Snail Mail

My little sister and I exchange letters through the mail quite frequently. In fact, I’m three letters behind in sending her a response as we speak.

She’s in New York and has the benefit of a mailbox on every street corner, so she can send out letters all the time. I either have to drive to the post office or leave my letters out in the mailbox. Which always seems weird to me – does it upset the mail carrier to pick up mail instead of dropping it off? I don’t want to upset him. He’s a nice guy.

I write letters to everyone in my family, but not as frequently as I used to. A few months ago, my sister passed away from suicide, and in going through her things we found that she had kept all the letters I had ever sent her. Of course, she was a pack rat and kept EVERYTHING so it wasn’t that significant. But of course, it was to me. It felt as if all my letters to her weren’t enough. All my care, all my attention, all the love I poured into them wasn’t enough to save her.

So I stopped writing letters for a while. My little sister noticed, but thought I was busy and gave me plenty of space about it. She’s good people. Eventually, my Grandmother wrote (the matriarch of the family) and I had no choice but to write her back. That act got me back into the habit again.

So now I write my little sister and my Grandmother, and that’s all I really need. Sometimes I’ll write a friend or two, but I’m nowhere near as prolific as before. Knowing that my letters didn’t mean much to my other sister makes me sad, but I think my little sister in New York likes them, and my Grandma likes them. So I’ll keep writing because I enjoy sending them letters, and they enjoy receiving my letters.

(If you would like to be a ‘pen pal’, just go to the Contact page and fill out the comments section with your mailing address and I’ll send you a letter, too!)