Oh, The Letters We Wrote!

TODAY!TODAY!TODAY! January 25, 2021
"Equal and Opposite Reactions" by Patti Liszkay
is FREE! FREE! FREE! on Amazon Kindle
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​OH, THE LETTERS WE WROTE!

     A cold, overcast January day, still deep in the depths of the pandemic and still sheltering in place at home against it,

...and yet still feeling some good "out with the old, in with the new," vibes,

...made today feel like as good a day as any for digging into a some "out with the old" activity around the house.
     Thus my mate, Tom, decided to finally give the heave-ho to boxes of  old letters and other odds and ends that had been taking up space in our basement for years. Make that decades.

      And yet, in going through this stuff he did come across some old gems that, while mayhaps not to be saved, were worth one last look, one last smile, one last memory.

    Among said gems were a card some friend sent Tom almost fifty years ago,

...with a punch line so naughty that I dasn't share it, however proving that we Baby Boomers could rock a dirty joke back in our day.
     There was this picture dated 1977 of Tom and I as newlyweds in front of our first apartment in Louisville, Kentucky,

...and also from that era was a copy of this funny poem styled after "The Night Before Christmas" that a couple of my co-workers at the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center composed on the joys of being archivists.

      Here was a birthday card made by my daughter Maria when she was about two or three years old.

...and the response I received from the White House to a letter I wrote to President Kennedy when I was ten years old,

...back in the days when I went by Patsy Ann I looked like this:

...and before I'd ditched that awful moniker (see post from 1/30/2014, "I'll Tell Ya What's In A Name!)

      There was a letter I sent to Tom shortly before we were married when he was in grad school in Louisville and I was living at home with my parents, in which I wrote that it was almost midnight and I was waiting up for my mom. One of my siblings' friends had called my mom earlier asking her to come over because the friend's mother hadn't eaten in three days (This was before the word "depression" was common - or so well understood - in our vocabulary). My mom being a nurse - not to mention the kindest, most helpful of people - neighbors in need often called on her. 

   So many memories come to life from these old words on these worn sheets of paper. It was amazing how much we all wrote to each other back in those days. All the words we wrote, all the stationary, envelopes and stamps we ran through, how we loved to communicate. Whether in oceans of thoughts written on page after page of beautiful high-stock writing paper, or in a few quick few words penned on a lined sheet torn from a spiral note pad, how we loved to send and receive letters!
    Now, I'm not saying that I yearn to go back to the days before we were in constant communication with each other via cell phone, text, email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, et al.
​    But it was nice to spend an afternoon reminiscing about those days.