A Treasure in Words

There's a pretty simple way to gain great wealth, and you don't even have to send me $$$ to learn the secret.  It is costly, however, depending upon how much you value your time.

My trick for accumulating great treasure is to write letters to family and friends, by hand, because they write me back.  Like most folks, I can type much faster than I can write with a pen and dictate via a voice-recognition app at lightning speed.  Can't we all?  Writing by hand takes more time and effort than we're used to exerting.

Then, there's the inertia of starting to write; what do I say, have I already told them about such-and-such, where did I put their new address?  If you've kept their annual card or have an e-mail from them saved in your Inbox, that'll get you started.  There have been times when I wrote out a list of subjects to mention in my note, I was so stuck and lost for words.

Did you know that people love to receive all kinds of personal mail, even postcards?  I have one girlfriend who puts all my postcards to her family front and center on her fridge, like I was her precious daughter away at college.  She sees them everyday and thinks about Uncle Grumpy and me, and how much her family loved living in our area.  We also pray for each other's families every Wednesday, but that's another post.

For quite a while I've been corresponding with my professor of pediatrics from when I was in occupational therapy school.  She's the person who got me interested in working with children instead of the adult OT track I had always expected to follow.  She loves nature and beauty and living a contemplative life and we have so much in common, yet I've only seen her about three times since I graduated in '76.  Some friendships are like that but our friendship is special because we write each other several times a year.  I usually enclose a copy of a little essay I've composed and she sends me back a brief note, handwritten on one of her beautifully-sketched cards.  She's still teaching me, because many of the critters and facts she shares are ones I never knew about before. 

Thanks, Eleanor.

And thanks to Casserine, for my beautiful, handmade quilt.