You've Got Mail

Greeting cards, handmade envelopes and engraved letterhead are to me what diamonds are to Elizabeth Taylor; I can't get enough of them. The kind of paper doesn't matter -- linen rag, recycled grocery sacks, rice stalks, vellum -- they're all beautiful to me.

Handling fine paper and writing on it with a good ink pen is a pleasurable sensation, the end result of carefully selecting birthday, wedding, birth, sympathy and thank you notes to match the person to whom they're intended, as well as the occasion being recognized.

My hand-written correspondence, too often sent on one-of-a-kind cards that cost more than a tuna sandwich, reflects my personality and conveys my taste. I want recipients to know I took the extra time to write, address, stamp and mail my letter because I value them and our relationship. Nurturing such connections has been important to me since I received my first postcards and letters, sent by grandfathers who worked on the railroad and mailed hasty greetings from such exotic stopovers as Butte, Mont., and Chicago. 

Before two Washington, D.C., postal workers inhaled anthrax on the job in October and subsequently died, 680 million pieces of mail were delivered in the United States every day. Now the specter of terrorism taints the processing of baby shower invitations and divorce decrees, love letters and Christmas catalogs. Experts predict e-mails and commercial courier services will prevail over the post office, making hand-written correspondence as outmoded as quill pens and sealing wax.

That reduction would be a shame. Receiving personal mail directly from the postman's pouch has always made me feel special. Tucked away in my cedar chest, along with a lifetime of other treasures, is a year's worth of letters from Vietnam, written by an old boyfriend I haven't seen since. There are also valentines from my husband; a sole surviving example of my father's handwriting, scrawled on a vacation postcard; an engraved announcement of my wedding; and the last birthday card from my terminally ill mother, her shaky handwriting expressing her love.
Letters have illuminated our way since the first word was written, and are preserved in everything from hope chests to great libraries all over the world. 
"Copy your forefathers, for work is carried out through knowledge," wrote a king of Heracleopolis in about 2135 B.C., to his son and successor, Merikare, "(for) see, their words endure in writing ... "
Without their letters the wisdom passing back and forth from Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would be lost. "I agree with you," wrote Jefferson to Adams in 1813, "that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."

And from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his letter from the Birmingham jail in August 1963, the world learned that: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Anne Frank couldn't send letters while hiding from the Nazis in 1944, so she wrote in her diary: "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

What if she'd typed that message in an e-mail and the recipient had hit the "delete" button?

The impersonal efficiency of a disembodied voice announcing "You've Got Mail!" is appropriate for quick business communication and casual chit-chat, but nothing will displace the thrill of being handed a creamy, stiff envelope with a colorful stamp and my name gracefully written in cursive across the front.

Holidays bring out the best and worst in letter writers: the best pen heartfelt greetings, the worst send e-mails directing me to a web site where a jerky stick figure is singing "Jingle Bells" in my honor. Such prefabricated greetings have bred tolerance, though. Now I even welcome three-page, single-spaced, photocopied Christmas letters, as long as they're signed. 

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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