The Handwritten Letter: The Noblest Form of Communication
by Donald G. Redman
I caught myself browsing ink pens while at an office supply store where I was supposed to be shopping for my daughter’s back-to-school supplies, but somewhere between packages of ruled paper and pocket folders, I’d wandered to the glass display of ink pens. These weren’t your standard pens, like for doing homework or balancing the checkbook or scribbling notes. No, these were Montblanc, OMAS, S.T. Dupont, Lamy and other notable, high-class writing instruments.
I’ve had a few quality ink pens in my life, the last one purchased nearly fifteen years ago. That’s a long time for someone who had once fancied himself a connoisseur of ink pens and who had hopes of establishing a collection of high-class writing instruments.
I hadn’t made a cognitive decision to quit amassing quality ink pens; however, I think that it has been about fifteen years since I last wrote a letter by hand. I once heard someone describe the handwritten letter as “the noblest form of communication.” I know it’s true; when it came to writing letters by hand I almost always used high-class writing instruments. It seemed that I wrote with more flair and panache when I unsheathed my Montblanc. Or so I imagined.
But with the arrival of the ubiquitous computer and printer, it wasn’t long before I started leaning heavily on the machinery to keep up with my correspondence. Occasionally, I would unsheathe a writing instrument, but usually only to sign my name at the bottom of a typed letter – with great flair and panache, mind you. And sometimes I employed the pens for inscribing Christmas cards and whatnot, but the opportunities and occasions to use the pens faded with each passing year.
The handwritten letters gave way to typed letters, which gave way to email letters, and even that has given way to text messages and Facebook status updates.
Browsing that day at the quality ink pens, I realized that it really wasn’t the pens I missed, rather it was the letters. I miss letters. Good letters. The sort of letter that’s three to five pages long, written front and back – by hand! I think I knew a lot more about my friends back when we shared letters. Today I know instantly that they’re going shopping or what they just saw while on vacation, but I know little more than that. When we used to exchange letters we shared all that day-to-day stuff, too – where we had been, what we had done – but always included somewhere in those pages was a deeper look into that person’s soul.
I recently read a book about John Adams and it contained voluminous excerpts of letters from John Adams to his wife Abigail, his kids, Thomas Jefferson, and their letters to him. They contained life’s banalities like what crops to plant, budgetary concerns, and petty gossip, but they nevertheless wrote with such magnificent style that even everyday tasks sounded majestic. I marveled at the sheer beauty of their words, their style and the depth of meaning – so open and honest and tender. Truly it was the pinnacle of letter writing!
I never penned anything so majestic, but that’s okay. My parents certainly thought highly of every letter I ever wrote them. My earliest letters were to my father, who traveled often and was always on the road, sometimes weeks on end. My mom made sure we all wrote letters to him to keep him up-to-date on what was going on in our lives and to tell him we loved him and missed him.
I wasn’t too good about doing that, but I fancied myself a pretty good storyteller, so my letters were always little stories. Sometimes they were lighthearted like the time I blended Curious George with Robinson Crusoe, and other times I wrote dark, brooding stories that I’m sure alarmed my parents, like the story about the serial killer strangling telephone operators.
I am able to recall these childhood letters because my dad held on to them. He and mom held on to just about every letter any of us ever wrote them. A lot of the letters were just plain, run-of-the mill “how-you-doing” kind of letter hardly worth keeping. Some were more personal in nature, explaining a failed relationship or asking for financial help or expressing confusion and loss. I don’t know why they held on to any of these letters, but maybe it was because they were always signed with love.
My parents had done everything by mail – fell in love, maintained a long-distance love-affair, proposed to each other, exchanged engagement rings.... They wrote letters to each other almost their entire lives and to distant relatives certainly their whole lives. After my parents died I took a couple of letters they had written to each other, just to hold on to a piece of them. There is a quiet comfort in seeing a loved one’s handwriting.
