What happened to letters

Before there was email, texting, twittering, and facebook, people had several options for communicating with friends and families. We used the phone or we wrote letters, sometimes we even sent a card to say hi!
I wrote letters.
I used to love to write letters. Some would be on notebook paper, some on stationery, some on home made paper from a favorite craft store. I had holiday paper, and paper in differents hues.

Letter writing for me was letting the recipient know I was thinking of them and nothing was more satisfying than folding those sheets of papers and sliding them into an envelope, soon to be addressed and stamped and taken to the post office.

My most faithful responder was my dear mother. When I moved away from my home town I could always count on at least one letter a week, usually more.
Some were full of family news and gatherings, some were just to say hi.
Bottom line it was the effort she took to write me a letter. I still remember the excitement of seeing that mail with my name handwritten on the face of the envelope and remember that they were almost always the small size and the notebook paper that would come from the drugstore purchased lined writing pad.
When my girls were young she would write them letters with little drawings to help them understand the text.

Some of my dear friends were also the recipients of my form of communication. I'd fill the pages with the goings on of my young family, trying always to keep the thoughts upbeat, and leave out the burdens young families have. Really, who wants to read bad or sad news all the time.

This isn't to say there weren't phone calls made on occassion, there were.
I found letter writing more to my liking as I felt freer to express my self and remembered more often the little things that made up my life.
I came to find out that some treasured my words and would reserve a special time when their children were sleeping or at school to make the cup of proverbial tea, sit back in their chair and read my letter. I must say I wss touched especially when the comment was often, how my writing was like I was talking to them.
I'm not sure when I stopped writing letters regularly. My Mom's death, put a halt to all letter writing for a while. Her loss was keenly felt and somehow even writing to friends wasn't the same. There would be no more letters from her in my mail, and the thought of that took my breath and ambition away.

After a while I would drop the occasional line to a friend. But things were changing. First came email. Not the same but kind of like a letter. Something wasn't quite the same. The length for one was shorter now. No more the equivalent of a least two doubled sided sheets, though didn't have as much news in my life as before. We emailed about our children aand our lives..but I noted that no bad news crept in those keyboarded thoughts.
Then even the emails became fewer as we all moved around the country. Our children had activities and sports, time was precious.
We still sent the Christmas cards with a little note inside. Our lives were changing and with the change came less communication.

Then it was I got busy, they got busy, and I received the occssional Christmas newsletter or a card with a few small photos of their children.

So here we are, I have reconnected to old friends and familiy members due to facebook. Not quite in the same way but we are catching up a bit at a time.
There is one friend I have who doesn't have a computer in her home, and doesn't seem to want them.
We spoke on the phone seveal months ago reminding me that our commuication had been sparse.
In fact I think I"ll end this here and pull out my word processing program and drop her a line. Sorry honey, the hands will cramp now but I'll use a flowing font, which you will be able to read. Yep I think I'll just do just that .