Pen Pals and Postcards
Have you ever heard of “The Mail Moment”? Neither had I, until I started researching the decline in letter writing. “The Mail Moment” is the notable name of a mail study conducted by the US Postal Service. The study, ongoing since the early 2000s, found that personal mail is so rarely received that when it does arrive, it offers the recipient a spark of emotion so notable that the researchers endearingly dubbed it “the mail moment.” Americans still love the arrival of a handwritten note in their mailbox—and I am not the least bit surprised.
I hold a particular nostalgia for handwritten records of any type, but personal mail has a certain magnetism. I have a charming collection of vintage Christmas postcards from the turn of the 20th century featuring bundled-up children on outdoor ice-skating rinks and steamy figgy pudding adorned with holly. Aside from the quaint, festive holiday imagery, the short handwritten notes on the backs of the postcards are what really capture my imagination—usually messages of plainly stated affection like, “Sending love at the holidays, Warmly, Gertrude,” or “Wishing the Ferman Family a joyous Christmas.” The sentiments can be unfussy because the gesture of a handwritten note is, in itself, a sign of care and signifies one’s importance to a friend.
I dug up another of my letter collections while antiquing in France. Some people enter flow states while running, painting, or knitting. I lose all track of time and the world around me when I am humming along in an antique store—especially one in my beloved France. On this particular trip, to my delight, I discovered a box of letters, all over a hundred years old. The handwriting is in the unmistakable ink of fountain pens and looks like calligraphy rather than everyday penmanship. The paper is tissue-thin with elaborate postage and date stamps: “Paris, 1902” or “Marseilles, 1914.” I love imagining the people who wrote the letters, sitting, dignified, at desks in the calming solitude of a quiet room. Isn’t this how it would have been? Likely not, but my romantic sensibilities always paint this picture.
Sometimes, I wonder if letter writing, in all actuality, may have been part of the drudgery of life at the time, like our version of having to go on an errand at Target to get dish soap and dog food. And yet, one thing has not changed: opening a letter holds a suspended moment of anticipation, a mix of surprise and eagerness to be whisked into the sender's world.
“When you have received a letter, you first of all sit down, cutting open the envelope is done slowly and resolutely, as though diffidently raising the lid of an enchanted chest.” —Karel Capek (1890-1938), Czech journalist and writer
I have not been the recipient of terribly many letters by mail. Despite this fact, which could be seen as despairing for one with such old-fashioned sensibilities, I am a prolific letter-writer. The most bountiful year of letter writing was 1990, when my family and I lived in France. At the time, overseas phone calls to my high school BFF back home in Canada were out of the question. This was a problem, because so much was happening in my 14-year-old life: details of my daily walk to school on narrow cobblestone streets, my school originally built as a 1600s convent, boys, pastries (so many pastries!), buying my first lacy bra (that is another story, but I quickly learned while changing out for gym class that even high schoolers wear beautiful undergarments in France), and the fact that we didn’t have a clothes dryer and had to hang laundry to dry on clothes lines on the roof of our apartment building. Somehow, the blow-by-blow of every aspect of my French life had to be shared. So I sat down at the 150-year-old desk that came with my room in our tiny furnished apartment, and wrote to her every week. As if designed by a movie set producer, I had an utterly romantic view of a row of elegant Italian Cypress trees from my desk, and classical piano music floated through my window from the woman who lived in the apartment above us. I took my letter-writing very seriously and didn’t want to be disturbed by my pesky little brother, who to this day will say, “Yeah, you spent a lot of time with your door shut writing letters that year.”
By the time the year was up, my best friend had an entire stack of letters, oscillating in detail between boy-crazed and awe-struck. While we were in our twenties, she went to the painstaking trouble of binding all the letters into a book for me, a treasure that surely would not exist if she and I had had smartphones in 1990. With that technology, there would have been a lot of photos and texts sent, but no permanent or detailed record of my 14-year-old brain soaking in a life-changing experience. The irony of our current tech-saturated lives is never lost on me: we communicate more now than ever before with smartphones and social media, but so very little of it is recorded in a way that creates valuable future reflection. We often capture events in photos, but not feelings. I also think of my best friend, with an entire year of mail moments, and how it must have felt to know she had so dedicated a friend, so dedicated a love.
