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While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

The joys of being a post office groupie

December 26, 2010 by heidi 14 Comments

I’m sitting on a futon in my living room.The pug is curled up beside me, snoring. He woke up about five minutes ago and burrowed out from under the covers of the bed, where Joe is currently (still) sleeping (in).

By June we’ll have a baby in this house, which means I now regard my husband’s sleeping habits with bitter sweetness.

The pug and I are on a futon because I sold our brown couch Thursday for $80 on Craigslist. (Yes, the brown couch my men are asleep on in the photo to your left.)

Over the course of nine months, I managed to save $1,092 in a mason jar to purchase a plush new sofa with an enormous seat and an equally enormous ottoman.

I told Joe it was important that I have a soft place to land as I get fatter and more pregnant. So, Merry Christmas to me.

But that’s not the point of this post.

As evidenced by the title, I’m here to espouse the pleasures of penpalship.

That’s right. PEN PALS.

Do you have one?

Chances are you had one many moons ago. It used to be that teachers encouraged the old-fashioned art of letter writing by hooking students up with pen pals in cities far from yours. Of course this was prior to email, which I’m also a fan of but for reasons completely separate from why I adore ACTUAL HANDWRITTEN MAIL.

The Internet has been good to me, but it’s not exactly the chicken soup to my Luddite soul.

In the same way a Subway foot-long can’t replace my mother’s grilled cheese sandwiches, an email can’t replace a handwritten letter delivered to your door.

I know some people complain about the rising cost of postage, but I’ve always considered the U.S. Postal Service to be a romantic and old-worldly operation. You can’t do much with 44 cents these days, except of course stick a stamp on a letter, place it in your mail box and trust that a handful of strangers will aid in delivering it to the opposite side of the country in less than a week. And in 10 days, the opposite side of the world.

When I open a letter, I imagine the author of the note sitting at a table writing it feverishly while all the world throws distractions their way. It’s not easy to see a letter through. A certain level of discipline is required. Motivation. Legible penmanship. Stationary. The proper address. And of course, the trifling stamp.

I’ve had many pen pals over the years, but none as expert (and awesome) as my girl LZ, who you’re about to meet.

LZ and I worked together in the early 2000s at a once-thriving Waldenbooks store in a mall outside of Buffalo.

We hit it off immediately. Not only are we both fiery Aries. We share the same April birthday and similar creative impulses. Our Waldenbooks manager once told me that she scheduled us on different shifts because we had a tendency to work less and giggle more in each others’ company.

If I had known we were going to be living in different countries one day, I’d have spent more time giggling and less time working.

Funny how that works.

We’ve been writing to one another since we both fled Buffalo six years ago – she for the University of Toronto and I for the Gulf Coast of Florida. I hadn’t seen LZ in five years until last September, when she and her tall, handsome boyfriend attended my wedding in Ellicottville, N.Y.

At one point during the reception, when we were both in the restroom, we turned to one other and in near unison said that our side-by-side reflections in the mirror looked (and felt) like a mirage.

Yet, it didn’t feel like five years had passed.

Why?

Because of our letters and packages.

For years we’ve documented our lives in random bits and pieces passed through the mail, neatly cataloged on custom forms, stuffed inside padded envelopes and bubble wrapped boxes.

We’ve exchanged mixed CDs. Good books. Earrings. Vintage magazines. T-shirts. Magnets. Post cards. Secrets.

Each year we send each other flowers for our birthday.

LZ started this tradition.

On frayed pages torn from old notebooks, delicate stationary and blank note cards, we’ve chronicled our ups and downs, our fears and triumphs. The boys we’ve dated. The parties we’ve puked at. The friends who’ve slighted us. The trips we’ve embarked on. The laundry we’ve yet to do. The work we’ve avoided by writing letters. The cramping our fingers suffer from because we refuse to email one another.

In all our years of penpalship I think we’ve exchanged one email.

When Facebook reared its insidious head, we were loathe to friend one another. It seemed sacrilegious.

But we did and consequently refrain from exchanging more than four sentences via Facebook.

Facebook has its place, but I’m not about to retire my beloved, rubber-banded-together address book, especially in the case of this relationship.

LZ is wonderfully sarcastic and wise and clever and thoughtful and quirky and entertaining. She’s one of those people you never want to slip out of your life. We’ve all got these people, whether we see them every day or every decade.

One time LZ suggested we record our messages to one another on tiny cassette tapes as Keri Russell did with her old friend Sally on the WB drama Felicity.

It’s an interesting idea. Maybe this year for our birthdays I’ll get us a tiny digital recorder and we can begin exchanging long voice mails through the mail.

Then again, she got me darling stationary for Christmas and I can’t wait to break it in.

PS. Photo of a mailbox by markdvk (via Flickr) taken at the top of Imogene Pass in Telluride, Colo. Imogene is the highest mountain pass in the San Juan Mountains.

PPS. For the record: LZ was just about spot-on with her latest letter (above), which arrived last week with a Christmas package. The only difference was that I was eating a big bowl of apple sauce, not cereal.

