Yesterday at work, I was sitting at my boss’s desk trying to make labels for the new items that had just been delivered to the store. Luckily, the POS system was as easy as my boss had made it look in the five minutes before she dashed off to her other job. Skimming her desk for a pen, the packing list, and scrap paper, I was surprised to find a small pale pink note card with a bird on the front—my note card, in fact. A thank you note I’d written her two summers ago after receiving my final paycheck and an unexpected gift in the mail upon returning to college. I was surprised she’d kept it. I mean, yes while I keep every written thing I’ve gotten ever, I know not everyone does. My mother looked at my mountains of paper with disgust and the very practical view of cleaning out and decluttering and not being so sentimental about notes I passed in eighth grade to my best friend when bored in Biology class.. (However, she may be onto something–my hoarding nature was also a source of my disgust this summer when I was cleaning out my room and dumped what was probably the equivalent of three full grown trees into our recycling bin.)
The funny thing is, I’ve noticed my notes popping back up to blink knowingly at me from their spots on desks, walls, or tables. While talking to one of my professors, I noticed my pale blue birdie card perched against a can of pens. I’d given it to her last winter for Christmas. One of my bosses tacked my thank you note up on her desk, next to other little cards she’d received. I find myself wondering: are these little things so rare that people feel like they have to keep them when they’re received? I realize that for a 21-year old, I receive a staggering amount of mail. Having been home for four days, I have five letters on my desk and have sent out three. I have a good six inch stack of letters received since May on top of my printer at school. At work, one lady caught me in the middle of a heartfelt six-page letter to someone I’ve never met (everyone should go check out The Rumpus’s Letters in the Mail; it’s fantastic). I was telling Ray Shea about what it was like to be in your twenties, how we deal with death and sadness, and apologizing for being kind of a bitch in my last letter–I didn’t realize I was in the throes of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I was generally kind of nasty to everyone between October-November, including myself. Six pages to a writer who lives in Texas who wrote eight pages to countless people about his dad dying and steel shutters rolling up inside him to keep him from crying. And admitting he’s scared–that’s a big thing, to admit you’re afraid of something. I think that’s the beauty of letter-writing: being able to admit things on paper you might not tell people in conversation.
One of my friends who I consistently write to–she lives in California these days–told me that in writing to me, she often works things out in her own head. I agree. I write about scary future things, like MFA programs and trying to throw myself into what I love even though there are days I seriously contemplate my cardboard box future and question my sanity. And in writing to my California friend, I block out step-by-step ways I can deal with this overwhelming anxiety about “THE FUTURE”. She writes me her frustration with her college and the way institutions run things, and I want to tell her how big and beautiful her spirit is, and how I know she is going to change the world. I have lots of friends who I think are going to change the world. I end every letter telling her how proud I am of her–I think everyone needs to hear that more–and that I miss her. I write other friends about my complicated love infinity symbols, where there’s so much love getting all caught and confused in the loops and somehow in writing to these people, I understand where it’s all supposed to go. I write very haltingly in German and try to envision my friends there moving on without me, moving on in their own lives, and I get a little sad. But we keep writing and we keep promising Skype dates, even though we’re fantastically bad at keeping those promises.
When I was still in elementary school and living in Maryland, my very best best best friend moved to New York. Lockport, NY. I don’t remember exactly how old I was–maybe, seven, eight? But to a seven or eight year old, Lockport, NY was three planets away. She wrote me countless letters, trying to keep our friendship afloat. I will admit: I sucked. I was the worst at writing back. (This was also about the time my mother was trying to impress upon me the importance of writing letters/writing thank-you notes, and in true bratty kid fashion, I balked. I threw tantrums, I sulked, I refused to sit down and write thank you notes, and my poor dear friend went for months without hearing from me.) We didn’t talk for awhile–not because we had a falling out, simply because I was not interested in writing letters and she (rightly so) gave up. Our families exchanged Christmas cards & a newsy Christmas letter every year, but that was about the extent of it.
“Don’t you ever talk to Anna anymore?” my mom would sigh.
I would shrug and tell her we fell out of touch.
In eighth grade, my family moved to New York. Anna and I found each other on Facebook some years later, in our teens, and started reconnecting again. I went to Germany and realized how amazing getting a handwritten letter was. And then I started writing to Anna. And like she always had, she wrote back. We got the opportunity to meet up last winter, after having not seen each other in eight years. We shrieked and hugged and danced in the snow and looked at each other and shrieked some more and caught up on the last eight years of our lives. Our moms were still parenting about the same. We’d both had a wild phase (kind of). We were still childhood friends, with the kind of relationship that could bounce back after intermittent correspondence and eight years apart.
