Love this prompt. There's something magical about holding a letter in your hands and recognizing the squiggly letters and slang as something that dropped from your friend's hand. Thank you!!! Cheers to penpals!
In my top dresser drawer, I keep cards and letters from loved ones, including the letters from my son’s first love—for years, we wrote back and forth when she moved away for college. It was also the best way to reconnect and stay connected with my mom when she had early stages of dementia—no technology to fumble and forget, just beautiful cards, pens, and our hearts on the paper.
Just love this prompt and attention given to writing letters again, Jenn. Like Sarah, I have so many letters and cards from people over the years adorning various desks and tables around my home. But also, just a week ago, a friend asked if she could write to me while I was away in California (where I still am and will be till mid-June), and I was delighted! So now I have a little pen pal for the next few weeks.
There are few things as delicious as waiting for a letter to arrive in the mailbox, retrieving it, sitting down outside near a tree, and reading it slowly, and then again and again. One of those experiences not many take time for anymore but so intimate. I love looking at someone's handwriting, how it often reflects the writer's personality. So much more personal than a text.
It is delicious, and so intimate! I feel like it's hard to pin down why it feels so much more special than a text or an email, and maybe it's because it's more than one thing: the handwriting, the fact that the letter has passed from their hands to yours, that you can carry it around in a pocket, that it's its own object (not mixed in with a billion other texts or emails on a device).
Oh how I miss it! I still do it sometimes, and once in a while am on the receiving end. But nothing like the early '00s when I lived aboard ships and you could actually find the mailbox easily in every port.
Love this prompt. There's something magical about holding a letter in your hands and recognizing the squiggly letters and slang as something that dropped from your friend's hand. Thank you!!! Cheers to penpals!
In my top dresser drawer, I keep cards and letters from loved ones, including the letters from my son’s first love—for years, we wrote back and forth when she moved away for college. It was also the best way to reconnect and stay connected with my mom when she had early stages of dementia—no technology to fumble and forget, just beautiful cards, pens, and our hearts on the paper.
An email or a DM can never replicate that feeling!
Just love this prompt and attention given to writing letters again, Jenn. Like Sarah, I have so many letters and cards from people over the years adorning various desks and tables around my home. But also, just a week ago, a friend asked if she could write to me while I was away in California (where I still am and will be till mid-June), and I was delighted! So now I have a little pen pal for the next few weeks.
There are few things as delicious as waiting for a letter to arrive in the mailbox, retrieving it, sitting down outside near a tree, and reading it slowly, and then again and again. One of those experiences not many take time for anymore but so intimate. I love looking at someone's handwriting, how it often reflects the writer's personality. So much more personal than a text.
It is delicious, and so intimate! I feel like it's hard to pin down why it feels so much more special than a text or an email, and maybe it's because it's more than one thing: the handwriting, the fact that the letter has passed from their hands to yours, that you can carry it around in a pocket, that it's its own object (not mixed in with a billion other texts or emails on a device).
Oh how I miss it! I still do it sometimes, and once in a while am on the receiving end. But nothing like the early '00s when I lived aboard ships and you could actually find the mailbox easily in every port.
handwritten letters retrieved from a port stop... that sounds so worth savoring!