A Man of Letters

Liam's best friend in Kindergarten is a boy after my own heart. He is single-handedly bringing back the art of letter writing. We don't have to worry about him only being able to write in text-message form, or in Twitter tweets. I respect that a lot. I am the kind of emailer who can usually not bring herself to abbreviate anything, like LOL (laugh out loud) or IMO (in my opinion). I just like for everything to be written out properly. I am also old enough that I have a stack of actual letters - real, paper, hand-written, not even typed, letters - that I received from family and friends while I was in college and even after college while I was traveling. When I traveled from country to country in my auditing job my parents would track me down, even if it was in Bogota, and send me a letter to the hotel. I did my part as well, of course, sending letters and so many postcards. Yes, now I'm left with a stack of paper to deal with, but there is something so nice about seeing a loved one's handwriting, and feeling the paper, and reading those completely formed sentences. I love email, but I do get nostalgic for letter writing.

Back to my story of Liam's friend - he is a letter writer. Granted, he is probably too young for email, and someday he will most likely prefer texting and Tweeting. For now, though, I love to see a letter in the mail from this little guy (he only lives a few streets away). They usually start with something sentimental like "My Dear Liam, my best friend in the whole wide world. You are the best boy ever." Oh, to be young enough to express emotion this way again. It is sweet, I tell you. So very sweet.