Dear Hand-Written Letter

Please don't go.  I know it seems like everyone's forgotten about you but I haven't.  Oh, I love my email to bits and pieces, but I'll never leave you, lovely Letter, for him.

I type myself an email to get it there now!  It doesn't hold a candle to putting my words on paper and knowing they're on their way to someone, a real person driving the truck or flying the plane to get them to the destination I've picked.  The San Francisco postman who delivers mail to my brother and my gorgeous (seriously-even though she's only three, women o' the world, you'd be envious of her hair and skin), the mail carrier in Northville, Michigan who drops my cards off to my Grandma, the woman I've actually seen because she used to deliver the mail to me in my old neighborhood, now popping it into the box of the friends I miss.  I close my eyes and think of all those words taking a seat and listening to the flight attendant give the safety belt and emergency exit speech.  No smoking.  That won't be cool cuz my words surely wanted to smoke.

Oh, the email.  I type out an email and that sure gets my thoughts out of my head.  My husband, a classic two-fingered-typist marvels at my lightening speed and wonders what I could possibly have to say so fast.  The thing is, I'm pretty shy, and it's just so much easier for me to say what I have to say with the written word.  Then I don't walk around all day flogging myself for some spoken gaff.  Besides that, I've been a divorce attorney for 19 years and I live in a small town.  I'm so used to keeping everyone's secrets and the nicest person here can be a two faced gossip, pumping me for information.  I just walk away, sometimes without saying anything.  Perhaps that's why Anne _______came into my husband's store the other day and when he told her we'd gotten married,  she marveled, "but you're so outgoing and she's just, well, standoffish I guess I'd say."  Wow, Anne.  You're a real wordsmith.  Tell it like it is baby.  But I digress.  You, having been the repository of so many tangents, Letter,  that you surely already knew I'd be off on one in my letter to you, as well.

Emails, though, dear Letter, just require the touch of a button and the message contained is off into "cyberspace."  Where is cyberspace?  It doesn't sound like any place I'd like to visit and whomever the recipient of my letter, it's certainly not on the way to her house.  Again.  Don't get me wrong.  The convenience of being able to shoot an email around to ten people at once narrowing down a time we can all get to my mom and da's for my sister's birthday or where my committee will meet for our Thursday nooner is unrivaled.  It's very efficient to be able to say to a colleague, "I'm sending you the research I found attached...you've got it?  Ok, let's figure out if that's gonna work."  Really, there's nothing like it.  However, no one ever hand-writes the idiotic "wassup" or "ttul" or "wtf" or "btw" or the hundreds of other letter combos my step-son uses in favor of in person, let alone actual written communication.  You can pen a sweet sketch in the margin of a letter, and no "emoticon" can ever have the same effect on the reader.  The effect on me when I see one of those little yellow faces is a sharp pain over my left eye that has staying power.  Wort of all, I'm ashamed to say I've used them.  Guilty.  Really, now.  If you're too old to wear Converse sneakers written on with a glitter pen, quit with the emoticons.  It's one of my New Year's resolutions.

That's the point, though, isn't it Letter, my friend.  It happens so fast it's like shooting someone in the back.  You, Letter, would never do something like that.  It's not just the writing.  I must admit that I'm addicted to stationary.  For some women, the heart quickens at the sight of Prada.  For me, the heft and texture of the perfect robin's egg blue card stock inspires.  I hold it in my hand and run the tips of my fingers over the surface the same way some must fondle the collar of a silk shirt.  The perfect fit doesn't do a thing for me, but a heavy envelope with a beautifully patterned lining just sends me, Letter Darling.  

During periods of  insomnia (basically three weeks out of each month), I've tried to stop pacing the house or cleaning it because my mom gets angry and tells me to "stop getting out of bed and try shutting your eyes once in a while."  I want to be able to be at least partially honest with her when she asks if I took her advice (which isn't really advice because if you don't do it, she accuses you of not listening), so I've taken to doing a little something I like to call "window shopping."  I'll go to www.crane.com.  I'll meander through the process of choosing a font, a color, a paper and a border.  Then I'll take my time tweaking things until I have my monogram just right.  I'll fill my cart with elegant yet simple personalized flat note cards-oh, they're so wonderful I'd better get them in three colors.  Then I hop on over to www.thestationarystudio.com for funky stationary and soon enough, my cart is full of "Silo Leaves Teal Foldover Notecards" and "Midnight Beads Notecards.

