I grew up when people wrote letters in longhand on pretty stationery. Going to the mailbox and finding a letter was a whiff of Christmas morning.

Many Sunday nights, as a young girl, I wrote to a great aunt who was a retired schoolteacher. You mind your p’s and q’s when you write to a teacher. She wrote wonderful letters back, often with original and amusing poems about life. When people ask how I got my start writing, I say “Letter Writing 101.”

When our children were young and we lived in the Northwest, far from family, my mother wrote wonderful newsy letters every week in her beautiful cursive handwriting. I did not have beautiful handwriting, which is why she asked that I type my letters. Mom saved the letters I wrote in a three-ring notebook and gave them to me many years later. There’s nothing monumental in them, just a litany of everyday happenings—all the small bits and pieces of life that tumble together and create a marvelous three-layer cake.

It is rare to find a personal note in the mail these days. Were it not for junk mail, somedays we’d have no mail at all.

Today we received a letter from Southern politician asking for support for one of his favorite nonprofits. Anticipating a favorable response, he included the recipe for his maw-maw’s Louisiana gumbo. We’ll decide whether to support his non-profit depending on how the gumbo turns out.

We also received an offer to give our air conditioner a tuneup, an alert that our plumbing may be at risk, a dire warning that we need more insurance, an offer to spray for termites and—drum roll, please-- an opportunity (offered only to a select few) to make some big money before the economy collapses.

Most of our mail is addressed to somebody named “Current Resident” and his kinfolk who all go by the name “Resident.”

The husband nixed my suggestion we place the trash bin directly under the mailbox. He says the answer is to replace the mailbox with a shredder.

We’ve opted for email communication in every situation possible, but there are still some pieces of snail mail we could not survive without—handwritten thank you notes from grandchildren.

“thank you for the wallet. I relley Love it. (Happy face.) I also Love the gift card. (Another happy face.)”

A few months ago, I wrote a note to a friend I haven’t seen in years who lost her husband. Last week I received a beautiful blue and white notecard in which she wrote, “Thanks for your note. It helps to know others care.”

That’s mail doing what the mail once did best—shortening the distance between two hearts.

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