A letter from the heart

When was the last time you sat down to write – OK, type – a letter? I don’t mean one of those pro forma letters of authority for someone to pick up your document or package. I don’t mean a business letter either, terse and cold and not more than three paragraphs.

I mean an honest-to-goodness letter – what is called a friendly letter (do schools still teach the different types of letters, parts of a letter and other such mundane but basic stuff?) – that starts with “Dear (or My dear or Dearest or variations thereof) —” and runs to more than a page, hopefully written on nice stationery.

Today, technology has greatly revolutionized the way we communicate, and that’s largely a good thing. What would we do without SMS, without text blasts, without tweets? Hard to imagine that not too long ago, within my lifetime, such terms were not in our vocabulary – when tweet was what a bird does and blasts made you cover your ears. I smile every time I recall nine-year-old Marcus asking me, in all seriousness, “Auntie, during your time, did you have telephones?” and how difficult it was explaining to him the concept of a rotary dial that could not send text messages.

But much as a neanderthal like me loves technology and the convenience and efficiency of communication it offers, I have to admit to a nostalgia for letter writing. I don’t know if anybody waits for the arrival of the postman anymore these days, but I remember the anticipation of what we would find in the mail box on our gate after he comes around and rings the doorbell – a letter for me from my cousin in the States perhaps, or a letter from China for my mother or, best of all, a letter from my pen pal?

Pen pals were all the rage when I was growing up. I had two pen pals for many years, one a daughter of my mother’s friend living in New Jersey and the other a guy from France, but I can’t remember where or how I found him. Letters took over a week to cross the ocean, so it was at least a good two weeks before I got an answer to my letter. I got an idea of what winter was like from their letters, and shared with them what living in a compound with grandma and aunts and uncles and lots of cousins was like.

Back in those days you wrote carefully, on stationery with matching envelopes, and you got the nicest stamps the post office had to offer, so your pen pals could collect the stamps too. I still have the triangular and diamond-shaped stamps my French pen pal sent.

Letter writing comes to mind as most of the world will celebrate Valentine’s this week. Love letters are among the most precious letters, kept and treasured, read over and over. The love letter in this issue will, however, not be sent by postal service, but it is a most precious and valuable letter – from loving a father to his daughter, sent from one heart to another.