The power of a handwritten letter

 

I am old enough to remember a time before computers, email, and cellphones.  

I remember sending and receiving handwritten letters from parents, grandparents, and relatives.  The choice of paper and ink was always different.  Their spirit lived in their writing.  The paper had their smell.  

When I travelled and met a girl overseas, we corresponded via airmail for years with overtones of romance.

When I asked a girl out, she wrote her name and number on a scrap of paper that I treasure to this day. 

These letters were read over and over.  I also enjoyed writing to my friends and relatives, sharing my life happenings with them.  Going away to University was the catalyst for this as I could no longer regularly visit. 

I would eagerly await receiving their letters, wondering what story was contained inside. 

The other day I found a bag of mementos my Mom sent me before her passing....Father's Day cards that I made for my Dad when I was a child, handmade baseball games that I created with pen and paper, a 2 page handwritten Mother's Day letter from my Dad to my Mom, a 2 page handwritten letter that my Aunt sent me on my sixteenth birthday.  I shed tears reliving the past.  I have no recollection of any of this, yet it was an important part of my life, buried somewhere in the foundation of  my spirit and personality.

We have lost so much with digitization of this realm....perhaps one of the most important is the "power of a handwritten letter."