The Victoria, The Pleasures of Staying in Touch: Writing Memorable Letters

A friend says she spent her entire childhood waiting for letters in the cavernous lobby of an apartment building on Riverside Drive. It was a magical place despite drafts and strange echoes, for every day—usually after one o'clock in the afternoon—the mailman would materialize at the front door, just like a genie from a bottle. With him came the incomparable mysteries of the mailbag. Nothing, she says, will ever rival the almost intolerable sense of anticipation and pleasure she felt each time the postman dipped his hand into the bag: "Is there anything for me?"

And sure enough, tucked between the glossy pages of National Geographic or Life, there might be a little square of dove-colored paper from her grandmother in Denver, or a powder-blue envelope with a kitten on it from her friend Betsy, who was at camp in Maine and had the measles. One time there was even a postcard with a tiny bag of sand attached to it. On the front it said, "Greetings from Miami Beach," and on the back there was a funny message from her father, who was on a business trip in Florida and sounded a little lonely for home. Decades later, the postcard and its small, unopened bag of sand still have the power to enchant.

It is cold tonight, but the thought of you so warm, that I sit by it as a fireside, and am never cold any more. I love to write to you— it gives my heart a holiday and sets the bells to ringing.
-Emily Dickinson

It's curious how emblematic a single letter can be, howit can encapsulate an era or sum up a complex relationship.

The beauty of being written to is the sense of importance it gives us. It is immensely pleasing and flattering to be singled out and acknowledged as someone worthy of a letter. Just the other day a good friend's eight-year-old daughter received her first letter from a schoolmate. She was so thrilled and happy to see her own name—and no one else's—on a pink envelope, sealed with purple wax, and with a real stamp on it, that she simply couldn't put it down all evening. It's easy to see how this luxurious feeling can become addictive; but the satisfactions of a letter-writing habit only deepen with time.

As teenagers, many of us were fervid, if not always happy, letterwriters, especially after the differences between ourselves and our parents had become all too obvious. The letters we exchanged with friends, however, created a private world of shared values, grievances, passions, and hopes; they sustained us during the most tumultuous years of our physical growth and encouraged the development of a rich interior life. Letters gave us something to look forward to when we weren't cramming for exams or hiding from the world because of a new set of braces, or, worse, the ghastly overnight discovery that one had grown taller-and would always be taller-than the tallest boy in our class: "Dear Harriet, I could kill myself. Eddie Wolfe is four feet shorter than I am?"

The heartfelt letters we write as teenagers eventually evolve into more mature forms of correspondence: love letters that burst with borrowed phrases from Browning and Shakespeare; and long pensive letters to college buddies or friends at home. During these years, personal writing of any kind, whether it's in a diary or a letter, gratifies our need for intimacy and, at the same time, gives us a satisfying outlet for self-expression. There's something forgiving about a letter: Budding writers know that it's a safe place to stretch.

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