black and white

On a 10 hour drive back from SC last year, my friend Ann asked me a thoughtful question:

Whatever happened to letters?

The slip-clunk! of the mailbox opening and closing used to thrill me. Who knew what I might find?! A postcard from a far-off land? A note from a secret admirer? A letter from a beloved high school friend?

But for the longest time, I haven’t found anything exciting in my mail. Since I paid off my debt, the “good” credit card offers arrive daily. Those bastards wouldn’t touch me a year ago, but NOW they love me. Re-finance offers also abound, though this free spirit has never owned a home. Bills. Of course. They never let up.

Things pick up around Christmas, when I get an unending supply of form letters from old school "friends." Sometimes they even put a little note at the bottom just for me. Yawn. Those bitches couldn’t pay me to visit and listen to them drone on about their scrapbooks, but their “holiday letters” force me to be a captive audience.

I think my mom is the only one who writes to me anymore. She sends me articles she clipped from the newspaper about new writers getting published, ideas for my blogs, updates about people I went to school with and general items of interest. But her letters more or less stopped after the multiple surgeries she underwent last summer.

Ann and I decided on that drive that we’re going to start writing letters again. I have stacks of gorgeous vintage cards, outdated stamps that I can double up and use and so, so many things that I want to say to the people that I love. I want to say everything before I lose my chance.

I wrote this last August. And guess what?

I still haven’t picked up a pen.