Suddenly, I became nostalgic for the old days
when there was no Internet or e-mail, when letters were written by hand, sent
by airmail at best, or by surface mail at worst. They used to take weeks, sometimes
months, to reach their destination. The postman delivered them personally;
people didn’t have mailboxes. Most of the time they came from far away, from a
relative, or from a love. The recipient would always be thrilled to receive them.
Those letters were opened with anticipation and the anxiety of knowing what was
inside. That piece of paper had been touched by the sender; it had their
fingerprints and even their DNA. Some words were crossed out. A mistake? A
change of mind? The handwriting was a reflection of who wrote it. If the
correspondence lasted many years, the way the letters changed would reveal the
age and the physical and mental condition of the author. Sometimes there was a
postcard inside that would make us dream about traveling the world. If the missive
was from someone we cared about, we would put it in a safe place and keep it
for the rest of our lives, as if it had been a treasure. There have been many
arguments between couples because one of them discovered an ancient letter from an old flame, being kept by
the other. My handwriting has always been horrible;
when I was in college, my professor of Humanities-101 cursed it, because he
couldn’t figure it out. I must confess that arthritis won’t let me write by hands anymore. I have to write
slowly so that the resulting words are legible. Being left-handed makes the
task even more difficult. I have to be very careful not to smudge what I am writing because, unlike you
righties, we lefties, drag our hand over what we have just written. Now that I think
of it, that must have some profound psychological meaning. It took me almost two
hours to write this one page, but I satisfied the urge. I am sending you all my
love, in black and white, on pulp made of eucalyptus, birch, fir, poplar, and pine.
© William Almonte Jimenez, 2013
