Letters

It is an interesting tradition to walk to the mailbox and peek inside hoping for a letter. With all the electronic communication and social media, there is still a thrill to find an envelope with your name written on it.

Someone has taken the time to put pen to paper and write down thoughts without wanting immediate response gratification. For letters take some focus to write without spell-check and a delete button. Even with an accomplished English vocabulary and firm knowledge of adjectives and adverbs, when a sentence doesn’t the piece of paper must be balled up and thrown in the trash and the message started all over again.

Receiving a handwritten letter is like a Christmas present. Inside that envelope is a mystery. Good news? Bad news? Random thoughts or a life changing comment could be within? You open the paper as if an ancient secret document.

To write a letter, you must have stationary and a pen (pencils are for notes) and a quiet place to gather your thoughts. Writing a letter is a reserved moment not a multi-tasking event. Each sentence is thought out before scratching ink to paper. A formal address and welcome plus  proper ending will format the page or two or three of reading for another.

A lick of a tongue like a kiss seals the message before delivering it to another who will promise to forward the stamped folder to the intended reader. Some will arrive on scented paper, some will posses small items of relevance, and some are just fluid message that can be read over and over again digesting each word with multiple meanings.

In most letters there are words not written between the lines to be deciphered by the reader. Replies must be thoughtfully written to ask the right questions without reveling too much of the answer.

Place in the post and await a reply. It is a strange game these letter present but when the long distant conversation is started can be most exciting and the possible return become a thrill to the mundane act of picking up the mail.

“To whom it may concern”