April is considered National Card and Letter Writing Month, which I didn’t know until recently reading an article by Courtney Zanosky where she highlighted not just the month’s celebration but also an initiative called Write_On that promotes handwritten letters because of how joyful the process can be.
But, this is not an initiative that should peter out as April fades into May. Rather, it should be something that is re-normalized, especially in a society based around technology. Now, I am not against connecting with people via any vehicle you can. Text, call, Skype, send e-cards, do whatever tells another person “Hey, I’m thinking about you!” However, don’t let one of the most beautiful ways of doing this die off.
I have grown up receiving weekly, handwritten letters from my grandma, ‘Grammy’ Bonnie Crawford. Some weeks’ letters are more drab, less consequential where she updates me about the progress of re-doing her bathroom or which one of her chickens pecked her the most recently (usually, it’s Sugar). Yet, even then, when she reads more like a log of activities than a passionate outpouring of creativity, for five minutes I got to sit down and hold that card and stationery in my hands and read knowing that my grandma sat in her corner seat on her couch, where it’s all sunk in with the form of her butt, and she put pen to paper to tell me about the new Hobby Lobby coming in and how she’s feeling anxious. Even when I don’t get a chance to call her or write back for weeks, I know what’s going on with her.
Other weeks, I open up letters with hysterical typos or viewpoints that I cherish forever that I have them in her handwriting so she can’t say that it wasn’t her! Most recently, I got her perspective on ‘selfies’.
“Listening to Sunday Morning and there was a lady talking about “Selfies.” She said women take more selfies than men, but men die a selfie-death more than women. Selfies are dangerous and no one wants to die a selfie death. Was funny but also had a series [serious] message.”
Never in my life would I have thought to bring up the topic of the cultural phenomenon around selfies with my grandmother, yet when she just sat down and put her thoughts to paper, I got to find out her take on them, and now I have a memento that I’ll be saving for a long time.
Besides my grandmother, I penpal with my younger sister who lives over eight hours away by car. She doesn’t write as often as I do, but with enough badgering and time, she’ll put a gel pen into stationary and write me an update. Over the years writing her, I’ve gotten to see her language and her penmanship evolve, and that’s not something that even a Skype call can capture.
Last, as someone in a long-distance relationship, I treasure ways to connect via countless digital methods, but when your dates are often limited to well-timed Netflix streaming, letters can be an outlet for the more romantic side. Not every letter has to mime the classic love letters to show someone you care, anything you write out, put a stamp on and mail is a physical sign that you spent at least five minutes dedicated to getting that envelope into their mailbox and that is an unparallelled message.
So, I applaud April for being a month that pushes the laziest scribbler to write out a postcard, but I demand more time for the art of handwritten affection because letters, and all the joy they bring, should be year-round.
