Every morning after my first class, I make a quick stop in the mail room. I peer into my mailbox and check to see if I have any letters. If I happen to see the promising edge of a thin white envelope, I quickly turn the lock until I am finally holding the letter in my hands.
It always begins: Dear Nora…
The warmth of this handwritten introduction always invites me back to a place of comfort. Most of my interactions at Occidental do not involve someone greeting me with “Dear,” and honestly, I’m lucky if someone even remembers my name. I trade countless quick hellos on the Quad, hold slightly awkward conversations in the Marketplace line, or get a 10-minute update from a friend as I toss a Frisbee and that’s about it. While I cherish these little moments, it feels strange that I rarely sit down and give my full attention to another person for a long period of time.
My communication with people back home is also brief. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with family and friends as we grow into our different lives. When we do speak, I always have to catch them up on important life updates, as if I am giving them a seasonal newsletter containing my top five bullet points of the month.
While I value these short conversations, they sometimes leave me feeling empty and distant from the people who I know and love the most. Writing and receiving letters from these people is one of the only things that has helped me fill that distance.
I first started writing letters at 12 years old when I went to summer camp in Northern Vermont. Away from my family for the first time and stuck in the woods without a phone, I frantically wrote letters back home to Brooklyn. In these letters, I was specific in recounting my days, describing in detail the mediocre meals I had eaten and introducing my new friends from far away places. But more than just detailing my schedule, writing letters allowed me to put other feelings into words, like what it felt like to be by myself, away from home. Curled up in my bunk in the woods, listening to the sound of my own breathing, I pulled out a pen and began to put stamps on white envelopes.
After that summer, I came to love writing letters and carried on the tradition every year. I wrote consistently to my best friend, my grandmother, a past boyfriend and my parents. No matter who the letter was addressed to, writing gave me the time and space to think about what I truly wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.
Well before beginning my first year at Occidental, I had already spent a significant amount of time far away from home. I worked on a farm in Italy, then spent three months hiking through Patagonia. I was thousands of miles away from the people I loved, and at times this distance felt unbearable. When I began to question myself and my decision to leave, I remembered that first summer and started writing letters again.
I wrote to my best friend the most. We knew each other as 8-year-olds in school uniforms complete with khaki skirts, and then suddenly we were across the world from each other. I wrote to her about everything, filling page after page. I told her about all the new places, the sun light on rocky mountainsides and the biggest grapes I have ever seen. I described to her my fascination with growing up, and how I was nervous about speaking Italian. I asked her questions, and she responded.
Our letter writing has now spanned about 10 years and I have kept every letter that I have received from her. Now she is in her third year of college in Boston, and the distance is just as real as it was when we were younger. In this way, writing letters has also been a way to mark time, keeping a record that will outlast us.
My time spent far away from home seems as though it will never end. Now, as I sit on the opposite coast, 3,000 miles away from New York, I still get to open a letter from someone that I love.
When I respond to these letters, sometimes it is a few lines hastily scrawled on a postcard, just to say I love you. Sometimes, I draft a letter three times before I feel right about sending it. Sometimes, the words escape me so I draw pictures or send little gifts that I stuff into the envelope. Sometimes, I write letters that I do not send. Sometimes, my letters are too long so I have to send them in two different envelopes. But one thing is for sure, each letter takes something special that is often missing from fleeting interactions: intentional time and thought. So if I have ever written you a letter, it must mean that I love you very much.
It is easy to get caught up in the appeal of brief communication that we can access instantly, but I would encourage all of you to sit down and write to someone you love. Tell them about your day. Describe a memory you have together. I promise it will make the distance, no matter how big or small, close just a little bit. Just take out a pen and start writing.
Love, Nora
P.S. Make sure you put the sender address in the top left of the envelope.
Contact Nora Youngelson at youngelson@oxy.edu
