Handwriting

Lorraine over at Here’s The Thing is an incredible writer and I’m always finding myself envious of her abilities. In a recent post, she spoke about being addicted to emailing which, of course, I can highly relate.

I think emailing is wonderful and I wholly embrace it. It’s enabled me to remain in close touch with friends from college, relatives, and “occasional exes from Texas” who, otherwise, might have fallen by the wayside as relationships often do.

However, I still admire the act of actually writing a letter with an actual pen and paper, addressing an envelope and posting it off. There's still something awfully romanticized about it and a handwritten letter can often be more expressive than an email.

My grandmother and I wrote a great deal to each other until she passed away four years ago at the age of 92. Her letters were so funny and charming and I always got a thrill to see her handwriting in my mailbox. I’ve kept about 20 years of her letters; there are 865 of them in all. Such a treasure.

I obtained a pen pal back in 1980 and we’ve been writing faithfully ever since, gosh, 26 years now. We’ve never met, never spoken on the phone, have never emailed, but have kept a faithful pen & paper correspondence all this time.

For a while, I had a pen pal in Russia on whom I’d practice my Russian. He said my grammar wasn’t very good, but often complimented my Russian handwriting. (Example below).

I think it’s much better than Lee Harvey Oswald’s, don’t you?