Correspondences

I’ve been writing a lot of letters lately (more even than usual): I have a friend laid up for months with a bum leg and a bunch who have moved lately. I figure it sets a good standard to receive a cheerful letter when you’re new to a home.

Letter receiving goes in cycles: people get on kicks, and for a while I was a member of an online letter-writing group that was mostly great, until I found myself scratching my head over one too many notes written to comparative strangers.

In general, it’s a very uneven thing: my ratio of letters sent to received is probably about 6:1. Mimi was a faithful correspondent, but I get more letters by FAR from Gwyn than from anyone else. She writes even more often than I do, and it’s fantastic.

This used to bother me (not the Gwyn part): I had a bug in my pants about “fairness.” Then I realized that I was being stupid. Yes, I love to receive letters. But I love to send them even more. It gives me pleasure to put time into choosing stationery and swirling words on a page. So I let go of the dumb idea that there is any sort of obligation involved in correspondence, and all of a sudden I sent more letters than ever.

For example: I have a friend who turned off blog comments on account of having a mild case of Being Famous. Now, every time I have something to say about her posts, I send her a letter. I hope she enjoys this half as much as I do. I’ve widened the scope of this idea, so that all sorts of random people have started receiving postcards containing comments to blog posts they made the week before. Perhaps this is confusing.

But I hope it makes them smile.

(Three letters sent yesterday, two today, plus two packages that I need to haul to the Post Office. I go through a LOT of stamps.)