Snail Mail

October 2019

Today I’m pondering letters. Written correspondence.  Snail mail. Because I’m old, I remember very well what it was like to use the postal service and send handwritten pages inside envelopes with stamps as payment. Back in my formative years, it was the most economical means of long-distance communication. Truly the only mode available for centuries.

Even in the pre-cell phone days of the 1990’s, phone calls that extended beyond local, were subject to huge fees.  I once had a monthly phone bill of over $300, just from calling my girlfriend a couple of times who was in college 100 miles away. And these were short calls of a few minutes each. That was a ton of money for me in 1982! Although the cost of sending a letter has been ever-changing, it was and still is, merely pennies to buy a stamp and send a letter. It seems archaic now. But it’s still cheap and some people still do it.

But because I’m not that old, I never loved writing and sending letters. I was impatient. Landline phones existed and were more immediately gratifying. Yet, I wrote my share. I obviously love to write, but there was little joy in it for me, to get sheets of paper and a pen and sit down and write a letter. I just didn’t think that way.  But I still occasionally wrote to friends and family.  Many who literally lived or went to school within 2-3 hours from where I was writing.  Let’s just say it was a much less urgent, more patient time.

My mom loved to write and receive letters.  When she died, I inherited a lot of her keepsakes.  Amongst these, there was a shoebox containing a stack of letters from the 1960s. These were received during a time when my eldest brother was in Army basic training. Likely it was his first stretch of time away from home.

Feeling nostalgic one day, I sat down, put them all in order and read them.  There were at least 30 of them all written over his 10-week stint at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  It was not compelling reading, but sentimental. I also learned a great deal.  Surprisingly, not about my mother and brother, but about how feelings can be conveyed both in the words and between the lines.

At first, they were quite mundane.  “How are you’s?” This happened, that happened.  I soon realized I only had one side of the story.  My mom’s many replies to his letters were not in my possession.  I had to extrapolate a bit. However, I still began to see this era in a different light. How letters like this can be literary masterpieces in their own way.  How sincere feelings can be conveyed both in the words and between the lines of these types of letters.

I was amazed how different these written words were from modern communications.  In truth, they were only asking about each other’s lives and giving updates on events. Yet their feelings seemed so much more obvious.  Even without acronyms or emojis! 😊  They had to write a little more to get their thoughts out there.  It made a massive difference for the reader. It was extremely personalized.

I am always experimenting with ways of telling a story. I like to work on the boundary between fact and fiction. Where truth and reality are blurred.  There was none of that here.  They were telling each other a story, but as a narrative.  A dialogue that could take days, even up to a week between responses.  It was both revealing and emotive.

I could feel what my brother was feeling.  The uncomfortable experience of being far away from home, sleeping in a barracks with 30 other guys he didn’t know.  Being yelled at and purposefully demeaned.  I could feel the pain of long marches and smelled the sweat and toil of scrubbing floors and toilets.

I could tell he was modulating his story to her.  I watched the storyline evolve as each letter represented a few days difference in time.  How he was growing more comfortable.  Growing up.  A storyline in snapshots.  It was an epiphany for me.

Over time we have graduated to emails and now texts and other forms of electronic communications.  Immediate. Sterile.  We always know, or at least expect, replies to be imminent.  So we write in that style.  Gone are the days of narrative conversation in writing. Even emails are generally cold and barren of feeling.  It had to happen, but is the world better for it?  Are we missing something in our relationships because of it?  I really don’t know.

One thing I do know is that the first time I heard someone’s email address I thought it was going to be like a CB handle. How ‘bout ya Female@gmail? That’s a big 10-4 good buddy. What’s yer 20?  Ah by golly, I’ll have to catch you on the flip side. I’m gonna put the hammer down!  That was real communication! Sadly, CBs are gone too, at least outside of 18-wheelers on the highway with a Bear on their backdoor.  I guess everything has its time and place.  But don’t you wonder just a little what might be next?