I came home the other night and opened my mailbox. There was a big envelope there, with my name written on it. No return address. But I recognized the handwriting immediately. From an old old flame of mine, a major old flame, who burned up my late 20s and early 30s. That makes him sound horrible and destructive. He wasn’t. The love going on there was … almost addictive. Or totally addictive. We were addicted to each other and the detox process took forever. There were moments of ESP and even a creepy Mr.-Rochester-calling-out-to-Jane-Eyre-across-the-space-time-continuum moment, when we were in different cities. It probably wasn’t healthy, but that was Love, I guess. When I moved to New York, he still lived in the Midwest, and we wrote each other letters. Long chatty letters. The “thing” between us was done but there was still so much we had to tell each other. Funny stories from the day, what we were working on, stuff like that. There was no email. Or, there was, but neither of us had it yet. Looking back, maybe we shouldn’t have been corresponding. It didn’t keep me hanging on or anything like that. There was nothing manipulative going on. It was just two people who got so much out of our interaction that we had to keep it going. Who will I talk to about the things I could only talk to about with him? And they were dumb things – like: “Holy shit, Leslie Van Houten is up for parole again, have you heard?” Or “I have got to tell you that I am now OBSESSED with early Bee Gees …” You know. Stuff that only he or I would “get”, or that’s what it felt like. So the letters flew back and forth until, at one point, or at many points, I can’t really remember, we stopped. Time to move on. It took us forever to let go. The last time I had a letter from him was, 10 years ago, or something?
I haven’t spoken to him since 2010 when we had a prickly interaction over text that derailed within 3 exchanges. I wasn’t doing well and he strolled into the middle of it, unknowingly. He forgot himself for a second, said something, didn’t respond to something I said, and white-hot-rage surged up in me, and I handed him his HAT. In no uncertain terms. He must have felt blindsided. We don’t always do our best in life. I mean, he and I are going on 20 years of knowing each other. Or, no, it’s been longer than that. Damn, I’m old.
From the first moment we met, there was a recognition thing going on. Like babies reaching out to each other from separate carts in the grocery store; “Oh. You. You’re like me.” That was what it was like, and that has not changed.
So I opened the mailbox and saw his handwriting.
Knew it instantly. After all these years. Instantly. Said to myself, even with no return address, “This is from him.”
It was a hand-written letter. It made me feel happy. He is doing well. He is happy I am doing well.
But what struck me was the handwriting. I know the handwriting of all of my friends in grade school and high school. To this day. I could pick my friend Jackie’s handwriting out of a lineup. My friend Kate. All of my siblings. Because I grew up in the day when you wrote letters to each other. When you got to know stuff like that. I joked with my friend Kate that I needed to lie on my side to read her writing, because it is so slanted. Getting letters has gone the way of many other precious things. I haven’t received a personal letter in years.
There is something precious and personal contained IN someone’s handwriting, regardless of the words that are written. It is someone’s essence, who they are, it emanates off the page in a way that can’t be translated via email. When I used to receive letters all the time, I didn’t experience it that way because letters were common. But now, looking at type all day long, communicating with my friends and family ONLY by email or text … I felt this rush of personal-ness, in reading his letter. It felt like he was right there in the room.
Getting that letter made me miss getting letters, and sent me on a little tailspin imagining the handwriting of my friend Kate, my friend Beth or Betsy, my siblings, my father. Each one … unique. THEM.
His handwriting is a fingerprint. It says: “Him. And him only.”
Totally agree about handwriting conveying more information than just the content of the words. It’s hard to choose the slower, more complicated option when so many great shortcuts are available, but something important is lost when we don’t. A lot of schools have stopped teaching cursive altogether, which I think is a huge mistake.
Yeah, I never write letters. I’m going to write him back, long-hand. We don’t have each other’s emails anyway. But it will be fun. To write a letter.
