The treasures of handwritten letters

When my wife and her sister cleaned out the lake house their parents had built in 1960s, they found a trove of old pictures and letters.

Many of the pictures are mysteries, taken decades ago of people my wife and her sister don't recognize. Other photos are affirmations of vague memories of events from long ago.

The letters are more precious. Most are of fairly recent vintage, as early as the 1950s or '60s and as recent as the close of the 20th century. My father-in-law kept all the letters he received, most of them in the envelopes in which they came. I've read a number of the letters my wife had written when our children were small or yet unborn. Her salutation was often "Dear Family," as she intended the letters for her parents and her siblings, passing along news from her way station hundreds of miles distance.

Several letters are from our time in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where we lived while I fulfilled my military obligation and she doted over our first-born child, who was enjoying the benefits of being cuddled and entertained by her young parents. Later letters were postmarked in places like Hamlet, N.C.; Danville, Va.; and Wilson, N.C. as I followed the opportunities in my newspaper career.

Much of the "news" in these letters was mundane, pertaining to our daughter's development, our tight budget, car troubles, and recent purchases for our nearly empty apartment. There were also stories of visits from my wife's siblings and occasionally from my family and friends. These letters refreshed vague memories of what our lives were like long ago.

Later in our life's journey, we began communicating with my in-laws (and most everyone else) via email. My father-in-law printed out each email from us and filed them away to be found years later. Those old email copies were passed around while we were clearing out the house for sale. Some sparked guffaws or sad sentiment, but we all agreed not to keep the paper copies of emails.

Those emails just don't have the appeal of a neatly penned letter. Handwriting adds a personality to a letter that is not present in a typewritten or computer-generated letter, which was my preferred means of communicating during those years. We found some letters I had written on my old typewriter or on a computer, but they lacked the intimacy of my wife's handwritten missives.

My mother (born 100 years ago) was also a good letter writer. When my oldest brother joined the Air Force and was stationed far away, she would write to him every Sunday night, sketching her neat penmanship on a pack of lined writing paper from the dime store. Later, when I left home for college, I received weekly letters in that same neat script and on that same cheap writing paper.

Regrettably, I did not save my mother's letters. A few may be boxed away in the attic, but I did not treasure them the way I should have. I would like to recall her thoughts on the various happenings in her life, tales of visits to relatives or church friends, funerals for neighbors and church members I barely remembered, and, always admonishments to be on good behavior and work hard.

I have never developed the habit, which I much admire, of sending short notes to people who have won success or endured misfortune or grief. I have been the recipient of such notes, which always impressed me but I never emulated. I have sadly concluded that I might have run out of time to nurture such a habit. Both my wife and I have vowed to be better about sending notes, and we've encouraged our grandchildren (still young enough to develop good habits) to write letters and notes, too.

The musty, crumbling letters from long ago offer glimpses and reminders of what our lives were like. When our children and grandchildren clean out the drawers and boxes we've squirreled away, they won't find many handwritten letters. If they look on the hard drives of our computers, the artifacts they find won't be as interesting or as intimate as the letters we rescued from a landfill.

Ours is the last generation to cherish the handwritten word. I have a photocopy of a letter written in the early 1900s from my great-grandfather, whom I never met, to my grandfather, who was then a young man. The one-page letter reveals much about these two ancestors and the world they inhabited. A generation earlier, a better-educated population indulged in long conversations in stilted language about all manner of events, politics, science and philosophy. Two hundred years after their letters were posted, the conversations between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are still being studied.

None of our 21st century substitutes for the handwritten letter can provide the insight into and understanding of long-ago lives. Our world has substituted efficiency for intimacy.