I've just been struggling a little to write a letter to one of Himself's great grand daughters...she's thirteen, though could just as well be thirty...we've never met her or her younger brother and sister but she wrote a letter to us not long after Christmas...all fancy twirls and squirls...and it's been nagging at me that I hadn't replied.
Because both of us refuse point blank to Skype...my reason being I'd have to comb my hair and put my teeth in and Himself because he doesn't begin to pretend to understand the on-line games and stuff the children want to talk about...neither do I actually...can't quite grasp the attraction. If it was about the latest book they'd read then that'd be different...the only child I've come across in years who reads avidly is Caitlin. And she only thirteen, but reads the same books as I do...
It is Caitlin who scorns owning a Kindle preferring...as she says...a proper book.
But the grandchildren and great grand children think books are for school, not for pleasure...not the Swedish grandchildren...but they are different.
So I wondered whatever to write about...school of course. She finds Maths and English difficult but likes Science...I told her about the donkeys and cats and dogs...then thought it was probably enough to be going on with, after I'd padded it out a bit.
There was a time when I wrote letters to friends and family...not so now though and it's a shame in very many ways because there is nothing nicer than receiving a newsy letter through the post from an old friend...it's a brief e-mail or an even briefer note on FaceAche...even worse, a quick and thoughtless enough click on the 'like' button...
Mother wrote letters each and every week in her distinctive hand...as time went on and she managed to squabble with more and more people, so her letter writing began to dwindle...she wrote on Basildon Bond writing paper...the cream coloured one because she said white paper was common...and she used the long envelopes and a proper ink pen...biros were common as well...as were small envelopes.
When I was researching the Cillins, I received some wonderful letters from elderly people...carefully written on torn off paper from lined notebooks which smelled slightly of dust and mould...one old lady, who had buried three of her stillborn babies in her local Cillin, actually wrote down the sides of the paper in the way which was common-place many years ago...she'd filled the centre of the page first...then running out of space, had written down the sides. Those letters arrived in every post...sad and heart-breaking tales of horrid priests and kindly grocers...it was the grocers who all too often supplied the orange boxes for the Father to make into a little coffin...
It was when we were in England that we found a weekly second-hand market in a local town...one of the stalls only sold ephemera...for a cardboard shoe box stuffed to the hilt with old letters and receipts...bills and Wills sealed with a dab of sealing wax...it was three pounds. How I loved those boxes...one letter I found was dated 1786...from a young man to his brother about his weekend spent in the country home of distant relatives...there were mourning letters...the pages edged in black...telling of the demise of someone in India who had succumbed to fever...telegrams brief and to the point...arrived 4.40pm...met by coachman...all well. Sometimes there'd be dance cards...but only once did I find a love letter...carefully tied in a length of faded pink ribbon. That had been written in 1862 to a girl named Alice...
There is pleasure to be had from sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading and then re-reading a proper letter from a friend...or from a grandchild.
22 Replies
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Nothing wrong with writing letters
Name is always good start and from the heart .. nothing wrong with humor eather shows we are all human sencative
On a persnol note i would wrote back sooner But like you say you know that.
What to tell her? Just copy what you have just written. If this young lady is intelligent and interested enough to write to you, then this passage should be a good opener for her. Then tell her about researching the family history, and that SHE is in it. And about the people you meet on here. Your problem should not be about where to start, but when to stop!!!!
Dear vashti, johnwr has just said exactly what i would say too; you will never be short of what to say and how to say it, everything you put to paper is so interesting and often exciting. I believe you should start sending your granddaughter clips of some of your previous posts also start making a scrap book and put them in (if you have a printer that would be easy), maybe you could pencil some little drawings in too, what an amazing gift that would be.
I would love to find some of those shoe boxes that you speak of. it's always fascinating to me reading about past lives and how things have changed.
I still have a bundle of letters, tied with a ribbon from someone I thought I loved (at the time.) I get them out sometimes just to remind myself that I used to live in the real world . One guy (different one) that I had a "summer" romance with in the 60's used to write to me every single day after he returned home to Finland - sometimes twice a day. I kept all those letters for thirty years - then he came back to visit! What a disappointment he turned out to be? From the lovely, gentle young man I remembered to a bitter, miserable and mercenary person who was just trying to run away from an over dominating wife. I think he thought that I was his way out? - Wrong! I couldn't wait for him to go, and had a lovely bonfire with all those letters after he'd gone.
Oh ha b***** ha! If I were more forceful I would not have been on my own for the last 50 years! I don't have time or patience for games, life's too short. XX
I like a nice letter and as a kid was always made to write thank you letters to people who sent money or gifts for Birthday and Christmas. It was the way things were done then and my mum loved to write letters and to receive them. Things are so different nowadays but with regard to the teenage granddaughter, just tell her anything you like in the wonderful way you write anyway vashti. You could make the weather sound interesting. She will either love it or not but you will have written and made it all sound amazing.
I also love books and you could not persuade me to have a Kindle.
Your Caitlin sounds like a lovely bright little thing and I actually think kids today are not as remote from older generations in their aspirations and needs as they are made out to be - it is the society they have to survive in that is quite different now. Not the human beings and their fundamental needs. You may feel a bit awkward about all the social media stuff they use now (I like your term FaceAche - good one!!) but believe me, so are the youngsters, and they are really put under pressure to perform well and be the same as 'everyone else'. How lucky you are that you didn't have all that growing up! At least, I feel that myself. I share your love for letter-writing and handwriting and handwritten postcards, diaries, etc. My hobby is calligraphy and I am doing my best to master the most difficult style of all: 'Copperplate' or the good old-fashioned Victorian-style writing that past generations used. I would love to write and receive more letters daily but using email and these forums, for example, is a wonderful way to connect with people today and has opened up fantastic ways of getting to know others, especially when you are limited in getting out and about (I have no transport except buses) and the weather has you stuck indoors most of the day with COPD,etc. I love using a Kindle when I am lying in bed as I can't grip a normal book for too long because of my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. You know all that, no point in me rabbiting on about it! By the way, I have a 6 year old niece called Caitlyn. She sounds like she is going to be similar to Caitlin in your family, loving her books, drawing, learning handwriting, etc. A bright little spark. Kids are definitely not as far away as we think with all this technology, as I said. Let them get on with it. The art of letter-writing as it stands will always serve a purpose which emails and faceAche just cannot. The younger generation will discover that for themselves. PS I'd love to find a box of old letters, as you did. Any ideas anyone, where I could get hold of some? xxx stillmovin1
Vashti, you are not short on a few words! You can write humourously about the difficulty of maths and talk about Einstein who was bad at maths at school to. His teacher even thought that he wouldn't go very far in life and certainly not with maths!
You can speak of some Irish tradition and ask if she follows any; and certainly ask for what she did for her birthday.
Add a little smiling mouse or dog or cat. Girls like cats! Cheers, Mic
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