The letter was dated December 2015 and on the avocado green envelope was my name and address in familiar block letters. I simultaneously felt affection and guilt whenever I saw it, after four years of not having written a response. I knew I wasn’t about to win friend of the year anytime soon.
My college friend Kith and I share a love for old fashioned snail mail. We reconnected after we left Manila and agreed to keep in touch only through letters. No calls, no emails, just the occasional text message to confirm each other’s mailing address. She went to Zurich and I went through a few zip codes in San Francisco and beyond, but our letter exchange helped us hang on to something familiar and comforting amidst the drastic changes in our lives.
It exhilarates me whenever I get a personal letter, especially at a time when people mainly communicate by text or email and junk mail has drained the joy out of mailboxes. Knowing people’s penmanship is like knowing their voice or scent, it creates another layer of familiarity. I’ve loved letters since I was a kid: the holiday cards I received from my parents and the letters from my brother stationed in a South Korea military base. Growing up away from my family (that immigrant life!), for a while I felt like I knew their handwriting better than I knew them. I was mainly raised by my Auntie Vi and after she passed, I kept a piece of paper with her writing on it. It’s not a letter to me, just a few numbers jotted down for an expense, but I feel her presence whenever I see it. I have cards and post-it notes on my fridge from my friends and my nephews and nieces, as well as a ten-year postcard correspondence with a good friend I met from the Peace Corps.
If I love writing letters so much, why has it taken me four years to get back to Kith? For me letters are an expression of making time for someone and being thoughtful. She and I typically wrote elaborate letters with pages of life updates, and the idea of sending back a rushed response felt disrespectful to her and to the ritual of letter writing. There was no lack of intention on my part to respond as I even had Kith’s letter in a folder, along with several sheets of white lined paper I planned to write her on. This folder became my inadvertent travel companion as I took it with me whenever I traveled, thinking I would find time to write during flights. It was always in my carry-on bag with my journal and other reading materials, ready to be whipped out at anytime. Six countries in four continents and five U.S. states later, still no response from me.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, an exercise prompt from writing class led me to dust off the folder and finally put the blank paper to use. The words flowed and I was relieved to overcome whatever has been holding me back. Perhaps it’s an indication that I’ve managed to slow my life down even a bit to make more room for things important to me. I’ve written four pages so far and while the letter isn’t finished, I’m sure that soon I will text Kith for her mailing address.
Have you ever received a handwritten letter that made you feel good? Is there anyone you feel like writing a letter to?
