By Maggie Beamguard
Insider Editor
One of my childhood chores was to run out and grab the paper from the driveway and the mail from the mailbox. It seems like a primitive task — the gathering of communication from the outside world — given the current age of the internet and smartphones.
I’d shuffle through the stack on my way back to the house — Southern Living magazine, National Geographic, the utility and phone bills, catalogs and coupon flyers — in the hopes of finding at least one piece of mail that had my name on it.
It was a lucky day when my Highlights magazine came, and a luckier one still when a grandparent would send me a note or an older sister would send me a postcard or a friend a party invitation. And then there were a few months during senior year of high school when letters arrived from a certain young man from Parris Island.
The thrill upon reading “Maggie Frampton” on an envelope was like a little jolt of joy. Here in my hands was tangible evidence of someone’s thoughts of me.
Nowadays, text messages fly in at all hours of the day, friends and family connecting with me whenever the whim strikes, but there is no heft to them. I can’t feel the grain of a text or smell the lignin fibers.
I can’t trace the slope of the handwriting or note the pressure of the hand that wrote. Nor can I appreciate the practicality or whimsy of the stamp or distance from which the postage mark originated.
Letters — we can hold onto; store them in a box; take them out to cherish the signature of a hand you can’t hold at the moment, or ever again.
Our modern technology has its place and use. How marvelous to have the privilege to FaceTime my daughter away at college. But there will be no lasting record of those communications.
In my college years, we had but rudimentary email, so I still got regular letters from friends and family.
My dad was the most prolific of all of them. He shared funny stories from home, life lessons he wanted me to know and always included a little mad money to use if I read his whole letter.
I treasure them. He still speaks through them. He wrote to my sisters too, and all the aunts and uncles and many neighbors.
What I didn’t know until last weekend was that he also wrote to my mom. While organizing my mom’s estate, my sister and I stumbled upon a box upon which we had never laid eyes. Sealed tight, it was labeled “Love Letters: Betty’s ltrs. from Charles.”
We placed the box gingerly on the dining room table and carefully opened it. A sacred silence fell as we took in the magnitude of the riches inside. Letters. Over 330 of them.
Yellowed paper, elegant handwriting, three-cent stamps, postmarked Clemson S.C., addressed to Miss Betty Jean Davis, N. Charleston.
The only eyes to read these letters until now were hers. I’ve only peaked at a few so far. They just feel so . . . personal, so private. But here they are, weighty and real and lasting like my parents’ love for each other.
Now we are on the lookout for a second box: Betty’s letters to Charles. And I’ve added “fine stationery” and “stamps” to my shopping list so I can create some tangible evidence of love and care of my own.
