A few weeks ago, I reached out to an old friend over text. I asked her how she was and told her to update me on her life. The pandemic has made it both easier to reach out (we’re lonely, we want connection) and harder (we’re stuck in our little COVID routines and small circles of people).
Yet, even after a while, she still hadn’t replied.
There’s something about an unanswered text that’s way more interesting than one that you get an answer to in five minutes. There’s mystery, intrigue, anticipation. However when a few weeks passed, I started to worry.
But there’s something even more interesting about a letter in the mail.
“Sorry I never replied to your text,” was the first sentence of a six-page letter from my friend (each piece of paper was actually hand-numbered, a true nod to the old-school, letter-writing days). She said she had been saving the specific stationery (light pink with a purple border) to send me a letter one day, and that my text message seemed like the ideal occasion.
The whole situation was a throwback to grade school. When I was in fifth grade, I had a pen pal in Maryland who would send me letters on greeting cards with teddy bears on them. She would always include photos (the Kodak disposable camera variety) of her cats and talk about baking scones. Around the same time, my best friend and I would write each other letters using “invisible ink” pens (you needed a blacklight to read the writing) on American Girl doll or Disney stationery. We would write prolifically and often. We happened also to live on the same block.
Receiving a message in the form of a handwritten letter is so rare, but so good. You have to work harder: check the mail, open the envelope, decipher someone’s handwriting. You have to wait longer (even if you live in the same town). You have to take the time to write a reply and find the stamps. There’s something in the tactile experience of letter-writing that can’t be satisfied by a text, email, or Facebook message.
Don’t get me wrong; modern communication, especially in 2020, is a lifesaver. Being able to reach out to anyone at any hour is essential to keeping any kind of kinship and community in times like these.
But let’s not forget about the romance of the letter for the moments in between.
