Letters have been a form of communication for centuries. Lovers write to send their passion for one another. New mothers write to send good news to family and friends. Military Generals write to give instruction, while people all over the world write to simply pass the time of day with a good thought to others.
(“Dear Santa… I would like a wagon. Thanks very much. Carroll”)
(“Dear Santa… I have been a very good girl. Please can I have a doll and a wagon? I would also like to have some candy. Love, Valette”)
As you can see, I come from a family of writers and all I have done is to follow in their footsteps. This truly was the way my writing started. By writing letters. And while the above was probably not the best prose my parents ever composed, they were concise. They spoke directly to the audience for whom it was meant. And, the message is clear, yes?
(“Dear Santa… I have been a very good boy. Could you come to my house first with my presents? I don’t know how much longer I can last. Your friend, Tommy”)
As a little girl, I watched my mother write letters to everyone. If she met persons on the street and liked them, she got an address and wrote to them a card. Mom and Dad took many a cruise, in later years of their life, and made new friends… those new folks would be entered in my mom’s address book and at Christmas they got a card from my parents. Ask me how many were on my mother’s Christmas list when she was living in her last residence with my father. Four hundred! And that’s after my dad went through and cut her list… he was tired of licking all those stamps!
(“Dear Santa… I was not nice to my little sister, but she hollers all of the time. Could you please bring her a nap for Christmas? Yours truly, Carolyn”)
Mom always looked so peaceful and happy when she wrote. These were attributes I’d always wanted in my life… even as a little girl. So, I asked to be a part of her world of writing. I learned quickly that in letter writing, there are rules to this thing.
The Wright Family Rules of Letter Writing:
1.) Everyone deserves one year of receiving letters. If they don’t answer, no more letters and they only get a card at Christmas.
2.) Penmanship is important; write as clearly as you can.
3.) Keep a healthy supply of stamps at all times.
4.) Select stationery
5.) Take time to enjoy your stationery and placing your penmanship on the page.
6.) Write when you have made the time to complete the activity, when you can think and recall what it is that you wish to say.
7.) Always have a beverage to sip as you write.
8.) Be in a quiet place if possible; enjoy your surroundings not by sight but by the feel and energy of it, while you write.
9.) Develop a distinctive signature, one that expresses who you are.
10.) Place the finished product in the addressed envelope and make certain the letter is mailed promptly.
My mother would write letters every single week. She always sat in the same spot peacefully observing her rules of writing. I would write every time Mom wrote. She started me writing to my grandparents. My words were not prolific. My thoughts were not grand… just a child’s day and all the little things that I wanted my grandmother to know. My grandmother always wrote back to me, and that made the process more rewarding. I became friends with Grandma Harris in a way that was wonderful but unexpected.
This was such fun, I decided to branch out and I talked my cousin, Sandy, into writing letters back and forth. And, how very liberating the experience was; we could say all the kids stuff that we knew adults would not want to hear. Sandy and I wrote to each other through sixth grade and into high school. We talked about everything… and yes, we talked about our boyfriends. We said things that we couldn’t or wouldn’t say to our mothers. It was better than a diary because a diary doesn’t write you back!
(“Dear Santa… Can I have a doll for Christmas? I want one that can talk. Be sure to put my name on it, so my sister doesn’t think it’s hers. Thanks. I love you. Barbie”)
My cousin had “cool” handwriting, I thought. Writing letters really is a time to check your penmanship and (for a person in the formative years) make changes that seem good. I wanted to make my handwriting something like a mix between my cousin’s, which always had such clarity as it traveled in a perfectly straight and level line across the page (Plus, it was beautifully legible), and my brother’s artistic flourish. I worked hard to make this new creation mine.
(My father to Carolyn concerning her handwriting as and adult daughter: “I can always pick out your handwriting, ‘PK’… It looks like a beautiful personal form of Egyptian markings. Trouble is I just can’t read it!”) So. I can write artistically and beautifully straight across the page but few can read it. Not exactly the success I was going for, but one lives with what one becomes.
Now when a person becomes a serious writer of letters, one can become comfortable with those rules and go off the beaten path. And, this is just what happened. Enter Rule Number Eleven added by yours truly.
I was overloaded with homework, I had an hour of piano practicing to do, and my mother called from work… “I want you to clean the house before I get home.” The house was a pretty big mess and it took me a while to get it done before she got home. I was into my homework with the piano practicing done. I knew I was going to be up very late; and Mom told me to do the dinner dishes. I snapped. I knew better than to mouth off because Dad always took my mother’s side, and then I’d be doing even more work for having expressed an opinion.
While I was digging into those dishes, I was having a pretty big pity party in my head. (Why wasn’t my brother doing any of this? Why is my sister off Scott-free… She isn’t THAT young. How come I always get all the house cleaning and crap jobs?) I decided I needed to talk to Somebody, and Tom was gone to his scout meeting. So after all the dishes were dried and put away, I began to follow those rules and took time from homework to bare my soul to not my cousin (big mistake here) but to my mother’s mother.
“Dear Grandma… I am so tired of being the one that does 2/3rds of the housework around here while my mother goes to her job. I would like to know where she got the idea to pick on her eldest daughter to carry all this responsibility. You’re always fair, Grandma, and why isn’t she?” Do you sense the idiocy of this letter? Do you feel the stupidity of the author putting my rant down on paper?
Enter my addition to the Wright Rules of Writing.
Number Eleven: “Reading other peoples’ letters, whether mailed to your home or leaving as a letter to someone else, is unacceptable. Only the person to whom it is addressed or the writer should see the content.”
Yeah, you guessed it. My mother saw my letter lying on the table and that it was to HER mother. She opened it up and read what I wrote. (Oh brother and then some!) She was hopping mad! She punished me not with more work but with words. Words I will not elaborate on but words that made it clear she didn’t want me telling her mother anything about the way she ran her house. I learned a very important lesson that night. Everything in my life is not everyone’s business.
As an adult, writing seemed to blend very well with my life. None of my family lived close to me so I wrote letters to them. I wrote to grandmothers. I wrote to my brother. I wrote to my parents. I wrote to close friends. I must have been writing at least a thousand words a day. And while I kept up with music as a career, this writing was more and more becoming my mantra.
Writing soothes my soul. Writing lets me be myself. It adds clarity to life and fills me with peace. Actually, I think it could do this for anyone because with Mom’s rules of writing, there is direction. One can find one’s self. You will see who you were and find who and what you wish to become. It makes one sit down and stop running. It keeps your mind active and makes you think. And this, I believe, is a very good thing.
My cup of tea is gone. The day is finished. Sitting here with you has been good.
“Dear Santa… Could all the many friends who read this blog all over the world find peace and vision in writing a letter, whether on the computer or (my favorites choice) on stationery. Thanks.
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple”