If you were very fortunate, you had women in your life who practiced the art form of letter writing. They gifted you with the delicate, sometimes hard-learned via the crack-of-a-ruler-against-knuckles, flowing script that delivered all the news and celebrated your accomplishments.
It is a somewhat lost art form, therefore a lost connection. We wait no time at all today to write and respond at the speed of thought, frequently without any thought at all. But those women, with their mundane family updates, talk of the weather, simple shared wishes and dreams, were the glue that kept you connected to their community.
The personalized style of handwriting sometimes matched the personality. Sometimes it was wilder than you expected and caused you to consider what secret story this woman might have. The times you brought letters to others to help work out a word as though you were translating hieroglyphics that would unlock a mystery.
Getting those letters was a cause for mild excitement. The sense that you were remembered in a way that the person writing to you had taken time. They validated you. They valued you. In one or two pages of correspondence about the how the garden was doing, and passed along hellos from elementary school "friends" whose names you'd forgotten, you knew you were loved.
They taught me that the simple act of writing a letter by hand can be a treasured gift, a life line when feeling alone, and the sweetest remembrance of people I have cherished.
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