HANDWRITTEN
Everything changes with a pen in your hand and a message in your heart.
When every word is carefully chosen; each thought delicately (l)inked to a sentiment
that serves as a reminder or a validation, recognition, repudiation or profession.
Taking the time to capture a moment, share it with someone
and expect nothing in return is such an amazing, intimate gift.
Handwritten letters and notes, whether they are on napkins, scraps of paper or elegant linen sheets are tangible tokens we can carry with us throughout our lives; echoes of who we are, where we’ve been and what we believe in.
No emoji can do that.
Printing out an email or a text can’t convey those sentiments in the same way.
The trend today is to make our communications more disposable.
Snapchat, those “don’t-print-this-email-if-you-don’t-have-to” email signatures; KiK Messenger,
all designed to make our thoughts something easy to throwaway.
I say fuck that.
If you have ever physically written me in your life, chances are I still have it.
There are footlockers and original Air Jordan boxes filled with them that
I have moved from state to state, year after year.
Every yellow planka from CMH’s senior retreat;
Each one of the hundreds of pages Kiki Vandeweghe put in the mail in the summer of ’89;
A homemade Valentine written backwards.
‘Atta boys from the Journal Sentinel days;
Condemnations, congratulations;
Cards from Camp Illahee.
Goodbyes from colleagues I don’t remember
and ones I’ll never forget.
Love notes from Rebecca
pictures from Sean, Leah,
thoughts from my Mom, Sarah, Tim
and the three letters I have from my dad…
All these and hundreds more are my evidence.
Proof of how blessed I have been by so many.
Some of you may have gotten a note from me in the past;
it’s something I believe in and try to pay forward to this day.
It’s what this whole weird blog thing is all about really –
you knowing, people knowing
what they mean to me, done for me
and just getting it out in the universe so my final record is more than three letters,
because I so wish his was too…
What about you?
When is the last time your heart started beating a little faster when you got the mail; when you
saw that envelope with your name on it and wondered just what the message was inside?
When is the last time you put your feelings on paper and shared them with someone?
Let’s take back the lost art of the handwritten note and make some no15e.
Are you in?