How to Recover a Lost Art in 2020

Dear Reader,

A  brown cardboard storage box contains cards, letters, and notes I've received for the past 50 years.

Their messages were kind, or they came from special people. They struck a cord with me for a variety of reasons, and I've never had the heart to get rid of them ... for the past 50 years. The box can no longer contain its bounty!

The recent influx of papers and letters from my  Dad's life combined with mine to fill a good portion of a closet. Time to glean a few and toss the rest.

The result: I've spent hours reading and lost in memories. My grandmother's rounded, neat cursive, wishing me well. Dad's strong, bold handwriting with something humorous to share. Friends, some long gone, remembered by their writing even before I read the name.  Cards from my boys when printing their names was a laudable feat. Every handful or so, there would be one from my mother, a prolific letter writer. Her familiar severe right slant and unclear letters had me rereading and decipthering as her handwriting always did - letters to me at college, in China, from her new home in South Carolina.

I pictured those many hands I loved as they wrote with their arthritis or age spots or broken nails, and I heard their voices come to life on the page.

Finally, I landed on a thank you note from my mother in 1999. A thank you note from my mother! Whatever would the woman who gave me breath and met my needs for the first quarter of my life have to thank me for? But she did ... and I've framed the card, her love, and her unforgettable handwriting.

Today, I answered some email and sent a few texts, but there wasn't  one memorable piece of handwriting among them. No cursive to reflect personhood, nothing worth framing, no picturesque reminders of a hand or a life. Just Times New Roman 12 in featureless black and white.

Perhaps this implies enough about teaching our children cursive in elementary school. Like so many other things, memorable is being sacrificed on the altar of quick, fast, and modern.

For over 30 years my career involved teaching teens grammatical rules and proper writing style. Now, I am flabbergasted when I realize my texts are dashed off with incomplete sentences, without end marks, minus capitals and punctuation. Whatever happened to the Mrs. Walczak of eighth grade English class? Several generations of teenagers must be equally flummoxed about the years they spent learning English grammar that have been blown to the icloud in social media.

Here's a challenge for 2020: let's return to the art of letter and note writing ... even if only once a week. How do we recover this lost art? Simply, do it. Pick a recipient who could use a bit of joy and scratch away. I realize it will cost a postage stamp and a bit of time, but consider it memory making for someone, carving kind words into forever.  A day is brightened, encouragement shared, when the mailbox produces an envelope with your handwriting. The message doesn't have to be so meaningful that it is saved for 50 years, but it can exude friendship and love, poignant enough to frame with your fingerprints and style embossed across its face.

No simpler, less intimidating, more inspiring way to lift someone up.

But the most life-changing letters I've ever received are compiled as epistles from the likes of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, and John whose goal was to communicate the Word of God. Originally recorded on parchment or sheep skin, they stand witness for eternity to God's everlasting love, and each bears the very handprint of God.

That box of letters I've kept for 50 years? Most of them are still in the box and back in the closet. Who would have the heart to dispose of such memories and kindness? Not me.

Continuing to pen in cursive and
 challenging you to enrich your connectedness ...
 with a letter.

Love,

Your Friend on Layton.