Dear Daughters And Sons – About The Fine Art Of Letters

I have made a new friend, they are always so good to come by and surprisingly difficult to find. This friend of mine is an amazing letter writer. She started it, she began by writing me the most deliciously long and funny email from the other side of the world. My first reaction was “Oh my god, what am I going to do; now I’ll have to write back – bugger it.’ And I wrote back a rather lazy, typical email, not unlike the ones we write hundreds of in the course of a normal day at work. She wasn’t to be deterred by my crisp, short memo. Oh no. She wrote me another, friendlier, longer email, complete with smiley faces, which despite my hardened, jaded attitude made me laugh. So this time, slightly softened, I made a bit of an effort and wrote a paragraph and a half instead of just a paragraph and sent it back to her. She continued with her friendly, old fashioned, what can no longer be described as emails but must be considered fully fledged letters like the pages my gran used to write, that just happened to be sent electronically and something in me shifted. I thought, this woman’s emails are great. I really like getting them. They make me laugh and she writes them better than me and I’m supposed to be the writer. So I made a bigger effort and wrote her a nearly proper letter. And on we have gone. And what have I learnt? I have learnt that whilst we bemoan and wail about the loss of cultures that are threatened, we rarely attend to our own lost culture. The art of letter writing has a long and distinguished history. It is time to embrace it and use it as the wonderful tool it is for so many things; Telling people they are great friends. Telling people about what is really going on in your life. Telling people you love them with all your heart and soul, with your bones and your being. p.s. thank you Laura for teaching me how to write letters again (not emails) Visit Em's Den; http://petite28.wordpress.com