Steve McGrath
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

Thank you for your comments on the “art of the letter” and its endurance over time. When I was a child, my mother required that my siblings and I write “thank you” letters whenever we received a gift from relatives or family friends. She regarded the signing of a card purchased from a store as an affront to accepted standards of respectability and she banned their use ad infinitum.

She did not place any restrictions on the content of our writing and refused all of our attempts to cajole her assistance. She insisted that the letters reflect our personal and honest appraisals of the gift we received unless, of course, we hated it. She also demanded that we seal our letters in their matching envelopes and address them ourselves. I never understood, until many years later, why she insisted on writing addresses on a separate piece of paper so that we could each duplicate them on our envelopes.

After my grandmother’s funeral in 1998, I traveled with my mother to grandma’s home to help move her mother’s personal belongings. While emptying the drawers from my grandmother’s antique roll top desk, we discovered three leather faced photo albums, organized in chronological order, that included every handwritten thank you letter she had received from her grandchildren, including those we mailed her as young adults. Accompanying each letter was the envelope it was mailed in, which she had carefully prepared by removing the adhesive flap before inserting it between the plastic display pages.

It was plainly evident how my grandmother cherished the letters our mother had compelled us to write. My mom and I spent the next two hours laughing hysterically as we read the random undeveloped thoughts that my siblings and I had transcribed by hand two to three decades earlier. What interested me was the vibrancy and ‘art’ of each letter. Due to the expressive hand script, even bland sentences such as “I really like the wool socks”, animated from the aging stationary like a flamenco dancer on an antique wood floor.

Regrettably, our ritual habit of writing letters did not follow us into our adult lives. Emails and texts have taken their place and I am met with shock when one of my siblings takes the time to send me a signed card purchased from a store. Of course, we don’t dare send an email or a signed store-bought card to our Mother in place of the expected thank you letter written in hand script. Instead, she gets a telephone call. We are horrible sons and daughters.

Having confessed my shameful treatment of my loving mother, I think I will go buy some paper stationery — if they still sell such a thing — and write her an 18 page letter of apology. Thank you again for your inspirational words.

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    Steve McGrath

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    Mammalian; rounded braincase; thick skull balanced on a vertical backbone