My own parents were busy people, but they also wrote letters, once my brother and I were grown and gone from home. My mother had always written to my grandmother whenever they were apart, from the time she went off to college until my grandmother died more than fifty years later. When my brother and I left home, my mother simply made carbon copies of Grandmother’s weekly letter.
Father became a letter writer only after his retirement. Before then, he kept up with us by an occasional phone call. Once he started writing letters, however, he, too, used a carbon. Both parents personalized the copies by adding a line or two of handwritten communication. As the youngest sibling, the copies I received tended to be smudged and at times illegible, at least the ones from Mother, who made two copies (the original went to my grandmother), and used a manual, lightweight typewriter.
The carbons were always crisp (thank you, old faithful IBM Selectric!). Both parents were hunt-and-peck typists, and their letters were full of strikeovers, cross-outs, and just plain mistakes. It didn’t matter. We loved receiving them, even though a letter from a parent is often a reminder that you’re not really as grown up as you see yourself. It’s not the contents that matter; it’s the contact.
His letters tended to be short, except when they offered scientific information and explanation, and even then, they were economical and clear. Mother’s, on the other hand, contained long, detailed descriptions of where she and my stepfather had been, what they had done, and whom they had seen, detailed to the point of tedium. She was much more enthusiastic about her life than anybody else could be.
By far the most rewarding letters I’ve received over the past 30 years have been exchanged more or less weekly with a dear friend. We have an epistolary relationship that manages to be fun, supportive, challenging, enlarging, and comfortable, all at once. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
She is someone I knew casually when we were in college. She went to school where my stepfather taught, and she and I spent one summer mutually employed in an “outdoor drama” (a good summer job for college students in those days). After that, I didn’t see or hear from her for several years, but we kept track of one another through mutual friends, and later on, she married my husband’s best friend and working partner.
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