I love receiving and writing letters. I collect stationery like corners collect dust. I blame my mother for this addiction because, from the moment I could read, she has written and posted me letters. All through my childhood, she would often disappear to the post office and post a letter back to where she’d just walked from. Initially I thought she was quite mad. But of course she knew and I soon came to realise, that there’s nothing quite like the thrill of receiving an envelope, complete with beautiful handwriting, a pretty stamp and always containing a little message of love, support or advice.
She still sends me letters (despite us speaking daily and seeing each other weekly). Sometimes it will be nothing more than a page torn from a magazine that has taken her fancy. At other times she will ask my advice on something, share a recipe or enclose a photo or a funny cartoon. She never holds back (sigh) on sending me newspaper clippings that support her political views. I’ve decided it’s her version of Facebook. Her handwriting is very distinctive and she continues to use beautiful stationery. E.v.e.r.y. single letter I receive from her gives me a thrill.
Not long ago Mum sent me a poem she had torn from a magazine with a yellow sticky attached that read “Isn’t this poem beautiful? Um, yes, absolutely it is. Evocative, gentle words designed to prick the imagination. Beauty can be found in unexpected places and at the least likely of times. I choose to share it here because of the bitterly cold winter that is lingering in much of Europe and some parts of the United States and Canada. So, to my northern hemisphere friends, I send you a different way of thinking about winter, courtesy of Mr Gabriel Setoun (1861 – 1930).
JACK FROST
The door was shut, as doors should be,
Before you went to bed last night;
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,
And left your windows silver white.
He must have waited till you slept;
And not a single word he spoke,
But pencilled o’er the panes and crept
Away again before you woke.
And now you cannot see the hills
Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;
But there are fairer things than these
His fingers traced on every pane.
Rocks and castles towering high;
Hills and dales, and streams and fields;
And knights in armo[u]r riding by,
With nodding plumes and shining shields.
And here are little boats, and there
Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;
And yonder, palm trees waving fair
On islands set in silver seas.
And butterflies with gauzy wings;
And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;
And fruit and flowers and all the things
You see when you are sound asleep.
For creeping softly underneath
The door when all the lights are out,
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,
And knows the things you think about.
He paints them on the window pane
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.
Do you like receiving and writing letters or do you think it’s a waste of time given the advent of text, social media and email? Personally, I can’t imagine a world without them. If you feel the same and like this poem, perhaps you might print it out and post it to a friend? 🙂 x
I don’t send as many letters as I should/would like to but I know I send more than the average person based on the lovely feedback I get. It’s a dying art, and a much more personal way of letting someone know you care xo
Ahhhh…I do Love a letter or a card in the mail! Alas….most I know have let go of the Art of Letter writing, when they embraced email! My Mother was a Wonderful letter writer too. She could set words to paper, that brought to life for Me, anything that she was describing about the happenings of home! I still have the last 5 letters she wrote me, a scant 3 months or so before she passed….32 years ago! I bring them out every so often and read them. And, they always transport Me back to that time, giving a vivid memory of her; and the events of the final months of her life!
Thank You Caro for Sharing the Lovely poem too! I quite enjoyed it! 🙂
I love getting letters or cards and I love sending them too. My mother and grandmother were prolific letter writers and I loved coming home from school to find that lovely envelope with the big rounded writing spelling out my name and our address on the front. I saved those letters for years, and still have a few tattered and well read long letters from my mother sent only a few weeks before she died.
Now I have one surviving aunt – my mother’s youngest sister – and I love getting her letters and cards telling me all the gossip from the retirement village in Qld. I send her cards and photos often because I know she enjoys it too. I can hear the laugh in her voice as I read her letters. It’s sad that this lovely custom has faded out over the years since email became so widely used by all ages. Bring back the old fashioned hand written cards and letters – it’s the best pick-me-up ever!!
How lovely Jo. Thanks for sharing your story. xx
Beautiful poem, takes me back to nose pinchingly cold winter mornings in Cornwall! I reckon everyone loves to get a letter. I save them and remember when having a “pen friend” was the in thing at school, especially a French pen friend!
My four year old recently received some drawings from her little boyfriend in the mail. She knew who it was from straigh away. She wrote him a valentines card and we dropped it in his mailbox last Tuesday. 🙂
Charley, how lovely. Very impressed that Valentines cards are already being sent! x