I have three boxes of letters stashed away in plastic boxes in my mom’s art studio. I’m keeping them for me, but also for my future kids. I don’t know if they’ll have any interest in reading their mom’s old letters to friends, but I’ve always been interested in family history, in things that were happening in my mom and dad’s generation, and in the kind of the people they were in their teens, twenties, thirties. And it’s wonderful to get something other than bills or junk mail in your mailbox. A letter always brightens my day–it’s a labor of love. Someone took the time to sit their ass down and scratch out 1-11 pages (the longest letter I’ve written was 12 pages?) to you. And seeing their handwriting on the page makes it all the more beautiful. When one of my best friend’s and I were abroad–she in Belgium, I in Germany– and sometimes feeling lost, as one is wont to occasionally feel in a foreign country, we swapped the occasional letter and Christmas cards. Every time I saw her loopy handwriting on an envelope, we were back drawing silly cartoons in Anatomy & Physiology senior year. I was comforted and I was not alone.
I joke that I am trying to singlehandedly keep our postal system afloat. I moan about the rising price of stamps and one of my housemates recently remarked that “The world would end if you didn’t have stamps on you”–which she very conveniently needed. In our world of texting and emailing and chatting and messaging, a personal touch is often lacking. I found out people love getting things in the mail. I’ve gotten some of my friends into letter-writing. And this is why things like The Rumpus’s Letters in the Mail and The World Needs More Love Letters are so kickass. Try writing a letter to someone this month–it’s the holiday season, after all! Maybe family, friends, someone you see every day at the office, or someone you fell out of touch with over the years. Sometimes writing to other people presents us with clarity in our own lives. And, of course, if you want to write to me, let me know! (There’s a comment box-y thing that WordPress calls a “contact form” at the bottom of this post for your convenience.) I’ll always write back. That’s a promise I can safely make now.
Also, totally off topic: everyone should read Cheryl Strayed’s new book Tiny, Beautiful Things. It’s magical and human and heartbreaking and I can’t stop calling people “sweet pea” now.
Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah or Happy Holidays, dear readers! Here’s my Christmas wish for you: that your holiday season is well and blessed and full of light and things that make you smile.
The Wanderer 
Hey Amy, lovely post. I find myself envious, encouraged, and enlivened by your linguistic passions and the glimpses I’ve gotten via your blog posts into how you are following those passions still. It’s invigorating, is all. I’ve missed being surrounded by your ilk at Geneseo.
Happy holidays, and I hope you’re well!
P.S. I saw your poem in the new Gandy Dancer. It was the most held-together of the bunch, in my opinion. Bravo!
Hi Jeff! Thank you so much! I hope the post-grad life is treating you well! Please tell me you’re still writing–your pieces were some of my favorites in our Creative Writing class! I haven’t been posting as much on this blog because I’ve been writing a lot of poetry that I’d eventually like to send other places and submission guidelines can get weird about blogs as “previously published work”. And thank you for your kind words about Gandy Dancer–it’s funny, because the poem went through two more revisions after it was accepted. Ever a work in progress! Lovely to hear from you-if you’re ever in Geneseo, let me know!
I am still writing, although much more sparingly than I want and should. And like you, I haven’t been posting any of my poetry to my blog because I’m sending stuff out. I had one poem accepted to the Southern Humanities Review. That was very exciting. The excitement dissipated rather quickly, though, both from the fact that my poem won’t actually be in their print until as much as a year from its acceptance and from the sort of universal the-things-you-want-aren’t-as-sweet-once-you’ve-got-them existential cliche.
Not to mention the cruel torture of reading periods, some as long as 7 months. My poems are stale to me in about 7 minutes, let alone 7 months. It’s not the sort of business one ought to expect contentment from. Perhaps that’s the blessing of it all.
Congratulations!!!! That’s wonderful and exciting! I’ll have to find a copy of the Southern Humanities Review when it comes out! And agreed–my poem in Gandy Dancer has gone a few steps further and when I did the reading, I so very achingly wanted to be reading the new version, haha. But, as you say, therein lies the blessing: the push to always be newly creating.