Letters
“More
than kisses, letters mingle souls.” John Donne
My
cousin, Sandy, just showed me a post card my daddy sent his mother
during World War II. Written in his tiny boxed script, it crammed one whole paragraph into a three inch square. He hadn't seen war just yet, was
still in port in California and chomping at the bit to get going—as
only a young man who doesn't know the truth of war would. He had his
first liberty, and was not much interested in going off ship. Though
he didn't say it, I detected homesickness, loneliness in the tone of
his words.
I
miss letters. Do you? I know email is faster and easier, etc. But
email is so impersonal. Especially now that we are being snooped upon
by the NSA, the FBI and every single search engine in the world. Who
on earth would write of heartfelt longings, of first love, of details
of one's day and life. I used to write and receive long letters with
whole stories of incidents and experiences, complete with feelings
and thoughts. When is the last time you saw that in an email?
I
have kept a few letters from my grandmother that I received in my
teens. I don't know that I kept them on purpose, but somehow they
were never thrown away. Now I cherish reading them from time to time.
I can see my grandmother's face, and hear her laughter on every page.
I can feel her presence because she wrote in exactly the manner she
spoke. Her letters, just as my dad's postcard, hold glimpses into the
heart of the person I remember so well.
I
think about bringing letters back into my life—about writing to
friends and family; ink on paper, a pretty stamp and sealed with a
kiss. The co-mingling of souls is so desperately needed in our
cyber-dependent world.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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