Letters

I realized the other day how much I miss getting actual mail, not bills or ads or mail from contests I did NOT enter, but a real honest-to-goodness  letter.  Remember waiting for the mail to see if someone had written to you?  I had a pen-pal for years.  Our friendship changed when she came to California but her snobby relations would not let us meet, because they lived in Beverly Hills and I was from Pacoima.  It's a shame, really but I lost interest in communicating with her after that.  I was about thirteen at the time.  My mom was ready to take me to meet her, but she said "no" in this funny way that made me realize that she was probably told that meeting a girl from "the wrong side of the tracks" would not be suitable.  The strange things is, we became pen- pals via a church newsletter.  It was sort of the beginning of the end of my church-going days, as I began to see that going to church was not for me.  I am not saying that it's a bad thing, if you get something out of it.  It just stopped for me.  Maybe it was where I was going to church and maybe it was just me.  I don't know.  I just remember after that I looked at Sue's letters with a more jaded eye, and although we continued to write for a few years after that, I think, I had no real interest in being her friend anymore.  I was thinking of writing a letter to my dad's cousin, probably the only person I know who does not use email, but I wonder about that.  My penmanship is terrible.  I print instead of using cursive ( do they even CALL it that anymore?)  I read a meme that made me laugh  "I don't have bad handwriting, I have my own font".  It made me think of my mom whose handwriting was SO bad she typed her letters.  I remember my then-mother-in-law asking me why my mother typed the letters to her.  I went in the house and got a letter my mom had written to me ( after all I had 'cracked the code" years ago) when I showed it to her, she understood.  I remember coming home from school one day to a note from my mom on the back door.  I sat down and cried, because I couldn't read it.  Mind you I COULD read, just not the note.  It was telling me that she was next door and I should go there when I got home.  She heard me crying and came home.  Still I miss actual  newsie letters from friends.  Nothing compares to the anticipation of slitting open an envelope and sliding out an actual piece of paper and reading it.  I am not complaining about the email letters I get from far away friends, those are great.  I am just waxing nostalgic.