Here is a quote from Clarissas comment on my WOWH post: “Letters have been a passion of mine for years; I even married one of my penpals nearly 21 years ago!”
Thank you Clarissa. I completely forgot about penpals. I used to have a few when I was a young adult, and with some I was corresponding for a few years. Eventually, probably as my studies demanded more time and attention, the letters stopped.
For years I kept those letters although I didn’t go back to read in them quite often. I guess they seemed too childish to the more grownup me.
I don’t know when exactly I lost or tossed them, but they are all gone now, and to tell you the truth, I’m not that interested in what was in them anymore. What I would really love to read is actually the letters I wrote and send to my penpals. I think they will tell me a lot about my old self. Maybe I would find out things about me I did not remember or even didn’t knew at the time.
I guess it will be a good idea for the future to keep a photocopy or a scan of the letters we work so hard on. We might not find any interest in them after they went out, but I can imagine my children wanting to read them after I’m gone.
After all, our letters are much about us as they are about the ones we write to, maybe even more so.
Tags: memory