Stories through writing letters

Hand-written letters

‘I’m going back to writing letters by hand,’ I told the person behind the counter at the post office after asking for thirty 10-cent stamps to add to my $1-stamp-stash at home.

‘Your mob is keeping us busy,’ she replied, handing over the goods.

I felt myself light up. ‘Really? Are people writing letters again?’

She nodded. ‘Grandchildren to grandparents, mainly.’

What a delightful by-product of covid-19, I thought as I strolled home with my dog.

Yet last night’s news reported that parcel-delivery numbers are rocketing, while letters are still on the slump. Perhaps the Woodend trend doesn’t reflect the national trend.

But every person I speak to loves receiving hand-written letters. As ‘The Band Who Knew Too Much’ sing so convincingly:

Give me a hand-written letter

Not one of those pesky bills

More like a party invitation

But not from government dills…

Haha! Merely pondering this tune makes me wanna stomp my feet and slap my thigh while ripping open the envelope from the friend whose hand writing I recognise so well.

 If you’re one of those people who are risking wrist RSI by picking up the pen again, make sure you ask the recipient to keep them. If you’re lucky enough to be receiving these letters, stash them somewhere safe. They’re precious. They’re marking time. This strange time.

Emails, too, even texts are worth storing and exploring later. Don’t throw them out.

Years ago, I remember Mum saying casually on the phone, ‘Oh and I finally threw out all of your letters from India just the other day.’

 What?

 About fifteen years after writing them I was embarking on this new and exciting career called writing. Didn’t she know I was a writer? And writers need material?

 There was no warning that those letters might be going to be discarded sometime soon. The first thing I knew was that they were gone.

 Gone was the parent-pleasing version of my first trip overseas as an adult. Gone the funny stories I thought they’d like that I’ve now forgotten. Gone the glimpse into my 24-year-old brain bumbling around the dusty streets of Northern India, the jungles of Thailand and the land-before-time-ness of The Kimberly and the Northern Territory. Just gone.

 All of the notes we record are precious.

 Just last week I was contacted by a family who has boxes and boxes of great-uncle letters, articles, diaries and snippets. When he died, they didn’t know what to do with them but they didn’t throw them out. They sifted and sorted and sought out a ghost writer to shape them into a story.

 Even shopping lists are valuable at this time. Do you remember, not so long ago, when every list we wrote had ‘toilet paper’ on it, just in case there happened to be some on the shop shelves?

 Those times are gone. (Thank god.)

But if we’re to live and learn, we need to remember. Oh gosh, I do hope with live and learn from this…