Feb. 11, 2008
A lost art?
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Recently dear hubby took on the task of cleaning out the storage area in our laundry room. Y'know, the stuff that you're sure you'll use but wind up forgetting for years, then finally throwing away once you come to your senses. Anyway, he came across an old box full of correspondence from my college days. In it were letters from my parents, friends, and several from my dear grandfather. Pop-Pop and I shared a sense of humor that was best tickled by Reader's Digest anecdotes. He would clip them out and tape the assorted quips to a sheet of paper, along with a letter written in fantastic penmanship for which he had won awards. In it he would give an account of the latest ministry he and Mom-Mom were involved in at their little country church, tell stories about their black labrador, or write about their recent trip to visit my parents on their migratory route to sunny Florida for the winter. As I thumbed through the letters in that box I felt like a college student all over again. I remember checking my P.O. box (a daily, often futile mission) and finding to my delight a letter addressed in that familiar scrawl. I treasured every letter I got from home, but his were extra special. I'd like to think I'm as tech savvy as the next geek's wife, but while email is handy, free, and instant, there is nothing in my mind that could ever replace the joy of receiving bona fide "snail mail", as it has come to be called. Even my kids, who don't know anyone their age who can write yet, ask almost every day if they got any mail. One would think after hundreds of "no's" they would be deterred, but the hope is still there. Eventually birthday cards do come! When my grandparents moved to Florida and their health began to decline, I thought it high time to return the favor. I began writing them at least a couple of times a year. So what did I write to my grandparents, and my grandfather in particular, when it was apparent that his days on earth were few? I told him how much I appreciated and loved him. How thankful I was for the spiritual legacy he and Mom-Mom passed down to my mother and to me and my siblings. I told him that he made a difference in this world, and in my life, and in the lives of his great-grandchildren, whose pictures I included. I thanked him for his service in the military. I told him things he needed to hear--things that don't get deleted in an email after they're read, but are kept in a dresser drawer to be found and reread again and again. My grandfather is gone now, and my lonely grandmother spends her days in the silence of an empty apartment. Once while thumbing through my latest issue of Birds and Blooms (a magazine dedicated to gardening and bird-watching) I read something that inspired me to write her and include the magazine. She enjoyed it and my mother said it did her good to receive the mail. I realized then that I had a new campaign of letter writing. There's many things she needs to know, too, and I need to tell her. She also needs to feel that familiar flutter in her chest when she opens her mailbox to find a letter...a real, bona fide letter. In the email world where capitalization is optional and atrocious spelling considered acceptable, we have a generation of young people who would rather play a video game or hang out at the mall than express themselves creatively through writing. Perhaps I am a little biased. I did, after all, major in creative writing in college. I am a bit old fashioned too, I suppose. But writing and reading (another skill that has been replaced by TV and the internet) are two essentials we would do well to cultivate in our lives, and in the lives of our children. Writing, in particular, inspires creativity, trains our brain to focus our thinking, and gives us an appropriate venue for emotional expression. There's nothing I enjoy more than reading a new "book" my seven year old has created. He recently wrote one about a swing, and while it was difficult muddling through the misspelled words and run on sentences, the story itself was clever and creative, and I loved it. Often times he will balk at writing when it is part of an assignment, and I try to be careful not to squelch his desire to write by making it a boring, dry, mandatory thing. I want to cultivate his desire to write, not make him hate it. It'll be a delicate balance of discipline and freedom, but my ultimate goal is that he will see writing as something enjoyable and worthwhile. A lost art? I hope never. |
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Feb. 15, 2008 - I just love
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