I found something in the garage the other day. It stopped me in my tracks. A mighty can of worms. Not the slimy dirt pooing kind of worms. But rather like a bag of those brightly coloured sweet and sour candy worms. Too hard to resist for their promise of pure sugary indulgence, and highly addictive for that exploding sensation of pleasure and pain that unleashes itself upon the taste buds.
A treasure trove of nostalgia right there in a shiny silver box. Every letter ever written to me by anyone of note in my life (and in fact many of a little less note too). The good, the bad and the ugly. There are all sorts in this box. Mouth wateringly alluring, and addictive once you start.
Why I have kept hold of some of this stuff I really don't know , but I was certainly glad to see them all the same. These things have a power to transport us back to a time and a place. To ignite old feelings and dangerous amounts of sentimentality. A friend said to me today: We are the sum of all we have ever known and been. And here in this box are many clues to who I am and who I have been and who perhaps I will be.
There are notes that were passed to me in the back of class at high school whilst the teacher attended more dedicated students.
One of my most prized letters from school is this one.
I think I might frame it one day. It is from the Head Mistress at my private girls high school. It was my life's obsession at the time to make regular yet subtle jabs at the establishment and my uniform provided the perfect vehicle. I am so glad I have a letter to prove my success.
I have letters from my Mum written throughout the teenage years. Clearly the only way she could communicate with me. I treasure them now, although I am sure at the time I tossed them aside in disdain. Perhaps I can draw on a little of her wisdom through these letters when it comes to dealing with my own teenagers.
I have kept all manner of silly little notes from my flatmates after I left home.
And of course quite a few love notes and letters too.
All the years I spent in Europe during my twenties (the 90's) are marked with letters from friends and family. Some written in curly artful fonts and others with drawings and photos included.
How much time and effort went into writing a letter, into making it a piece of art, into something you want to keep forever? I am astounded now by all the beautiful things people have written to me over the years. Of all the stories of adventure and love and disaster held upon those pages. All crafted by the hand, straight from the heart.
Brad found a similar box of his own. And we sat there side by side, silently emerged in our worlds. How quickly life has changed over the last decade. I no longer have a box for letters, purely as I do not receive them. There is something really quite intrinsically sad about that. The loss of this beautiful art form.
A favourite story Brad likes to tell, to anyone who will listen, is of his time as a backpacker in Europe and receiving mail via
Poste Restante . Arriving in Rome and locating the main post office to find you had mail waiting. How romantic that sounds now. Back then it was the only way to receive messages from home.
How about those light weight air mail letters that came already stamped. You'd spend a day or two in various bars and cafes watching the world go by whilst drafting the words in your head. Then using the teeniest script you could manage you'd fill up the pages with as much information as possible. It could take a few days to write a good letter, it was a timely and creative pursuit. I think about travellers today all crammed into Internet cafes connecting through the screen via short tweets and quickly typed out messages. It's a different world.
My relationship with Brad started with letters. We'd been friends at Uni and he wrote to me on his first European adventure. The occasional postcard.
Much later when he returned and we lived in different states, we would write to each other regularly, it was our only communication. It now seems an utterly romantic old-school kind of courtship. They weren't really love letters because we weren't really in love then. But I think we really wanted to be in love and therefore the letters were some kind of a test. A test of each others intelligence and our skills in esotericisim.
They were just as much fun to read and decipher as they were to write. I am glad I still have them.
As we both sat on the floor of our garage immersed in our history, reminiscing the memories and enjoying the very tangible remnants of the life we've lived, it occurred to us that our children may never have this privilege. Never know how to really write a letter, nor the excitement and anticipation of receiving one. What a terrible shame that will be.
Do you keep your old letters?
