Snail Mail

Today

The past was threatening to overwhelm the present, in that I had several large and totally unorganised boxes of cards, letters and other memorabilia going back to 1964 cluttering up the study.

So I've spent the last three days trying to get them all into some sort of order before the lot is popped into the loft.

There are greetings cards, Christmas cards, some with nice little notes, thank yous, invitations, baby arrival notes, pieces of work, certificates and school reports belonging to the girls. And letters.

In My Day

Once upon a time we actually used to write letters. Postcards from holiday, letters of congratulations, commiseration or just to say "hello".

Tricia, it seems, used to write to Paul regularly, on all sorts of topics. Her letters rarely give the full date so the year has to be surmised from content. We have the minutiae of her life; catching the bus, cleaning her flat, caring for her great-grand-daughter. She apologises about being tiresome or grumbling and sends meticulous thanks, remembering that the girls would share a room so that there was somewhere for her to sleep or that I had driven a long journey to collect her.

I have a letter written by Daddy after his stroke, struggling to get down a few shaky lines. "What you didn't see" wrote Mamma "is the sheet on which he practised writing 'Dear Julia'". And when I broke my ankle in 1977, he just had to write, but couldn't get the whole phrase down before his co-ordination gave way. I have a letter from Mamma from the Westminster hospital where her lungs were being drained to give her, literally, breathing space before succumbing to lung-cancer.

I wrote postcards from various locations on my great European hitch-hiking tour, mainly, I think, to reassure the folks that I was still alive. And people have sent me postcards from all over the world, although the who & when are pretty random.

There is much correspondence between me & Beatrice; I wonder if she's kept my letters? If she has, the parts can be put together, jigsaw-style. Once we had computers, I wrote many letters on the word-processor. It's true that such letters lack the personality of handwriting, but on the other hand, it enabled me to keep a copy. So many letters to the girls, enclosing cheques and the letter to Becky enclosing the infamous refried beans recipe!

There are those that think that letter-writing had the effect of undermining social interaction because distance is a pre-requisite. But letters also give you time to reflect and order your thoughts and are a lasting reminder of the care that someone else pays to you.

I very much like the lively exchanges that take place of Facebook and MSN, but they are utterly ephemeral and will never be there in the future to revisit and cause one a smile or tear.

In fact, I think I'm going to get my pen out today.