Why Get A Penpal?

As the practice of letter writing faded, I found myself with very few like-minded friends who wanted to buy stamps or who knew where the red postboxes were situated. When I realised I don’t bother going to the mailbox to check anymore, I felt a pang of great loss. And then I felt determined. One thing led to another and now I’ve got a new penpal!

Composing a letter is a personal interaction. Just you and what you want to tell someone and, hopefully, vice versa. They think about what you’ve written; the questions you asked and the gossip you relayed, and they write back to you. It’s a long, slow, endlessly satisfying volley across time and distance. In the past I kept up a lively correspondence with many people. My grandmother in Queensland and I sent two-page chats back and forth. Letters to and from Germany were written on see-through aerogrammes, then light airmail envelopes, and eventually, when I could afford to pay more for the stamps, missives stuffed with photographs and memorabilia alongside the note itself.

Then, email came into my life and I stopped writing letters. I email constantly. Letters stopped arriving in the mail. As a result, our postal services have been winding down delivery of personal letters. Australia Post confirms that their business focuses on parcel delivery. In a shock move, Denmark’s public postal service ceased delivering personal mail at the start of this year. 

It’s easy to criticise and complain but that’s not what the beautiful souls in the land of human contact and handmade do when the heart of our slow way of life is in peril. No! We ask “What is the one thing I can do that will contribute to making this situation better?” An email does not meet our standards when it comes to intentional, personal, correspondence.

The term ‘snail mail’ cuts straight to the heart of what matters. Letters take time – to write, to post, to collect them. Relaxing with a cup of tea to read a handwritten letter is one of the most calming activities still available in this fast paced world of ours. Sitting at the desk with a beautiful piece of paper, a pen, and the letter you’re about to answer, is a close second. During the pandemic when nostalgia was a gateway drug to the simpler things in life, I started sending postcards to people in my address book. A few sent me texts to tell me a card had arrived. I started to send notes. A couple of friends and my mother-in-law sent me one back. That once lost, familiar rhythm resonated, and I wanted more. I craved quality and depth.

We have sold out social depth for social breadth and interactive quality for interactive quantity…

Susan Maushart (The Winter Of our Disconnect)

In my cosy corner of the internet, there is a quiet revolution building. Sites selling stationery, blogs about letterwriting, and posts about the joys of snail mail have been popping up over the last twelve months. It’s growing on paper sliding artfully into envelopes. It’s unfolding on Pinterest boards featuring exquisite notepaper placed on velvet-lined writing desks. It’s burgeoning in online stores selling coordinated letter sets of such beauty that handwriting is the only possible adornment imaginable. And it’s happening in projects where you can apply to be matched with a penpal.

This is where the digital world made analogue easier. For example, there’s such a thing as a letter subscription. You can sign up and receive a monthly letter based on an historical event or from your hero. Once a month, there it is in your mailbox. Yes, you do have one. Stand up for a minute, walk to your front door. If you live in a house, there’s a good chance you’ll glimpse the mailbox somewhere out the front of your place, likely at the end of the driveway. Apartment dwellers, you may have noticed a wall of slots as you walked towards the lift. That’s them! One will have your unit number on it, that’s your mailbox!

I had a two penpals through High School. Fleur lived in England and went to a private school, I imagined she was living the dreamy life I read about in my novels. I think my life Down Under intrigued her just as much. Matthias lived in Germany and only wrote because it was expected of him in his class. I wonder what happened to them.

Now, forty years after the thrill of receiving those names and addresses and sending letters introducing myself to strangers, I’m doing it again with a like-minded soul who shares my obsession with paper and stamps and a commitment to writing letters. She lives in Western Australia, which is nearly as foreign to me as England. We had to use email to share our mailing addresses, but we are now off the digital platform. The first letter has found its way over to her and I believe there is one flying back to introduce her to me.

I’ll be checking the mail every day this week, there’ll be something for me soon. Did you have a penpal ‘back in the day’? While my teenage correspondence fell to the wayside, I wonder how many people managed to stay in touch. Did you?