Written by Marianne Mansfield
A letter came for me last week. I was about to toss it aside, assuming a computer-generated address disguised to look human. On closer inspection, though, I realized it wasn’t. The envelope was addressed to me in an oddly familiar hand. For those of you who don’t get that last phrase, it means I recognized the writing.
I glanced at the return address, which jostled a vague memory, as well.
Curious, I tore it open. Out fell…a hand-written letter. Not just a note, but a two-page, both-sides-covered letter from my very first best friend. This was the friend who cut my bangs the day before we began first grade together. I thought I looked smashing. My mother was not as impressed. This was the friend with whom I appeared in most of our first communion pictures, as well as confirmation and graduation from 8th grade at St. Mary School. We stayed close in high school, sharing a locker at various points. We walked together down the aisle at commencement in 1969.
Our paths drifted apart by the time college came and went, although I do remember attending her marriage to a dentist. We exchanged Christmas cards for several years, each of hers going to the same New Jersey address that had stirred my memory this day.
I’d heard through the grapevine (OK, full disclosure, it was on Facebook) that her father had recently passed away. Her father and mine, who has been gone since 1992, were good buddies back in the day. Although my father was much older than hers, they seemed to have a common bond of some sort. After my parents moved away and my father became ill, he corresponded with her father, and each visited the other when it was possible. I was always grateful that their friendship endured to the end of my father’s life.
When I heard that my friend’s father had died, I felt compelled to express some of this to her. Because she isn’t a Facebook user, I was forced (?) to resort to the old-fashioned method of communication. I wrote her a note. At first it was painstaking. My handwriting has fallen into a state of disrepair in direct proportion to the speed with which I keyboard. I’d lose a thought as fast as I had it because hand-writing is not as fast as typing. Yet, slowly, I started to recall the pleasure of forming words on paper, of pausing between thoughts to think sentences through from beginning to end. I told her a bit about my life, my family, my causes. I asked about hers.
And on this day, I opened a letter and learned about her life with the dentist, her children, their children and her plans for retirement.
The value of letter writing as a form of communication tracks with an article I read recently by one of my new favorite writers, Ed Kociela: http://thesouthwestjournal.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/news-nostalgia-the-slow-death-of-the-salt-lake-tribune-and-hard-reporting/. Among many others, one of the points he examines is the detrimental impact of omnipresent social media on the reporting of factual information.
A similar argument can be made, I think, about personal communication. Of course, texting is quick. Facebook, with which I am unfortunately very familiar, and Twitter, Instagram – with which I am not – have their place. Quick, efficient and, to a point, unregulated.
But letter writing? Is it doomed to become a lost art? Is it too slow, too labor intensive, too time-consuming to be of value?
Not if I have a say. It is all of the above, and none of the above. And it definitely is an art, one that should not be lost. Like good, tough, hard-fact reporting, writing a letter can be intense, personal and full-hearted. The act demands a high degree of concentration, conscientiousness of decision-making, and the delight of choosing which words work and which don’t. Letter-writing, I would argue, is a more worthy form of communication between two people. Because it is so seldom done these days, I would also argue that it is among the most precious.
Enough for now.
I’m going to write a letter to my friend.
I’ll keep you posted.
