Writing Letters

It’s amazing what good stationary does! A few weeks ago, I was gifted with a couple of boxes of great quality, small note size stationary with matching envelopes. In the past week, I’ve discovered writing letters and mailing them.

I grew up in the age of paper. My grandfather came to this country after WWI from Germany and I can remember the look and feel of the airmail envelope. I can remember looking down the hall way and seeing them propped up on the bed and hearing Grampy reading (in German) all the news from the old country.
I remember being sent to the desk for paper and pen to write thank you notes and letter’s to family members that had moved away. It was exciting to receive mail in my name and know that someone had thought enough of me to do the physical task of putting pen to paper, writing my name on the envelope and spending money to insure that it arrived where I was living.
To this day, I still get excited butterflies in my stomach when I receive mail from family members and I still have letter’s and card’s I’ve received from when I was a child.

Don’t get me wrong. I now live in the electronic age. I spend a huge amount of time in front of computers both at work and at home. I love getting and sending email. I actually find it easier to write an email than a letter because I can erase any mistakes I make in spelling or grammar. Writing a letter in pen slows me down because I have think about what I want to say and then write it down. I’ve always thought faster than I can write and it became very frustrating forgetting what I wanted to say. Not to mention the fact, I can’t spell worth a damn.

Getting back to the stationary - During the week, I wrote a longish letter to a member of my knitting guild. She did not attend that last 2 meetings and I missed her. She has been my inspiration for a long time. She’s taught me so much about knitting and life in general and is always the first person I want to show off a Finished Object to. She is also a night owl, literally! She sleeps all day and is up all night so getting her on the phone is difficult. Not to mention that I don’t like to wake up her husband by calling too early in the morning.
And then tonight I was thinking about the wife of Youngers softball coach. She was diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year and has not been able to come to any of the practices. We’ve been getting update on her progress from Coach but today it came to me that I wanted to let her know I was thinking of her and sending good energy her way. So I grabbed the box, pulled out a sheet and wrote her a short note. Then I folded it, put it in the envelope and addressed it. I’ll drop it in the mail at work on Monday.

Stationary is good!