Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 6, 1994 TAG: 9401050071
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I received my first Christmas card/form letter that was actually interesting. And I had all my Christmas thank-you notes written before the end of New Year's weekend.
Both of those events help inspire me to work toward my annual first-of-the-year resolution: to write more letters.
As Southern writer Ellen Gilchrist says, "Only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen."
That sentiment, that creation of magic, can come from letter-writing as much as it can from writing a good article, short story or essay. Letter-writing helps me figure out what I think. It spawns ideas for the future, and it helps me remember the past.
That said, by March I generally putter out on my resolution and return to my slack personal-letter writing routine of about one a month.
I keep up with my Competition Letters, of course, my two friends in Ohio and South Carolina who write such good letters that my honor is at stake if I don't reply immediately - making my letter just as witty and lively (read: exaggerated) as they made theirs.
And I always, always write thank-you notes promptly. Failure to comply with this rule is my major pet peeve.
I know you shouldn't marry a person with the intent of trying to change them. But if there's one thing I'm proud of accomplishing in my three-year marriage, it's that my husband now writes thank-you notes. I may have to give him the stamps and stationery, but it warmed my heart yesterday to see him writing one of his students to thank her for the Christmas tie she gave him - unprompted by me. (He even wrote "Miss" on the envelope and spelled out "Virginia" in the address.)
I have two teen-age nieces I send money to every Christmas and birthday because that's what I figure faraway aunts are supposed to do. When I was little I always wrote to my Great-aunt Gennie in Arizona - especially right before birthdays and Christmas - because I knew she'd send a card with $5 or $10 in it. Not wanting to mess up a good tradition, I definitely wrote her thank-you notes, usually the same day.
I never met Aunt Gennie before she died, but I know I could still pick her arthritic handwriting from a stack of letters. And her address is as deep-seated in my memory as my first home telephone number: 653-5748.
At the risk of sounding like someone's grandmother, my own teen-age nieces would rather risk losing that semi-annual check I always send than write me a thank-you note for sending it. I mean, sometimes I even send them self-addressed, stamped envelopes!
So this is it, I decided last week. No thank-you note this time, no more money. And long live the Hallmark commercial: They can see for themselves how tear-jerking the empty greeting card can be.
I know it's their parents' fault for not teaching them manners. And sadly, I know letter-writing is coming to be a generational thing, supposedly not suited to the Nintendo-playing, computer-keyboarding, speed-faxing set.
I have a stack of my grandma's old postcards from the teens and '20s I wouldn't trade for anything. That was back when people wrote home so often, they even sent notes from day trips to the next town over. Even neater, the postcards aren't pictures of the towns my grandmother visited, but studio pictures of her and her friends dolled up in beaded hats, gloves and dresses.
Old letters and cards belong in musty boxes in musty attics, where they provide us with occasional glimpses of our past relationships, and of history itself.
I'm still kicking myself about the huge stack of letters my mom sent me in college. I happened to run across them a few years ago - right after the two of us got into a fight on the phone - and threw them away in a moment of rage.
She can't type worth anything, but my mom is a good writer, though she has this strange tendency to omit pronouns and articles from her correspondences. So that her letters from home, pecked out on an old manual Underwood she picked up at a yard sale, looked something like this:
"Went to XnurXsing home to sXee Grandma yesterday,. Took her DQ sundae,. Had nice visit/. [ribbon smudge] Then went to mall, bought 2 blouses on sale, but returned this a.m. as shirts didn't fit when got home (always lookX flabXbier in home mirrors than..X..store mirrors - HA) . . . "
Mom has a fancy electric typewriter these days, complete with an automatic correcter ribbon. Not that I get much mail from her anymore. Now that we can afford it, we tend to pass on the long, typo-filled accounts of our respective days and talk on the phone instead.
Which brings me back to my New Year's resolution to write more and call less.
Letters are not only more fun than phone calls, both to write and receive. They're safer, too.
For instance, my mom and I always get along great - through the mail.
by CNB