Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Letters

 
I was going through some boxes and found an envelope full of letters I wrote home to my parents.
They kept them all and reading them, I saw just how much I forgot about my life living abroad.
Letters really are more personal and like a diary of your life.
They are not deleted like what I do with emails today.
I look at my nice handwriting and I know I must have a load of letters they wrote me as well somewhere.
My Mother was always critical of my hand writing until one day I told her that my handwriting was better than hers. lol She said no cause it was more fancy with squiggles . I told her squiggles is what makes it more fun to write and personal. By my squiggles, you will always know who wrote the letter.
I also knew who opened the envelope, by the way it was opened.lol

Anyway they never wrote as much as I did.
They didn't have as much to write except about their garden.
or to be asking when we would come back home.

Today's generation with technology, will be a lost, forgotten generation. It will be a generation which didn't exist
except in cyber space somewhere where no one will know them or find them.
They leave nothing behind that can't be erased with a computer virus.
Millions and millions of memories, gone in a wink.
When I look up my name, I find tons of people with the same name.
Can you imagine how confusion can result?
I can take on the life of anyone carrying my name, anywhere in the world where they live.
With computer savy, it's so easy to do .
Life wasn't like this before. We never knew other people, with the same name existed. lol
I know life becomes irrelevant, because my old computers crashed three times before we got one secure enough to withstand the evil which tries to get in to destroy it, just for fun or because it can.

You can't feel the paper and the aura of the person who sat and wrote these letters either.
You can't look at the postage stamps the paper you wrote on, state of mind you were in.
It's just not there in emails or texts.

I can feel my parents , having nothing to do in winter, picking them up and rereading them and
 discussing their daughter while looking at the pics which accompanied the letters.
I can't believe those days are over.
I can't believe we are getting old and the new generation, has no idea about what kind of life
their parents led.
No letters, no roots, no memories.
Sometimes reading these letters you see how faulty your memory is and how things really transpired during this time.
Like for example, I had this Pekanese a Chinese lady gave us.
 Her name was Pinky.
Lovingly I called her pinky stinky and she'd look at me with these huge brown eyes.
She was a doll face.
During the Hungry Ghost festival, I had dreams about saving people, for 4 days.
When I'd wake up, I would realize that these people were dead and couldn't be saved.
Then someone stole my dog and I was very upset.
One Chinese man came and told me not to cry because something bad was coming to my household
and the dog took it away.
I don't remember this story but through the letters I wrote my Mother,
I now know more than I remembered.
Astonishing !
xoxoxoxoxoxo




12 comments:

George said...

My wife kept all the letters I wrote during the year I spent in China. I found them after she died and was amazed by how much I had forgotten about what happened during that year.

Maude Lynn said...

I saw a story on the news recently about handwriting being a lost art. Kids just aren't learning anymore.

Lydia Kang said...

Very thought provoking. The digital age is wonderful and awful at the same time.

deeps said...

a practice almost at the verge of extinction...

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi A Lady's Life .. my blog name came about because I was handwriting letters to friends and family re my mother and they said how positive and interesting they were. But they were a mix of handwritten and typed 'round-robins'.

It's interesting as you know my mother has recently died and I wrote both tributes, and a thank you to be read in Church as she'd had a business, and then sent these out to friends/relatives who couldn't attend - with a covering letter, which encompassed those who didn't know) - and I've had wonderful phone calls, letters back ... so it can be done on the net.

I do write out cards too ... I mix and match - but I'm definitely one of a kind I think ... from people's comments - but it's helped me to close off my mother's life - with some gentle touches and remembrances.

I wonder what the future holds - humanity still needs humanity ... cheers Hilary

A Lady's Life said...

George - I think letters are still precious and personal things to have.
I am sorry about your wife.

A Lady's Life said...

Mama Zen - I guess parents should promote hand writing skills at home or as an art form as in calligraphy.
I remember the quill days and the ink jar holders in our desks.

A Lady's Life said...

Lydia - Today I think people lose a lot, think less, dream less, work less. I am not so sure this is a good thing.

A Lady's Life said...

deeps - unfortunately this is true.

A Lady's Life said...

Hilary - I have cards and letters and invitations and thank yous I will treasure all my life. I think they are worth scrap booking and kept as a form of history and this is better than anything you can get on the net or any other digital
machine.
Digital will never replace the real thing as holograms will never replace people.

Unknown said...

Finding old letters is indeed a great treasure to behold, but one should not discount what is being chronicled by younger generations on the internet. For it will remain long after words on a piece of paper fade to nothingness. That is, if this world lasts that long, of course.

A Lady's Life said...

Jerry- I agree. But paper doesn't fade as fast as say something happening to a satellite and a system like google which can ALL be erased in one swipe.
The whole world can be left in darkness. All info gone, because people learned to depend on technology instead of themselves.
Maybe this is why government still relies more on analog while people are going digital.Of course the end of the world will come one day.
Then God help us all.