALL of this," too, creating a few special memories that will last through her lifetime, as well.

And maybe, one day, she'll get to relive them, too, however vicariously, through her own child.