don't you ever wish love letters would make a comeback?

Recently my grandfather was in the hospital. He had this one nurse that really thought he was something special and would always make sure to spend some extra time in the room with him. While we were visiting one day, she asked how long he and my grandmother had been married. 65 years. This blew her mind… “Girl, I can’t get a guy to stay with me 65 days.” Girl, you and me both. Anyway, this inspired Latisha to sit down for a while and tell a story…

After Latisha’s parents passed away, she was cleaning out their house and found a bag of letters that her father had written her mother when he was overseas fighting in WWII. Obviously, she sat and read them all – wouldn’t you? As she relayed to me the basic theme of the letters and even remembered some of the direct quotes, we both admitted that love letters are a pastime that we wish would make a comeback.

Now I’m not suggesting that we abandon the convenience of emails, texts, instant messages, Facebook posts, etc etc. The instantaneous element of today’s communication channels definitely has its appeal. But so does the longing that comes with waiting for that letter to arrive. To lay awake at night knowing that he’s sitting down somewhere with a pen and paper thinking about you.

Because maybe pursuit shouldn’t be convenient or instantaneous. And maybe I want to see your face, or at least hear your voice as you try to woo me into being your girl. Instead, I get butterflies when a vibration and red blinking light indicate that I have a new text message from you or when I see your email address flash across the bottom of my computer screen. When you say something romantic, I want to be able to share that moment with you – it feels so disconnected to instead call up all my girlfriends and ask what they think I should write back.

So I think that every woman deserves a love letter at least once in her life. There’s something intimate about being able to hold the same piece of paper that your man sat down and wrote to you on. To be able to touch and feel where the pencil he gripped in his hand imprinted his loving words on the paper. No shorthand, no emoticons, no “oops, sorry, wrong person”.