The power of words

They were in a dusty cardboard box at the back of a dark garage. I didn't come to the garage sale to buy anything. The real estate agent who was emptying the house for the old owners had promised Susan some small wooden tables and here I was poking around while they chatted. The box had been unopened and so I was curious about what was inside. What caught my eye was a bundle of envelopes, they were the old international air mail envelopes, dozens of them. I pulled one out and saw large unusual postage stamps of some important potentate and the return address was from Borneo. Although I didn't read the letter, it was several pages of rough but legible handwriting. The envelopes were all addressed to the couple who had lived on this property. Missives from a loved one perhaps, a relative or dear friend, they were cherished enough not to be thrown out, but stored away.

I thought seriously about buying them for a few seconds but the thought of clutter overcame the curiosity about other people's lives. Still, what remained with me was the power of written words from people far away. When I was in high school, I worked for two summers in a small touristy retail shop in a town in the Rocky Mountains. Back then, there were no cell phones and calling long distance was a costly matter that involved the use of operators. Consequently, letters were of tremendous importance being so far from home and I cherished then, as I do now, the words of my own loved ones set to paper for my benefit.

More than their words, a letter was a physical keepsake that could be read again and again. The handwriting itself, distinctive, and belonging to one and only one person, mirrored the speaking style and individual thoughts of that one person. Unlike emails whose contents are made of electronic ether and come in a variety of prescribed fonts, letters were a physical treasure, carrying the happy and sad travails, the loves, hopes, disappointments and tragedies of the sender, which we held in our own hands.

The power of handwritten words transferred all the emotional energy of the sender across whatever the distance, even from places like Borneo, and placed them in our hands to be relived and felt anew. The letter itself becomes a talisman of the sender, the sender we hold in our hearts, the letter we hold in our hands.