LETTERS HOME

Have you noticed that people don't write letters anymore?  In this day of computers with E-mail, text messaging, and cell phones, no one writes letters.  I confess, I'm one of those people who hates to write letters, but loves to receive them.  I also don't like to throw away letters, especially from family.  It just doesn't seem right.  I have every letter that my mother or father (and probably every other family member) has ever sent me...bulging out of manila envelopes, shoe boxes, and old purses that should have been thrown away years ago.  They are in no particular order, either by date or by sender, but somehow, these letters are like a timeline, a record of who was doing what, and when.  There are letters I received as a teenager from friends (and even a few I wrote myself and never sent for one reason or another.)  Those I read with amazement as I find out how different a person I am now than that young girl who once talked about nothing but where I wanted to go that Saturday night.  Then there are the letters that I received from home after I had set out on my own.  I can read about my Dad planting the spring garden, visits from my nieces and nephews, my brother and his wife wallpapering my parent's bedroom, and family dinners and vacations without me.  But somehow, I could be there, because someone took the time to sit down and write about it.  By writing that letter, they didn't know it...but they included me.  The other day I was reading through some old letters and I found one from my grandmother (one I had not remembered ever reading although I'm sure I must have.)  It was written shortly after my moving away from home and she was telling me all about everything that was going on there.  It was then that I realized that she had actually touched this piece of paper all those years ago, held it in her hands, wrote each word carefully in her own handwriting, sealed the letter and licked the stamp which now still holds her DNA.  If she had e-mailed me, those words would have been long gone and forgotten.  At the click of a mouse, they would have disappeared forever.  Holding that letter in my hands, I had something that meant so much more now than when I first received it.  I had a piece of the past..a family treasure.  Letters are something that you can touch, and smell, and feel.  They hold perfume and tears and dreams....and love.  They can bring back memories and stir up old feelings.  They have the power to make us happy or sad.  We should learn to create more of them before they go by the wayside.  I know that someday, handwritten letters will be a thing of the past...laughed at and mused about by just about everyone.  That's when I will pull out one of my boxes and show my great grandchildren something they have never seen before.....a letter.