When I was a kid, there was a show on TV called The Big Blue Marble. One of their regular features was about pen pals, and you could write to them to get addresses of people to correspond with. An avid letter writer, I had many pen pals back then--Byung-Wook Choo and Jin-Ho Lee in Korea, Bruno in Belgium, Zalimun Ali in Trinidad, Theresa in England, and Beatrice from France.

Recently, I discovered a treasure of letters tucked away in my basement. In it, I found all sort of things. Envelopes with brightly colored stamps from far away places. "Mega letters" from my friend Becky--10 and 20 page missives decorated with stickers and stamps and amazing cartoon drawings. There was a beautiful oriental painting, folded down to fit in an envelope, and a card from a long forgotten boyfriend. I found an entire box of letters from a friend I wrote to for more than 10 years, chronicling our adolescence and early adult years. And letters from my Dad, the ones he wrote almost weekly while I was in college.

I've spent time each night since reading through this wonderful box of memories. I can't help but laugh out loud...and roll my eyes...and cry a little. What fantastic stories are told on these pieces of paper, what amazing moments captured.

As I stood in line at the Post Office today, I chatted with an older gentleman. "My family has lived on Main Street for more than 90 years," he said, "This is a really good town." The woman ahead of me nodded at the same time I did, and we all smiled. Later I heard a man commenting on the lack of typewriters for sale in the new OfficeMax catalog and I thought...there's something slipping away here.

Not just the r-i-c-k-e-t-y t-a-p of typewriter keys, or the conversations missed at the Post Office, something more. Something grander.

Receiving a letter is an event. It's that feeling of surprise when you find it in your mailbox. It's the anticipation as you carry it into the house. It's the treasure of sitting down to spend a long-distance moment with a friend. And then being able to re-read it...a little while later--many years later.

"We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others."

- Goethe

BACK / NEXT