On letter writing

Did you write a lot of letters when you were a kid? I moved around a little bit when I was younger, so letters from friends were extremely important to me, to help me feel connected. I kept pretty much every letter I received, including some very random ones from people I’d met once or friends that sent me short notes in the post, just a few lines long. Sometimes I’d even keep notes that I exchanged with friends in class!

When my parents moved over to the UK a few years ago, they brought over a huge box of mine, full to the brim with letters. They stayed at their house for ages, safely in their loft, until quite recently, when they passed the full lot over to me. This past weekend, I finally went through them all!

Some, I’m afraid, I did decide to throw away. There were the four (FOUR!) letters I received from Andrew, a French boy I kissed one New Year’s Eve. He had long hair and we never met again (I think I was 16 or 17), but apparently we kept up quite a friendly penpalship (I’m making that a word). Andrew, I’m sorry, but your letters about your maths class didn’t make the grade. Most, I’ve decided to keep.

It has been so nice going through the letters. There were too many to really read every single one (although I will definitely do that one day), and more don’t have anything more exciting than what the writer got up to that day. But they are just such a great snapshot into my life, and my friends’ lives, when we were young. And so much effort went into each one. Not so much in the writing, but in the decorating, with stickers and elaborate drawings and funny jokes in the margins, and sometimes even in the reading – one was written entirely in code! And the stationery was so fun – I got Garfield paper, handmade envelopes from magazines, Lisa Frank…

With the move to email, it’s nice that in theory you can be in touch more often (although I don’t think that’s actually how it’s worked out, at least not for me), but there’s just something so nice about receiving an actual letter in the post, with a cool stamp, and decorated envelope and quick note inside. Now I pretty much never get letters, which makes me a little sad, although thankfully not too many of my friends or family have moved over to e-cards…

Did you send a lot of letters as a kid? Did you have a penpal? I kind of want to start writing real letters to people again!