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Letters, Art, Photography
Years ago, before computers, we wrote letters. My mother’s letters were like little novellas. They sometimes were several pages long. She wrote her family members and friends and they loved to get her “books.” How I wish I had saved my letters from mom. As a witness to her letter writing, I would watch as her pen moved passionately across the pages, sometimes witnessing her eyes well up. Letters were her release. They were her way of expressing herself in ways she could not voice. Sometimes she would write letters to people out of anger and then tear them up. To my knowledge, she never sent one of those angry letters. It could have been politicians, relatives, and those are the ones I knew about. She would express her heart’s desire, open up her soul, and pour out her thoughts.
As a letter writer, I did not have the beautiful penmanship of my mother, but I learned that the pen was my power. I also wrote letters and tore them up. I even wrote one about the need for a doctor in our little town and it was published in the newspaper. I wrote letters to family, friends, old friends found from a long time lost, family who I wanted to see but knew my letters would reach them long before I ever would.
