Dear @ninojje,
Reading about your mom started off some long trains of thought in my head. I belong to the generation who were accustomed to waiting outside the local GPO in a city, for that long awaited letter from home, when out in the great vastness of the world. Traveling form place to place, we did not know life was back home and could only dream of a phonecall as they were too costly to make.
I remember sitting outside the GPO in Kathmandu, Nepal, waiting my turn to go in and flip through the drawers full of letters from all over the planet. Letters of love and loss; full of stories and memories and adventures of others, who also went around that part of the world at that time. Well, some letters might even have sat there for years; who knows?
I even remember the smell of back home, when opening a letter from my best friend or my mom. That faint scent of something familiar. Being so far away, it was pure magic. I used to put stuff in there for my reader to find when they opened my letters, from somewhere exotic.Little flowers or other.
I remember breaking up with girls in letters,(Because the very thought of calling to do it was absolutely deadly!) and then waiting for their reply with much agony. Man! it took days, sometimes weeks before I knew how they felt about it. Still, even though waiting was always a pain, it had something going for it. Had we known what was to come, we might have tought differently about it.
GPO (short for General Post Office) was a term I had to learn when first venturing out on travels as a young man. Even the word had never been a part of my world knowledge, until I was 18.
I don't miss the good old days in a lot of ways. Now is so much more convenient on a multitude of levels. But that I miss. To read a physical letter, that another person took time to write, dispite their longhand being in need of assistance, is always a deep, deep pleasure.
I've tried it. Writing letters to people abroad. My youngest is in Spain, and I have mailed her letters, only to discover that they do not arrive at all. That's not the greatest and yet, the thought of her missing out only leaves that more to tell when she comes home again.
Sincerely yours,
@pwinding