Letters for a Rainy Day

This morning I was traveling in Iowa with my son T and thought I'd take him to the Macbride Raptor Project before we headed home. I used to visit the owls (my favorite animal) frequently when I lived in Iowa; seeing their majesty always gives me a sense of great peace and serenity.

The Raptor Project is nestled in the University of Iowa Macbride Nature Recreation Area, with the rehabilitated and permanently disabled raptors in spacious outdoor cages you can walk past on a dirt path. As luck would have it, no sooner had I pulled into the parking lot than the heavens opened up. No way I was going to be pushing T in his stroller in the pouring rain.

As I drove back toward the highway, I passed scenic picnic areas overlooking Lake Macbride. When I heard T sigh heavily--a sure sign that he had settled in for a long nap in his car seat--I knew I needed to seize the opportunity for some quiet, beautifully situated, writing time.

I pulled into a picnic area and sat in the front seat of my car, writing letters as rain pelted the windshield. I wrote to my coworker J, thanking her for being a sounding board and also inspiring me to get more involved in my community, get out more socially and just generally have a life outside the office (being somewhat of a homebody may support motherhood and my letter-writing habit but, honestly, I do need the dust blown off me once in a while).

I also wrote to M, one of my childhood best friends, letting her know how much--even though we rarely correspond anymore--I still cherish the memories of Barbies, trips to the beach and dance routines performed in the livingroom for our (incredibly patient and kind) relatives. Writing to M, I was struck with some of the same thoughts I'd had when I wrote to S, the mother of another childhood friend. I noted to M and S that the happy memories recalled as I wrote letters to them are helping me realize how much I want T to have a small town life--a community where neighbors know each other and kids still ride their bikes and play kickball after dinner. It took motherhood, I guess, to make me nostalgic for the kind of upbringing I had, and now I want T to be able to run with a pack of good buddies and make the kind of memories I made with M, S's daughter J and my other friends.

I looked at the clock. 90 minutes had passed like nothing at all. And even though I didn't get to see Duke--my favorite great-horned owl whose disability has made him a longtime resident of the Raptor Project--I still felt extraordinarily peaceful, and serene, as I made my way back to the highway and headed home.

MORE WEATHER-INSPIRED WRITING: This morning as I wrote I thought of Jackie at the Letters and Journals blog, who wrote recently about her own stormy letters. I eagerly await receiving my first issue of the Letters and Journals magazine, which Jackie plans to launch late this year or in early 2011.

Refuge and Reward

I wrote my first letter on a February night, lingering over my words and sentiments with a cup of tea at the dining room table. My son, just a few months old, slept nearby in his bassinet, where he remained for a few hours as mommy collected her thoughts. I strove to make many of my early letters--composed just this way--miniature masterpieces.

I wrote my 99th letter in my recliner this morning, gulping down coffee as I anticipated my now very active son awakening from a brief nap and my parents arriving for a Father's Day brunch. I've also written letters sitting on the livingroom floor while my son crawled around and over me, in a doctor's office waiting room, at the car dealership while my brakes were replaced. And I wonder, is this project worth carving out those little blocks of time? Can I do my letters--and their recipients--justice?

The time it takes to write a letter--and the effort it takes to find that time--is pretty obviously a big reason we got away from handwritten correspondence in the first place.  We are a busy people, running to daycare and work and back to daycare and off to the grocery and the dry cleaner and the dentist and the veterinarian. When we're trying to communicate with friends and family amid all those obligations, why wouldn't we lean on the convenience of e-mail and texting? When the point is to simply exchange data, the fastest and best methods are the same.

There certainly have been days when I've simply not found the time to write a letter, or if I was lucky enough to have some extra minutes, I wanted to spend them with my head on the pillow, not a pen in my hand. It was on the first such occasion, some 20 or so days into this project, that I changed my goal from "write a letter a day for a year" to "write 365 letters in 365 days."

And I did consider, early on, what other goals I might have to set aside as I made time to write. Would I have no time for meditation? For prayer? For journaling?

As luck would have it ... the letters have become my meditation, keeping me very much in the moment even as I in many cases reflect on the past. My letters are also prayers, prompting me to express abundant gratitude for the joy, support, lessons and love my relationships have brought me. And they are a journal of sorts, a written record of where and who I've been.

For those very reasons letterwriting has become a refuge and a reward, a place into which I willingly slip when opportunities arise. Quiet, tranquil nights of writing are indeed in the past, replaced with whatever moments my imagination can find. Lucky for me, the benefits are the same whether my writing is a production or piecemeal--my communication still feels elevated, transcending a simple exchange of information to an experience of reflection that ideally moves me and the letter recipient.

And I'd call that a masterpiece.

IN HONOR OF OUR FATHERS: In the spirit of this day for dads I offer a link to a syracuse.com blog post of letters from Central New York schoolchildren to their fathers. What a delight. Be sure to read through to the end--the last one is priceless.