Correspondence Course: I Come From a Family of Communicators

by Julia Sneden

Like most of the rest of the world, I have become an email addict. It’s a distinct thrill when my window comes up with “… checking mail… receiving mail … 2 unread messages …” It’s also a distinct disappointment when the window clears after  “… checking mail …” and I realize there is nothing new waiting for me. The immediacy of email is surely a marvel. I love writing to my daughter-in-law in California in the morning, and finding an answer the same or next day.

But nothing equals the excitement of receiving an honest-to-God snail mail letter through the mail slot in my front door. Shuffling through the ads, bills and catalogues (not much excitement there!) and coming up with a real letter with my name on it, is akin to finding that prize in the bottom of the cereal box, back when I was a kid. There’s nothing like it.

In the first place, it’s tangible. The envelope has heft and character. It can be carried to a private spot for solitary consumption, or put on a shelf to prolong the anticipation, or ripped open and fecklessly tossed aside after a quick look at the contents. Those contents can be squirreled away for my eyes only, or left on the table for others to read, or read aloud to my family, if they’re something I’m of a mind to share. One can, of course, print out an email, but it’s not the same as holding a piece of stationery with someone else’s handwriting on it.

I come from a family of communicators. I am told that once her eight children were grown and out of the nest, my great grandmother wrote to each one every Sunday for the rest of her life (she lived to the age of 92). Those same children started a “round robin” letter that went to the households of each sibling, in succession. Each household removed its last letter and added a new one before sending it on within the week.

As their children grew up and left home, the list expanded. By the time I was a child, we even had “Robin” stationery, with a drawing of a robin in a circle at the top of the page. The Robin went to about seventeen households, and I remember the joy with which my grandmother or great aunt would sing out “The Robin’s come!” when that fat envelope showed up a couple of times each year. The letters it held were first read aloud, and later perused separately by the grownups in our family. Listening to those letters gave me a profound sense of connectedness. My father’s family had nothing like The Robin, and perhaps as a result, I was much hazier on those relationships. I knew every name of every member of my maternal grandmother’s family, even though I had not met most of them. I knew where they lived and how they were related. I knew which ones were favorites of my grandmother and her sister, and which were sources of worry.

By the time I was grown The Robin had made its last flight, lost somewhere between generations. The descendants of Great Grandmother’s eight children had become too numerous, and too removed from one another by time and distance, to sustain contact. Of the original eight, only my grandmother and one her brothers were still alive. “The dear old Robin has served its purpose,” Grandmother wrote, “and it is time for it to fold its wings and rest.”