His name was Alessandro. He was tall, Italian, with thick curly black hair and eyes warmer than dark chocolate. He didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak Italian, yet we were pen-pals for a year in the ‘90s. We murdered verbs and sentence structure as we tried to describe our lives in French, then sent our efforts – nestled in envelopes plastered in stamps – across the seas for pained deciphering, translation and eventual response.

After Alessandro my great-aunt sent me postcards. Aunty Clara, Catholic nun and accomplished world traveller. I’d race to the post office to see if there was another glimpse into life so far removed from living in the Australian bush. The rolling green hills of Ireland, the “Beware of Dog” tiled entry in Pompeii, a dome from the Vatican all made their way to a tiny country town too small for mail delivery, to a girl aching to escape to the mad, wide world. My aunt’s tiny, perfect handwriting either filled every available space with her experiences, or simply said “Stunning! Love, Aunty Clara.”

Getting mail, real mail, actual letters or postcards and not bills or junk mail, still thrills me. I’ve written to grandmothers, aunts, friends, penned thank you notes and birthday cards with snippets of notes enclosed, received and dispatched swollen missives that have tested the closing glue to impossible limits. To reach into my mail box and pull out a hand addressed letter makes me smile, every single time.

It’s getting rarer, the art of letter writing. I’ve heard arguments that the world is too fast these days for actual writing, typing is faster, email is cheaper, and the response is instant! True, granted and absolutely, yet… where is the substance? Most emails I send are very short, a couple of sentences at the most, a gulped marshmallow instead of an enjoyable crunchy apple or complete roast dinner. The fact that I barely write with pen and paper is brought painfully to my remembrance during hour long lectures or three hour exams, and I cannot remember the last time I bought a stamp for a written personal letter.

Written letters are precious. Museums display them under glass or scan them for wider viewing. Love letters, war letters, general correspondence from days long past all evoke feelings, connection and memory. The burning, destruction or loss of a letter can be devastating, symbolic or cathartic. Letters left behind give us something to puzzle over, discuss, laugh about or inspire, though I have to wonder what letters we are physically leaving, floating in our wake like rubber ducks, as opposed to the speckled dust of emails stored on the net or computer.

Letters can come out of the dust. My favourite letters in the scriptures are in the Book of Mormon, where Ammoron and Moroni trade insults and threats, with beautiful debating skills, while trying to secure the release of prisoners of war. (My favourite line? “…Thou art a child of hell!” ) I’m sure more than one friend can attest to receiving more a stream of consciousness from me than a properly structured lecture, but there is a beauty, fascination and honesty that can come when you don’t limit your letter to standard form.

If I limited my letters to people I posted envelopes to, I would not be in contact with many people. I wrote a very satisfying (to my mind) letter to a friend in Utah last week, sent via email, and when I received her reply, still heard the soft cadence and tilt of her voice as I read her words, even if they didn’t have the swoop and curve of her handwriting. It was a letter, it was from my friend, and it brought the hug straight into my head in spite of the distance that keeps our bodies apart.

Do you write letters – either by pen or email? What are your favourite letters, be they written, received or in books or movies? Do you think that hand written letters still have a place in our lives? Will you write someone a letter, soon?

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