They say you can tell a lot about a person by his or her handwriting. In fact, here’s a whole science dedicated to it – graphology. I remember a parlor game we had that supposedly let you analyze your family and friends by studying their handwriting. I wonder if in the near future there will be any need for handwriting experts. No one writes today. Well, at least not by hand. And “penmanship” in the classroom has given way to “keyboarding.” Cursive writing is no longer being taught in most schools across the country.
Instead of the barely legible chicken scratch or the flamboyant loops and curls or meticulous Copperplate script, we receive digital typeset devoid of character.
I remember with great fondness a letter-writing campaign I had embarked on during the summer of 1976. I was a teenager working as a Boy Scout summer camp counselor and during a weekend furlough I met a girl at a dance and we struck up a correspondence that lasted all summer and longer. I remember with clarity the circumstances surrounding the first letter I wrote her: It was at nightfall and I was seated at a picnic table outside my tent, accompanied by a friend, who was also writing a letter to his girl. A Coleman kerosene lantern burned brightly between us, attracting all sorts of insects. My friend and I sat in silence, writing our letters while June bugs crashed like Kamikazes into the lantern’s glass pane.
I was writing to a girl for the first time to express my feelings for her. My friend was writing a letter to his girlfriend to call it quits. When we were done writing, we looked up at each other and shared a laugh: “I say hello, and you say good-bye.”
I received scores of letters from my girl all summer long, re-reading each one a thousand times. She even sprayed perfume on the letters, driving me even crazier. I have zero recollection of what we talked about in those letters, but I completely remember how I felt waiting for them to arrive, smelling them, and lying on my camp cot reading them again and again and again.
You can’t get a scented email or text message or Facebook status update!
Ink flows like honey,
Loops and curves promising love.
Dreams sealed with a kiss.
I’m a dinosaur. I have never been one to stay on the phone for long and I get antsy when the conversation lasts longer than ten minutes. Sure, it’s nice to hear the voice of a loved one or a friend, but once you hang up and the conversation is over, it’s gone. That’s the same with digital messages. I’m very tactile and need to feel something in my hands for it to be real. To be able to hold a letter. Feel it. Smell it. Fold it and unfold it and read it again and again.
Okay, I admit I do like the immediacy of today’s communication, but there is something to be said for the pain that anticipation inflicts upon you while waiting for a letter to arrive. There is oh so much truth to the description “snail mail.” Once you composed a letter and the mailman picked it up, it was a waiting game. The days would be agonizingly long while you waited for a response. You calculated in your head that if the person received your letter on Monday and responded that very day, she still couldn’t get it mailed until Tuesday, meaning that the earliest you could expect a letter in your mailbox would be Thursday. Hardly anyone ever wrote back that fast. It usually took five to seven days to hear back. Still, you checked the mailbox daily in anticipation of a response letter.
When it did arrive... O the joy! It didn’t matter if it was from your girlfriend or your grandma, getting a letter of any sort was always a cause for joy.
The other day, my wife and I returned home from an errand and as we headed toward the house she asked, “Did you check the mail?” My immediate response was, “Why?” She turned around and walked back to the mailbox while I proceeded inward. There’s no reason to check the mailbox any more; all my bills are sent electronically, the majority of party invitations are emailed, and I haven’t received a “real” letter in about twenty years. Nope, the mailbox might as well be a tombstone planted in my front yard.
I think the last handwritten letter I ever sent was to the woman who eventually became my wife. Sure, I still write notes to her inside cards on her birthday and Valentine’s Day and on our anniversary, and I guess that still counts, sorta. But I think she used to know more about me when we exchanged letters than we do day, lying next to each other in the same bed.
I think I’m going to get that Pelikan ink pen I’ve been eyeing, purchase some nice stationery and start composing a handwritten letter – first to my wife and then we’ll see from there... I have an aunt I haven’t written to in a long, long time... a couple of friends who don’t do Facebook... some cousins in distant lands....
Coppyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved
