Most everyone will agree that as thoughtful and well-styled an electronic communication may be, it will never trump a hand-written note, card, or letter. Positively, an email can be sent instantaneously and an electronic response will arrive far sooner than an answer dropped in the mailbox, but there’s something uniquely personal about holding a letter in your hand and studying the handwriting.
Was it penned in a hurry? Was the writer exuberant or somewhat despondent? Does the handwriting show budding childhood independence, strong personality, or the approach of old age?
When I receive a hand-written note, I like to imagine the face of person who wrote it and guess where s/he was sitting when the letter was written, what kind of day it was there. In a sense, the angel is in the details: the images on the card or stationery; the texture of the paper; the stamp’s graphic; the kind of pen and color of ink. Of course, carefully chosen words and the timeliness of the message are key to any effective communication.
And we can re-read a hand-written note, perhaps slip it in a bedside drawer to peruse at random some late afternoon and briefly place in memory a treasured relationship or friendship. Renew a beautiful thought.
Left to right: Viktoria (author), her Grossmutti, and her mother ~ Christmas 1981
It’s especially nice when a bookmark, memento, or hand-written recipe is enclosed. My mother lovingly copied down in her elegant European script many recipes from her years of fine home cooking and baking (Chocolate Sin, Streuselkuchen ~ see photo ~ rt), passing along only the very best in letters to her daughters and grandchildren. In my well-worn recipe box, I’ve saved a Rezept sent from Germany by my Grossmutti, who left this world nearly three decades ago. I think of her when I see her generously penned instructions for the making of Käsetorte.
You can’t say the same about content-similar email communications that inexplicably get gobbled up in a computer glitch or find their way in your Junk or Spam box, with all the real garbage. That’s certainly no place for them! Important and meaningful human communications are best written near to heart and hand.
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