Living in an apartment kind of ruins the allure of receiving mail. I don't know about where the rest of you live, but in the mail room of my complex, they have walls and walls of boxes that couldn't fit a pair of shoes, let alone a couple of magazines and water bills! But nevertheless, day after day, I marvel at just how much stuff the postal worker is able to wedge into my little mailbox. We're talking booklets of Meijer coupons, "Don't Miss This Great Opportunity" credit card offers (AS IF I need another one of those), postcards for 50% off air conditioner repairs, tire changes, blah blah blah. But a few weeks ago, as I was tossing my massive pile of pointless paper into the recycle bin, out slid a little envelope addressed to me in shaky but legible handwriting. A letter from Wilma.
It has been a while since I received a letter from my favorite 98-year-old friend, mostly because she forgets where she placed my address and her arthritis has made it increasingly painful for her to hold her pen. But nevertheless, there it was: A pretty floral card with a cursive "Thank You" printed across the front. Her note was brief, and at times, illegible. She commended me on my desire to become a lawyer (I'm just going to assume she forgot that I ditched the lawyer idea around November) and thanked me for visiting her back in early May. "Your visit made me feel like I was still living," she wrote. And then she signed it. "I love you. Remember me. -Wilma D. Albin"
Tears instantly came to my eyes... Obviously. What an amazing thing. In spite of a couple hundred miles and three quarters of a century that separate my world from hers, my life has been forever altered by this woman with wiry white hair. I have never been able to put my finger on it: Whether it is a conversation while sitting in her room at the nursing home, a phone call shouted into the receiver hoping she will hear me, or a handwritten note, there's something about Wilma that always seems to have a little magic to it.
She has told me time and time again that while it is difficult to talk on the phone, Wilma always enjoys sitting down to write a letter. "It makes me feel like I just had a visit with a friend." Because of this, I try to write her once a month to let her know what I've been doing, how my dreams have or haven't changed and how grateful I am to still call her my friend. It isn't much, but making the drive to Oxford can be tricky now that my weekends are the only time I have to accomplish things during the week. Whatever it is about writing and receiving those letters adds a little extra kick to my life that I don't get from anything else.
What is it about the notion of "the good old days" that seems to carry a sense of romance and nostalgia? I wasn't around back when people only traveled the country by train and wrote letters back and forth to bridge the distance geography created between friends. I always tend to love the kind of stories that revolve around aspects of the past: small towns with corner stores and white picket fences, a string of letters between friends, soldiers writing home while away at war; stories about way back when the world was different, almost magical, somehow. Dear John didn't exactly offer a healthy dose of reality when it comes to writing letters back and forth, that's for sure. I can remember the deflating disappointment I felt when I realized that most small towns didn't consist of cobble stone streets, barbershops, and smiling neighbors with wraparound porches and a constant supply of lemonade. Most small towns are run down, maybe a bit broken, because jobs and the perfect town rarely live in the same place.
But in spite of my disillusioned idea of what the world was like all the way back when, I still love this idea of letters. I will be the first to admit that I'm much more likely to respond to an email than I am to a letter in the mail. It's just the way things are. If you think about it, it's almost tragic the way we've lost this tradition to technology and convenience, though. Which is why I'm constantly thanking my lucky stars to have crossed paths with a certain 98-year-old lady, because in spite of their brevity, her letters never cease to add a little dose of magic to my life.
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| Wilma |
Tears instantly came to my eyes... Obviously. What an amazing thing. In spite of a couple hundred miles and three quarters of a century that separate my world from hers, my life has been forever altered by this woman with wiry white hair. I have never been able to put my finger on it: Whether it is a conversation while sitting in her room at the nursing home, a phone call shouted into the receiver hoping she will hear me, or a handwritten note, there's something about Wilma that always seems to have a little magic to it.
She has told me time and time again that while it is difficult to talk on the phone, Wilma always enjoys sitting down to write a letter. "It makes me feel like I just had a visit with a friend." Because of this, I try to write her once a month to let her know what I've been doing, how my dreams have or haven't changed and how grateful I am to still call her my friend. It isn't much, but making the drive to Oxford can be tricky now that my weekends are the only time I have to accomplish things during the week. Whatever it is about writing and receiving those letters adds a little extra kick to my life that I don't get from anything else.
What is it about the notion of "the good old days" that seems to carry a sense of romance and nostalgia? I wasn't around back when people only traveled the country by train and wrote letters back and forth to bridge the distance geography created between friends. I always tend to love the kind of stories that revolve around aspects of the past: small towns with corner stores and white picket fences, a string of letters between friends, soldiers writing home while away at war; stories about way back when the world was different, almost magical, somehow. Dear John didn't exactly offer a healthy dose of reality when it comes to writing letters back and forth, that's for sure. I can remember the deflating disappointment I felt when I realized that most small towns didn't consist of cobble stone streets, barbershops, and smiling neighbors with wraparound porches and a constant supply of lemonade. Most small towns are run down, maybe a bit broken, because jobs and the perfect town rarely live in the same place.
But in spite of my disillusioned idea of what the world was like all the way back when, I still love this idea of letters. I will be the first to admit that I'm much more likely to respond to an email than I am to a letter in the mail. It's just the way things are. If you think about it, it's almost tragic the way we've lost this tradition to technology and convenience, though. Which is why I'm constantly thanking my lucky stars to have crossed paths with a certain 98-year-old lady, because in spite of their brevity, her letters never cease to add a little dose of magic to my life.
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