As I said, 1990 marked the peak of my letter-writing, though any of my dear friends or family members surely has a small treasure trove of postcards and letters they have received from me over the years. I sometimes send notes to friends who live in town, just a little “mail kiss” to show they matter to me, but I most often send postcards when I travel. Unfortunately, finding postcards is getting harder and harder. There have been times when my family had to help me comb the streets of wherever we were visiting to find “Mom's postcards.” Even in Europe, and a few summers ago in Hawaii, postcards were hard to track down. This deeply saddens me. It is a sign of our surface-level, convenience-obsessed culture that taking 15 minutes on a vacation to write out a handful of cards is too much trouble. This moment carved out of time on vacation also allows me to sit and think about the essence of the trip I am on: the food, sights, smells, weather, and the funny habits of the locals. It is a little moment of tangible connection, offering a deep sense of being remembered, even from a faraway place, all in a four-by-six-inch card. Such a tiny gesture with such a big impact.
The faded trend of letter-writing has been on my mind lately because I am now highly focused on helping women build and maintain meaningful friendships through my program, The Invitation. While most of the world has moved away from this form of connection, I continue to embrace it as one of the many ways I weave meaningful expressions of love and nurture into my relationships. While facilitating community talks about the challenges of modern friendships in the Carolinas last month, I offered a parting goody bag for attendees. The idea for the goody bag hit me suddenly: I wanted to offer something they could do, some action they could take immediately after our deep moment of community bonding and connection. The bag held a small candle, herbal tea, a pretty stationery notecard, and an envelope—with a stamp already affixed. I know the barriers to connection can be many, and when it comes to sending cards or letters, it’s often the stamp. (How many of us have a graveyard of un-mailed birthday cards, all because we didn’t have a stamp?) After the gatherings, I have been delighted to receive messages from women who shared they created an interlude in their day, lit the candle, sipped their tea, and experienced their own tender mail moment as they wrote to someone. I think the researchers didn’t quite get it right; I am certain the joy of the mail moment happens in the giving and the receiving.
As I am drawn to ordinary pleasures that bring joy, connection, and a sense of a slow and rich life, I am forever on the hunt for others with kindred values. Here are two independent businesses offering stationery and other products that make the world a better place.
The Wildflower Illustration Company, Cheltenham, England. The owners of this charming English stationery store have started a free program called The Sunday Letter Project — a modern pen-pal system for strangers to send and receive letters. When you visit the project page, be sure to read their list of suggested letter prompts, which address a stunningly beautiful range of life's experiences. The letter project carries a simple elegance and depth of meaning that is rarely found in what consumers are offered these days. I am also particularly drawn to the aesthetic of their products, created with watercolor paintings of flowers, farm life, and the changing seasons in a natural color palette. They had me at “Hello.”
The Little Truths Studio, Portland, Oregon. As I continue finding kindred spirits who cherish letter-writing as a way to keep human bonds strong, I've stumbled uponThe Analog Life Snail Mail Society, offered by Little Truths Studio. Run from a farm just outside Portland, Oregon, this small, independently owned company sells writing starter kits for friends and family, alongside other offerings that support a life rooted in analog pursuits. Their style is colorful, playful, and kitschy, sometimes with a social justice bent (like a small pin shaped like a building that reads “Keep Public Libraries Open”). I found them through The Analog Life Project, which they describe as "An exploration of living more deliberately offline—through making, noticing, writing, and human connection." Their monthly newsletter and analog focus speak directly to my own values, and I wholeheartedly champion this independently owned business with a big heart.
Enjoy the slow- Heather