Then I just turn off the computer without ever actually "checking out," aka paying for anything.

At walletpop.com, a site that advises visitors on personal finance (seeing this at all was nothing other than sheer accident-don't ever come here looking for advice on personal finances because I can't even balance my checkbook-seriously), I found an amazing series entitled "Top 25 Things Vanishing From America."  When I saw that Number Nine was "The hand-written letter," I was choked up.  Do not bury your head in the sand, Letter.  You must be brave or who can help?

In 2004, half a trillion texts were sent.  Imagine what 2011 holds in store as far as increase.

"So where amongst this gorge of gabble is there room for the elegant, polite hand-written letter?" Tom Barlow asks.  Still, he opines, "Nothing expresses respect for another like a hand-written letter...[it] calls us to a time more deliberate, elegant and gracious."

"Deliberate" is a great word.  I used to get a huge kick out of the sign off my attorney friend, Mark, used for his business letters.  We'd have a case against each other and he'd write a letter to me threatening to flay my client for her unforgivable behavior, how dare she, and her inability to keep her seat during her deposition shows her total lack of class and my sorely lacking client control.  Basically, it was a "you better look out, cuz I'm comin' for you" letter written solely for the client's benefit (cover your ears Letter...I just need to get this off my mind-legal letters and legal writing in general are among the top five reasons I'll never practice law again...and just so you know, even the most offensive lawyer joke is true.  Every last one of them).   Each of these letters would be signed:

I Remain

Very Truly Yours

Mark___________.

Awwwwww.

I'd tease him and say "do you wish to 'remain,' as in my thoughts hearing you tell me my client is 'going down!' or are you telling me you're 'very truly [mine]' as in 'my worst nightmare'?"

It's not often we can say we did a truly good thing in our lives.  You, though, Letter, were the medium for one of my few truly good life acts.  My grandmother will tell you her love affair with my grandfather was the "greatest of all time and we never spoke a harsh word to each other."  When he died, she was heart brokenly lonesome.  I was living in another city across the country at the time and wouldn't return home for three months.  I made up my mind that I'd write to her every day until I could see her again.  I never told anyone what I was doing, just started writing until it all caught up and she was receiving what was essentially my paying witness to her grief each and every day.  Her daughters, my aunts, would call me at least once a week and tell me that going to the mailbox was the one thing they could honestly say she looked forward to and some days, they thought it might have been the reason she got out of bed.  Even now, over twenty years later, she gets a tear in her eye when she tells me she didn't know what she would have done without those letters to look forward to.

So you see, Letter, my beautiful friend, though your use among many has lessened or disappeared, you still have a power that no other communication can ever have.  You put the very words of one-angry, loving, hurt, lonesome, uplifting, admiring, and all the rest-into the hands of another.  The paper, the ink, the stamp; the physical.  My mom has neat packets of letters tied with red ribbon she's kept for over forty years.  They are you, Letter, in the form of the love my da wrote to her when he was away at college.  I've never read one but I've held the little bundles and fingered the ribbons and the weight of the words and paper has feelings:  a beating heart, longing, anticipation.

So, Letter, I hope you know how much I appreciate you in your purest form and that you understand that I'll never abandon you.  Please don't think me disloyal as I write what I will always think of as you, my Letter, here.  Finally, know I won't give up my accumulation and love of stationary, the thoughtfully deliberate penned missive, the stamp chosen for its beauty (why pick the plain one with the flag when there are so many fabulous choices and they all cost the same) and the bittersweet sound of you hitting bottom and living, just temporarily, with your brothers and sisters.  I imagine you talk much with one another of the trips you're about to take.

Sincerely Yours.