My name is Elle, and I’m a paperholic. A throwback, if you will. I admit it. I’m powerless over the thrill of things stuffed in envelopes, a fool for the smooth stroke of pen to paper. I love books, I love getting mail, even if it is the latest trash paper from the local WallyWorld. And ESPECIALLY if it is correspondence from a friend. OH JOY! While I have enjoyed the modern option of bill pay online, I’ve lusted after those electronic book reader thingies, and I do like the instant gratification of email, there is still something about the physical act of reading, turning pages and ending chapters. I love the mechanics of writing, putting pen to paper with a specific person and motive in mind. I like it, I crave it, I like to make cards, even. Friends and family have gotten some handmade Christmas cards from me, Christmases past.
Of course, it may be because it all seems so special and luxurious these days. I think I’d have lost my mind in the Pony Express days when correspondence across the miles took weeks or months. If I’d have been a woman like the one Nicole Kidman portrayed in Cold Mountain I’d have probably cut all my hair off and run screaming into the hills thinking I was a squirrel long before Jude Law would have made it back to my ruined estate. Come to think of it, I could have probably done that for a number of other things way ahead of the lack of timely communication. Lack of reliable electricity comes to mind and rags vs. tampax – no contest. Screaming bleeding squirrel in the dark - into the hills!
But back to the letterly love. I have several books of stamps in my possession, for just such an occasion. I have kept birthday cards and notes I’ve received over the years in a bulging, well-rifled manila file. When Chuck and I were dating, I was to be out of town for my birthday, and he sent a sweet card to my parents’ house so I’d get it for the day. He also wrote some romantic poetry that I have stashed away. A friend of mine took a junior year abroad trip to the then-Soviet Union and wrote me a letter on Soviet toilet paper, which was the exact size, density and texture of air mail stationery. Another friend sent me a hand-drawn get well card while I was recovering from an appendectomy. I still cherish it because it gives me such a giggle. The front illustration is an assembly line robot, robot arms obviously askew and misfiring, poised over this THING that may or may not be a car. Surely, there are car parts recognizable, but the steering wheel is attached to the tire attached to the rear view mirror, the engine is all wrong, the sheet metal is just a huge lump. The caption reads, "Robot PMS." Inside the card reads, "Get it together, we miss you." I have loved it into a seriously dog-eared and pushpinned-to-many-messageboards state. I may have to scan it and keep it in electronic form just for posterity.
There are other cards and letters I’ve kept: major silly birthday greetings – the best kind! -letters of recommendation from business people who expressed more than I could have imagined they thought or felt about me, the card my brother sent me while recovering from a stroke and learning to write left-handed, the note they gave my mother when they brought me home from St. Vincent’s detailing my daily eating and napping routine. (That was a total work of fiction, my mother, grandmother and aunt were horrified to see the scant amounts the nuns would feed me; thus documentation of the genesis of my eating disorder. Truly. ) These are markers along my peaks and valleys; there are some that are only memory; they’ve gotten too shabby to keep or were destroyed in anger or sadness in a younger, more impetuous life. Mostly, I’ve kept the papers pretty much as I’ve gotten them, and cherish them. I currently await a letter, written on a brown paper bag, from my fellow blogista and soon to be flesh and blood pen pal, Cardiogirl.
So, do you have a bundle or a folder of paper life markers, beyond the usual "important" papers? Scribble me a note here, tell me about them.
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