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January 29, 2007

29¢ History

This weekend I began sorting through all of my old letters. At one point, these lived in date order inside of an old suitcase, however when we moved I placed them all in a large box. Of course, everything shifted inside and when I opened it up on Saturday, it was clear that the letters were now one jumbled mess. After some thought, I decided to re-sort them by author and, in the process of sifting, I began to read the letters. Some dated back to 1988, though most were written between 1992 and 1998, or the summer of my sophomore year in high school and my senior year in college.

Here's the thing about letters- every facet about them portrays an element of personal history. MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, emails and blogs are nothing as compared to the impact and permanence of physical, tangible mail. Why? Because none of them will survive the true test of time. I have no idea what type of technology will be around that might enable us to reach back into our digital archives ten or twenty years from now, but I do know that my twenty-five years of paper letters are just as I left them the day they arrived in my post office box. The date and location from which they were mailed are stamped across the front of the envelopes; the cost of the stamp is further evidence of the era that they were sent.

Inside their casings, the actual letters are filled with various types of handwriting- the bubble letters of thirteen year old girls, the teacher-script of my mother and adult scrawl of college friends at a time when email was just starting to take hold. Most of the letters are long. They describe the mundane in detail. They also illustrate friends' lives in a way that most email correspondence that I now have do not. I cannot remember the experiences that I penned and sent to them and I probably do not want to see them, ten, fifteen years passed and I would assume that those who wrote to me probably feel the same way.

Still, my collection of letters holds something far more important than a decorated envelope and letters detailing moments passed and now forgotten. They are artifacts of both friendships and human development. The words illustrate small slivers of adolescence and early adulthood. They are pieces of people who meant or mean the world to me. I cannot think of any other medium that illustrates this more poignantly than a written letter.

This week I am going to buy some stationery.

Additional Story: When I was born, my grandmother, who was dealing with the death of my grandfather, gave my mother a pile of pre-stamped postcards for her to keep in touch. For several months, my mother wrote down her experiences with me, detailing my development in tiny increments. When my grandmother died, these postcards were among the things that were found in her house. Now my mother has them again and they are, aside from memory, the most accurate and detailed accounts my existence, not to mention her entry into motherhood. When Alexis and I decide it is time to start a family, I plan to do the exact same thing. Hopefully, I will write these notes to my mother on paper, just as she did, and it can be a tradition.

Posted by callalillie at January 29, 2007 5:01 AM | Introspect

COMMENTS

Posted by: kmkat at January 29, 2007 10:44 AM

Posted by: corie at January 29, 2007 12:18 PM

Posted by: Kevin Walsh at January 29, 2007 12:46 PM

Posted by: corie at January 29, 2007 12:49 PM

Posted by: Sarah at January 29, 2007 2:59 PM