Friday, May 24, 2013

By Susan Wilson
Published: July 9, 2009

Nowadays we bemoan the "electronification" of our correspondence, meaning that no one writes letters by hand anymore. Everything is done via email. Now that's clearly a broad statement, and I know that there are many of you who would deny that contention. So I ask, when was the last time you slapped a 44-cent stamp on an envelope that wasn't destined for a creditor? Aha! I'm not talking about the business correspondence many of us deal with, or formal dealings with insurance companies, I'm talking about the old-fashioned communication of letters between friends.

When I was a kid, albeit a long time ago, my cousin and I had a lively correspondence. We wrote to each other pretty much every other day, with the reward being a little pink or pale green (girlie stationery) envelope in the mailbox in an almost constant flow. I can't remember what the heck we wrote about, but one has to remember that not only was this in the dark days before email, but it was also in a period of American history when long distance telephone calls were expensive and never initiated between teenage cousins. Never. Ever. So, we wrote. With both of us being nascent writers of fiction, these letters, I can only pretend to remember, would have been funny, with bits of stories played out. Writing was (gasp) fun.

A little later on, I had a spell of corresponding with boys. One in particular was a young man who had come to stay with us when his cousins made their yearly visit. I had such a crush. Scott and I fell into a game of re-titling famous books. The only one I remember is "The Good Earth," which we labeled "The Great Dirt." Very clever. The joke went on for a couple of letters over the winter, then, like the letters themselves, it all petered out.

In this day and age of texting, Twitting, Facebooking, etc., there is still one snail mail custom that people of all generations cling to - the greeting card. For the purposes of this article, I'm ignoring the electronic version of greeting cards that do things like play music and build snowmen pixel by pixel. Having just lived through the month of June, which surely must be the most sacred month in the year for greeting card purveyors, jostling through the crowds at Rosebud, Mardell's or the Secret Garden for Father's Day, graduation, birthday, sympathy, anniversary, wedding, and (gleefully) new baby cards, I am struck by the avidity of teenagers, middle-agers, and crones like me to find the exact right card for every occasion - and the greeting card companies' near perfect score in providing that card.

As a writer, one would think that I'd prefer the blank card, a small white space meant for my own pithy statements. Sometimes I do. More often the card writers do such a nice job for me that all I need do is add a word or two. I picture these writers in tiny cubicles, penning their haiku felicitations with fountain pens, Yanni playing overhead. I'm not inclined toward the mushy, heavily sentimental three-fold treatises to mom or saccharine epigrams to a husband; I like the arch or ironic, to which I can add the appropriate sentiment. All the better if the front has a dog in goggles on it.

Getting greeting cards is always fun. But the question then becomes one of disposal. How long does one retain a birthday card? What is the expiration date on an anniversary card? There was a Seinfeld episode on just this topic. The sender finds her card cavalierly tossed into the trash of the recipient. Hurt feelings ensue. With a Seinfeldian attitude, my spouse tosses his out within a few days, grateful, amused, touched, but he doesn't feel the need to hang onto the card forever. Me, I stuff the cards I receive into a drawer. This drawer finally reached maximum occupancy last week and I decided it was time to clean it out. With every intention of jettisoning the years' worth of cards, I made the cardinal error of looking at them. And, lo and behold, a whole family history was presented to me. Cards from my long-deceased godmother, from my aunt, and from co-workers of my distant past. Anniversary cards from my kids with their names written in that big blocky style of tyro writers. Sentiments expressed in notes below the text. In other words, clues to my past. Oddly enough, I also unearthed my GRE scores, and have absolutely no idea how that bit of ancient history ended up in that drawer. (They weren't as bad as I remembered.)

It has occurred to me that the historians and researchers of the not-so-distant future will have to rely on greeting cards to track the object of their interest. Whole acid-free boxes will be filled with Hallmark cards as the only paper documentation of a life. Design and style as well as political reference points will guide the scholar. This person loved Matisse, that one was a rabid Republican. Relationships will be identified or new mysteries will be raised - perhaps a well-known spinster's engagement card will be found tucked in a drawer. Oh the excitement! Who was the mystery man and what happened to him?

Cards that we select for others reflect our own personalities, and those we receive connote our relationship to the world. I'm hanging onto my collection, adding to it with every occasion, and maybe some day an intrepid descendant will know a little more about me because some very special people - whose cards fill that box - were my friends and family.