Kind words and a reminder

This morning, a google alert revealed that Jas Banwait mentioned me in her daily blog. I surfed over to http://jasbanwait.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/blue-with-confidence/#comments and read some kind words.

When the days get long, it's nice to know that you have impact in the lives of others. Thanks Jas!

BTW - if those thank you cards are gathering a little dust, please read the column today in the Globe and Mail's Facts and Arguments page. Sipping my coffee (no sugar, one milk) at Tim Horton's this morning and leafing through the paper, I was reminded how important (and long lasting) is the effect of the written word.

A quote to think about today:

"Memories soon fade, but in my hand I can still hold a piece of birch bark with a love poem printed by my father more than 80 years ago. "

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A mailbox or a mouse? - RUTH BEST

I carefully turn the pages of my scrapbook to the tiny yellowed envelope postmarked May, 1916. Inside, in childish pencil printing, is a letter my seven-year-old mother wrote to a cousin describing a birthday party. I pair this keepsake with her photo, one where she wears a huge hair-ribbon and stands with one ankle turned, in front of a snowball bush.
A tin box in our attic is filled with my grandmother's 1892 love letters. The two-cent stamps bear the image of Queen Victoria. Grandmother was teaching school in Dundas, Ont., at the time and had received a proposal of marriage from grandfather. She pens her reply as she sits beneath an apple tree on her way home from school. Her turmoil at leaving her beloved profession seems clear as she writes, "my tears fall like these apple blossoms."
I am not a "tech-no" and do use my computer daily but I wonder if letter-writing is nearly obsolete. Will our grandchildren have any such keepsake windows through which to glimpse their family's history?
Although I understand that everything can eventually be retrieved from my computer's hard drive, will future generations have any interest in sorting through thousands of mechanically typed e-mail messages years from now? I doubt it.

Snail-mail postage increases yearly. Days when we have no mail delivery whatever seem more numerous, and the time it takes for a letter to travel across the country seems longer. Are these portents of the demise of the hand-written message?
Despite my questions, I am myself a constant e-mailer and quick to acknowledge the many advantages of keeping in touch electronically. The news is immediate. I heard about my grandchild's first steps just minutes after he took them. With no stamps to buy or walks to a post box, I am less likely to put off letter-writing and can sit down at my computer at any time and contact a friend with fresh news. I am now in regular communication with those whom I previously heard from only at Christmas. Still, I cannot deny the frisson of excitement I feel each time I find a hand-addressed letter in my mailbox.
Inside could be a snippet of fabric from a dress being sewn, a square of wallpaper from a renovated room or a pressed flower from the garden. The electronic devotée will argue that all of the above can be photographed and e-mailed as an attachment. But I would miss the luxurious feeling of delicate silk slipping through my fingers, the true vibrant colours of a wallpaper sample and an actual flower that I could hold.
One of my most prized possessions is the handwritten diary started in England by my great-grandfather when he was 21 and kept until his death in Canada. Pressed between its yellowing pages is the fragile remains of a boutonniere he once wore, plus his description of a visit to London where he recounts his reaction to the chiming of the newly erected Big Ben. "The sound was so great that I could feel my whole body vibrating and even the skirt of my coat if I touched it with my hand," he writes in hurried cursive under the heading Jan. 31, 1857.
I can picture this young Englishman shivering in his long skirted coat on the streets of London.
I fit him into my own history just as I do the frightened young mother, pregnant with another child that will strain the family finances. Her letter to her sister requesting money I found tucked beneath the boards of a drawer in my antique dresser.
Inside a wax-sealed envelope, written in perfect penmanship on fine vellum paper, is the official indenture of a 16-year-old ancestor apprenticed to an architect. The flowing cursive strokes are like a beautiful piece of art. Remembering my own ink-splattered pages as I tried to master the straight pen, I wonder how long it took the writer to perfect this document.
I understand that now penmanship is no longer taught in most of our schools. Has handwriting has become a lost art?
And what about thank-you notes from gifts received, or the "bread-and-butter" letters required by my childhood etiquette after an overnight visit? I recall my own blotched efforts when after much prodding I dutifully wrote, "How are you? I am fine. Thank you for the . . .," followed by a shout to my mother to ask, "What did they give me?"
My grandchildren's e-mails begin without salutation, are printed in multi-colours, interspersed with smiley faces and are shortened to "thank U 4 . . .".
I am delighted to get them.
And I am almost as happy when a black e-card dog carrying a bouquet of roses in his teeth bounces across my screen trailing a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner.
Some of these e-cards are quite lovely: winter scenes with skaters silhouetted against a full moon, gently falling snow and Silent Night sung softly by a choir, or magnolia buds unfolding accompanied by the sweet strains of Mendelssohn.
Memories soon fade, but in my hand I can still hold a piece of birch bark with a love poem printed by my father more than 80 years ago.
And the long-ago summer camp letter from a nine-year-old son that reads "At 7:30 in the mornen we go for a wash in the lake with nothen on."
Or the Mother's Day card decorated with bits of lace and a large "M" made from silver gum-wrappers.
These are rich pieces of history I can hold in my hand and also in my heart.

Ruth Best lives in Dundas, Ont.