Write On

In a way I don't blame the post office. I mean, if all you delivered were bills and junk mail, wouldn't you want to cut back? I'm speaking of the Postal Service's recent proposal to stop Saturday mail delivery. And I'm thinking that we are to blame, we the former letter-writing public. We bloggers and e-mailers, we Facebookers and Tweeters. We of the keyboard instead of the pen.

I try to write real letters; I really do. But all I can manage are several a month. Compare that with the Victorians, who seemed to write a letter an hour – or even compare it with an earlier version of myself. Tom and I have boxes of old letters in our basement, thin blue airgrams, envelopes stuffed with ink-stained paper, missives of all shapes and sizes. We can't bear to part with them; they are real, tangible proof of our loves and losses. They tell our story.

Now our story is told with keystrokes and stored in tiny chips. Now our story can vanish with a click of the wrong key, a toppled cup of coffee, a hard drive gone bad. I've come to embrace this new, hectic way of communicating. But if there comes a Saturday when the mail truck is silent, when there isn't even a chance of getting a real letter, that will be a sad day indeed.