Filed Under: Buffalo, Canada, Christmas, colorado, favorite things, girlfriends, note taking, observations, pen pals, sisterhood, Western NY, writing

Comments

  1. Heelya says

    December 26, 2010 at 11:11 am

    Enjoyed this blog. Wish I had the patience for hand writing a letter. I’d rather send “meat” in the mail or something unexpected.

  2. Heelya says

    December 26, 2010 at 11:12 am

    Enjoyed this blog Heid. Wish I had the patience for hand writing a letter. I’d rather send “meat” in the mail or something unexpected.

  3. Heelya says

    December 26, 2010 at 11:13 am

    erh, it posted my comment twice!

  4. RO says

    December 26, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Love the post office too :)And I totally totally treasure the letters I receive from you. I better get some kid friendly stationary to send packages to Baby Bardi 🙂

  5. heidi says

    December 26, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    Heelya Bedelia: Maybe you should clarify what you mean by sending “meat in the mail…”

    Hey, you’re one of the teachers who used to hook students up with pen pals. What happened??

  6. heidi says

    December 26, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    Oh and Ro Marie: Baby Bardi stationary coming up!

  7. Cynthia (It All Changes) says

    December 26, 2010 at 10:09 pm

    Hand written letters are classic and I love them. It is so nice to receive “real” mail these days instead of just bills and junk as people send more and more emails.

    I have a stationary/greeting card habit that I love to send real mail to friends just for a bright spot in a day.

    Yeah for you and LZ to keep it alive.

  8. Sara says

    December 27, 2010 at 8:07 am

    This post reminded me that back in the day I had a pen pal in California. We ‘met’ eachother through a service in some Teen magazine. We wrote for a couple years but eventually faded.

    I just tried to find her on Facebook. I failed. But then I remembered she turned into a weirdo, which is why we stopped writing so I’m okay with it.

    But I do appreciate snail mail!!

  9. heidi says

    December 27, 2010 at 11:30 pm

    Sara: I too had a longtime pen pal courtesy of Teen Bop magazine. She lived in Orlando. We wrote to each other for a good 10 years. We met for the first time in Florida when I was on vacation one year with my family. I think I was a senior in high school. She brought her boyfriend along. It went awkwardly and our letters stopped shortly after that.

  10. LZ says

    December 28, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    YES!! I just read this post now. I’ve been falling behind on reading your blog posts due to the holidays. So happy I have my very own posting.

    I received your package on the morning of Christmas Eve and opened it Christmas morning. I am already half-way through Shopgirl. Did I ever tell you about the time I met Steve Martin on the street? I’m sure I did. I adore him and wish that he was my quirky uncle. Thank you! I nominate myself for writing the next letter since my Christmas card was so short.

    Thanks again. XO.

    P.S. My tall, handsome boyfriend was also very happy to make a cameo in this post! Keep on writing and I will keep on reading!!

  11. Heather says

    December 28, 2010 at 6:11 pm

    I love snail mail too. In fact, I often surreptitiously write down my former students’ addresses for their dorms when they post them on facebook and I send them letters. I don’t really have anyone else to write to–most of the people in my life think that email is a big enough waste of time. I can’t see them sitting down to put pen to paper. I was pen-pals with my second cousin for most of my life and it was a wonderful experience. Oh–and in college when E was at a different school I wrote him almost every day. He wrote me about three times, I think. So… that didn’t go as expected either. Maybe I need to see if there are any teen magazines matching up people to pen-pals now. Oh wait, that would be creepy.

  12. Kim says

    December 29, 2010 at 4:32 pm

    Ahhhh I just LOVE reading your writing! Great post! For the record, when I got my package from you, I felt like a kid on Christmas…not just because it contained almost 1000 pics of our wedding, but bec it was decorated with stickers, and filled with personal touches–like adorable ribbon, a postcard, and the cutest little photo clutch I could ever imagine carrying around with me. There’s a reason why the postal service is still in business, there’s a reason why I sometimes order things online so that I can romanticize about coming home to a UPS delivered package, and there’s a reason why I left my postman a Tim Horton’s gift card taped to our mailbox this year at Christmas–if only he brought me more fun mail than bills! Sometimes I get random cards from my Grandma with random news articles or poems in them that she thinks pertain to me–they are some of my most treasured things :o)

  13. Caitlin says

    January 5, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    Several years ago, I bought a kit at a bookstore called Circle Journey. Inside was a little book that you could write in complete with pockets, stickers and the like. I gave it to one of my best friends before we ever got close as something fun to do while she lived in FL and I in PA. We wrote, drew pictures and sent little trinkets. In seven months, we grew incredibly close in a way you simply cannot in any other way but writing. When she finally returned to PA, the first hello hug was the most incredible one I have ever received. I love handwritten everything and try to send something out to someone, somewhere a few times a month.

  14. Sarah says

    May 14, 2011 at 11:05 am

    Ive been reading your blog for so long now… love your writing and really excited for you and your new path in life!

    I forgot about your love of handwritten letters until I was reading one of your newer blog posts…. I have two daughters 12 and 10, and I wanted to set them up with pen pals this summer … do you have any recommendations on where I can find pen pals for them? I am sort of skeeved out by looking on the internet because you just cant tell if its a legit site or not 🙁 any help or info would be greatly appreciated!!

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