Handwritten Letters: Nostalgic and Romantic

Have you received a letter recently? No, not e-mail; I mean a handwritten message on stationery or even just plain paper sent to you through post or personally handed to you or probably left on your desk? I bet you haven’t seen one in the last five years or probably a decade! Writing letters used to be so personal.

20 years ago in high school, I would get no less than three written notes a day from friends and classmates as it was a cherished age of innocence when the craze was getting away with passing notes during classes or

exchanging love poems made for our crushes. Believe it or not, I’ve kept each and single note I got from that time and when nostalgia hits me, I go through them, giggling and sighing as if I was transported back to the 90s.

High School notes and letters from friends and schoolmates

If girlish notes bring cheerfulness, all the more love letters! As a hopeless romantic, I’ve even kept the love letters of my first boyfriend who was also my first heartbreaker when I was fifteen.  It’s just that reading those reminds me that long ago there was this guy who cared enough to take the time writing his feelings for me on 2 sometimes 3 pages of plain paper. Nowadays, you’d be lucky to get an e-card written by a computer program or a text message which oftentimes is in that abbreviated mobile language I find lazy and detestable. It’s probably why You’ve Got Mail never lived up to the magic of Sleepless in Seattle; romantic love could only flourish through the written word.

My journal back in High School

It’s sad to think that handwriting letters is one of the heartening experiences the new generation would miss out on like childhood street games. But I think my 12-year old son Marti is about to prove me wrong. I found this passionate poem by Pablo Neruda which moved me so much that I thought such beautiful words should only be handwritten and so I wrote it on a small memo pad and tucked it in my wallet. Coming home later that night, I showed it to Marti who liked it so much, asked if he could “borrow” it for his English Literature class. I never saw the poem again and I have a feeling it’s now tucked in the wallet of some other young lady.

Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets

Ah, to be young and in love… again!