I don’t mind kids not learning cursive. It may very well be going the way of Latin. Who knows. Maybe some kids will love the throw-back nature of it – in the same way that some kids now are completely obsessed with vinyl, and record players, and are scornful of anything digital. Shit always comes around again.
What a nice surprise to get that letter! I love sending and receiving letters, so much so I joined Postcrossing so I would have things in my mailbox. Lots of fun getting postcards from all around the world.
When I read what you wrote about knowing people’s handwriting-all these images flooded in my mind of the sight of my loved ones distinctive styles-so much so that I am going to put together a box of letters (I have kept old ones, and I am so glad I did) so I have easy access to them.
Maureen – I’ve never heard of Postcrossing! I’ll have to look it up!
I, too, have a little box filled with letters I’ve kept. My father’s writing, especially. It’s very special.
Yes, to all of that. I still have a box of handwritten letters from friends, girlfriends, parents, grandparents, some no longer alive, some just lost to time. I treasure them all. Reading them, its like for a short time being in contact again with them, though of course that’s not true in any real sense, beyond what’s in my head and heart. Sadly, my cursive was never very good, so I printed most of my replies to them…and my experience was the same as most of us of a certain age, where the letters gradually trailed off then stopped; for me, I can trace it to somewhere in the mid- to late-1990s, as the Web became ubiquitous.
It would be a nice thing if letter writing came back. I sometimes wonder whether younger adults these days will miss not having their own box of letters to return to someday, moreso as we’ve moved from emails to ever more instant, transient forms of communication like IMs and SnapChat which don’t leave any trace to possibly return to someday, to remember those who have been lost, and perhaps recall some part of ourselves that we left with them as well. There has to be some kind of value to that history, even if its just to ourselves.
Tom – I feel the same way! Back in the earliest days of the Web, I saved every email – sometimes printing them out. My long-distance friends and I used it gloriously as the postal service and wrote these long long letters – and yeah, now, not so much. No more novel-length emails.
On the flip-side, things like Facebook – I mean, I really do feel in touch with long-distance friends in an everyday way that would have been HEAVEN back then when I was missing people so much. I see their kids’ first day of school pictures, and stuff like that, things I love to be a part of.
But yeah. Nothing nothing nothing like a hand-written letter!!
Sheila Oh, beautiful writing on your old flame, loved it! It’s strange and sad how letter writing is gone. Last year I sent my daughter and her beau a weird Halloween card, because they love Halloween, saying something like, “when you suddenly realize you are the creepy neighbor”, put tiny weird objects in it, disguised my handwriting, mailed it no return address from another part of the city. She called me, “thanks for the card Mom” I said, “Oh I started to get worried I creeped you guys out and scared you!” “Mom, seriously, do you think I don’t know your terrible handwriting by now?”
Regina – hahahaha That story cracks me up!
My friend Brett, who passed away in 2011, was a master letter-writer and card-maker, and never stopped – even with the Internet. His birthday cards and Halloween cards (he, too, loved Halloween) were EPIC. With drawings and collages and cartoons – all so beautifully done, crazy little Edward Gorey worlds – and he would decorate the envelopes too. I kept all of his cards and am so glad I did now – since I won’t get any more from him. :(
Handwriting. From the pen to the page. Which is really – from the person’s hand to the page. It’s breathtakingly immediate when you think about it.
Loved this. There’s so much more content of you, me (the sender) in a letter than in an email. When we write we give something of ourselves and it could only come from us. When I read that volume of letters to and from Leonard Bernstein earlier this year, I mourned the loss of the letter.
Recently my mom gave me a letter that I wrote her and my father in 1985 from Milwaukee. Written on Milwuakee Rep stationary. I have no recollection writing it. It could have been from someone else.
Wow. Seeing a letter from yourself … wow. A real time-travel moment.
You’re one of the people whose writing I would recognize in a dark alley! In purple pen!
The purple illegible scrawl.
Want to go to a NY Film Fest screening with me or are you all booked?
Would love to!! There’s so much I want to see. Let’s do it!
Me too. Let’s switch to email and figure it out!