“Thanks for your letter, I take it everywhere with me. Sometimes I put it in my bag absentmindedly, other times I just try to think of one of the beautiful lines in it. And not only the ones about me. That letter is one of the great things about being alive. I cherish it.”
And so begins a letter written to me from my then boyfriend, now fiancé, in reply to a letter I had previously sent him. I’ve kept that letter, with many more, in the drawer of my bedside table, and every now and again I will pull a letter out and read it. Every time I read a letter, I find something new within it. Something I had not noticed before. And every single time, without fail, I am transported back to another time in my life; back to memories so vivid if I shut my eyes I can see and feel them.
That’s what I love about letters – the way they speak not only the words within them, but of history too. History that cannot be erased with a click of the delete button.
I’ve never kept an email. Sure, I’ve saved some, I’ve even filed some away. But they’ve always eventually been deleted – when I’ve upgraded computers or had a purging attack. I can’t say the same for letters. My parents’ garage is filled with boxes and boxes of memories from my childhood and teenage years that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to part with. I’ve got letters from friends and crushes – tiny bits of paper with scribbles that can only be understood by me. And, on the exceptionally rare occasions when I sift through those boxes, I’m so happy it hurts, because they are all glimpses into my life; a culmination of who I am, and ever wanted to become.
People don’t seem to treasure things anymore, let alone letters – life is all about detoxing and streamlining and minimising – and I get that. But there’s something kind of wonderful about collecting move ticket stubs and train tickets and shoelaces and brochures from museum foyers. I still do. I write where I was going and who I was with on the back of train tickets – and I can assure you they provide more insight into the world than just how much the cost of public transport has risen over the years. It’s the lack of collecting being done that has made me encourage, with serious gusto, my nephews and niece to collect. And I love nothing more than taking them to an exhibition, or a fair, or a park, to then see them artfully pack away their goodies at the end of the day – pamphlets, and booklets, and wrappers, and twigs. Things they will see, maybe ten years down the track, and things they will remember. Cherish even.
People don’t cherish emails. Or maybe they do and I’m just old-fashioned and don’t really know. But in the age of Facebook, Twitter, MSN, texting and everything else, letter writing is truly a lost art. And there is an art to writing a letter. Despite what anyone says I will always believe that, like a car that’s routinely serviced and looked after, relationships run better when fuelled, every now and again, with an old-fashioned love letter. And I’m not the only one that believes that.
When the Sex and the City movie screened, it featured a book that, at the time, was non-existent in the real world. Love Letters of Great Men was a book created by the producers of the film for a scene within it where Carrie reads some letters to Big. Naturally, filmgoers believed the book existed, and when they discovered it did not Pan Macmillan cleverly released a book of the same title, featuring the same letters that Carrie had referenced, plus more. And I was one of the people that bought it. And originally searched for it. It’s a book that features letters from men such as Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, John Keats, Victor Hugo, Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ludwig Van Beethoven and many more. And it’s a wonderful, romantic, beautiful selection of real letters from real men to real women all featuring one theme; love.
I read one of the letters, by Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett on the morning of their wedding day in 1846, at a wedding of a dear friends’ last year. I doubt I would have ever read a copy of an email at such an event. Or an MSN transcript. In 2010, letters are grand gestures. Grand gestures that are not terribly hard to create.
My great man, my fiancé, may not have his letters published in a book, but he does have them tucked away in my bedside table, and every so often they are read, and I find something within them that I never noticed before. I am reminded of memories so vivid that if I shut my eyes I can see and feel them:
“You constantly remind me, I see it in others too, that life is love. Constant, un-diminishing love. Every bit of love I have is for you. One day I’ll find that last inch of it and finally be satisfied that I did the best I could for you. There are so many moments that send me deeper in love with you, I don’t know how far it goes. It’s such that I grow, swell even, looking in your eyes. You lift me.”
And I get so happy it hurts.
Lucky lady
i just got goose bumps. That is the loveliest article i have read in a long time. I have always been a big advocate of the written word – it is simply beautiful. Thanks Sandi xx
What a lovely article, Sandi. I’m currently going through the process of moving house and have made sure that all my boxes of mementoes and memories, of those things that you should keep, are safe and secure, instead of being thrown away (which can so often be the case in a moving process). These are the things that I look forward to rifling through when I’m old. Even just barely scraping the surface of the archives last night as I went through my cupboards left me with such a wonderful and varied range of feelings. Feelings that would be lost forever if I didn’t work to protect and treasure these ‘things’.
aww,this is a beautiful piece Sandi! And you definitely are one lucky lady. x
Love letters are great. For my boyfriend’s 21st, I wrote him letters everyday for a month leading up to it (as well as a photo album full of 21st birthday photos), and I think they really meant a lot to him, more than any store bought present that’s for sure! Great piece x
Though perhaps I’m reversing the trend here with letters from a woman to a man!
Wonderful Sandi.
I am big into not holding onto a lot of stuff. I clean out all my cupboards at least once a year, my handbag and wallet most weeks but there are a couple of special places that I always overlook these are the places where I keep photos, funny notes from the children, the readings from my grandparents funeral …stuff you want to hold onto to. In one of my house moves I stumbled upon a box that I had not seen for a long time. On opening I discovered a shoebox containing my dolls with holes punched into the lid so they could breathe (I still don’t like the thought of confined spaces), “dolls” made by my sister and I out of wool and “ransom” notes that my sister had written when she kidnapped all my stuffed toys that when I read I laughed until I cried, also in that box were wonderful letters that a school friend and I had written in high school – pages of them!
As I write this I wonder where that box is now. I resist the urge to turn the house upside down looking for it. Instead I know that sometime in the future I will stumble upon it again and enjoy the (re) discoveries.