Letter writing

This morning on Writers' Almanac on NPR, I heard that today is Lewis Carroll's birthday (born in 1832). What sticks out from the little blurb about him is that he wrote about 97,000 letters in his lifetime. That is impressive.


Letter writing seems to be a lost art. As I grew up, moving around to different Marine bases, I would always see my father sit at the kitchen table each week with the black (manual) typewriter, typing a letter to his mother. I started writing letters to friends when we moved from Quantico, VA to Camp Pendleton, CA when I was seven years old. Ever since then, I have written letters to family and friends. Letter writing is what kept friend NKE and me close when I moved from Japan (when I was 13 years old) and in the ensuing years.

The advent of email greatly decreased my letter-writing. Plus, now my letters are reduced in size to cards. There used to be "stationery" stores, but no longer. Most places that sell writing supplies only have cards for sale.


It is a little sad to see the demise of letters, especially when I think of the old standard--though I must admit that Lewis Carroll must have been at the extreme! Handwritten letters carry the memory of the person who wrote them. I can see someone's handwriting and immediately recognize that loved one! That won't happen with computer generated mail.

When I went through my parents' house after their deaths, I found a notebook full of letters my mother had written her parents when she was in the Marine Corps during WWII. Her mother (my Nana) carefully kept them in this notebook. Such organization benefits me, as a future progeny, and is something I should consider--the cards and letters I've saved are in two drawers, scattered and intermixed.

That's a future project--to organize letters according to their authors: my children, my mother, my husband, my father, and my friends. Some are very special, especially those notes my children wrote, both when learning to write and now as adults.