I received a note in the mail last week. The 3 X 5 envelope in which it arrived fairly shone among the circulars and pleas for donations. And, get this, the message inside was hand-written.
I was thrilled.
There was a time when receiving such a note would not have been remarkable, but that time has passed. Now, searching for a personal note or letter among the junk mail that arrives each day is like panning for gold. A reward is possible, but it is not likely.
Those of you younger than 40 may have little or no experience of personal mail, given that the flow of letters came to an abrupt end somewhere in the early ‘90s with the arrival of email. Now, with the availability of texts, Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime, it is difficult to remember that until fairly recently, long-distance friendships and relationships were largely conducted via the mail. Sure, phone calls were a part of daily life by the middle of the Twentieth Century, but most calls were “toll calls.” That is, there was a charge by the minute for any calls outside of one’s local calling area. Indeed, until I got my first cell phone, my phone calls from work to my daughters at home, only 12 miles away, but across a state line, were toll calls for which I had to reimburse my employer.
So, it is wonderful to be able to pay a flat monthly fee to call anyone in the U.S. via cell phone--no more waiting for Sundays when long-distance charges were reduced. And, certainly, all of the above-mentioned means of communication are fast and cheap. While one of my daughters was living overseas for several years, we had regular Skype calls. It was terrific to be able to see her face and to talk with her directly. This was far better than the blue air letters that were my mother’s means of communication with her family in Scotland while I was growing up. How sad for her that she never talked directly with her mother after moving away.
So, yes, I am grateful for all of these modern means of connecting. And yet I can’t help but think something has been lost with the near-end of communication via letter. A few years ago, I opened a trunk where I had saved nearly every letter anyone had ever written to me. I stacked the letters on my dining room table and spent a couple of weeks going through them. Many of these letters were quite long. Some were sad or funny. Each letter was a time capsule. Each brought back precious memories of my younger days. I wound up sending some of the letters back to friends so that they, too, could hold reminders of times past in their hands.
How will this work now? I did print out and save the emails that my daughter Anne sent to us during her semester abroad in 2005, but now that most communication is via text, what will be forgotten?
And what are biographers to do? Will they search social media, where people put their best [or worst] selves forward? Where are people’s deepest feelings and thoughts being preserved?
Here’s something else. About 35 years ago, I wrote a short story that consisted largely of letters between a woman in Edinburgh and a man in Seattle. The characters had agreed that they would not use the telephone during their time apart. This plot device was already a stretch in the late ‘80s, but what would a reader make of it now? “Why,” the reader would ask, “aren’t they texting?”
And what about love songs that can mean nothing to young people today, songs such as Please Mr. Postman (the Marvelletes), P.S., I Love You (The Beatles), The Letter (The Box Tops), and Return to Sender (Elvis)? In each of these now quaint-seeming songs, the singer is communicating, or attempting to communicate, with his love via letter.
What might equivalent love songs be about now? Ghosting? Dating apps?
Seriously, though, I have nothing against progress (or new love songs). I just hope the price of convenience is not the loss of the stories of our lives.
I, for one, am very happy to have my collection of letters.
