Six and a half years.
That’s roughly how long it’s been since Steven and I first passed a note to each other. When we first met, Steven didn’t have a phone and had no interest in getting one. He was of the mindset that if he needed a phone in an emergency, it would be possible to find one. It was kind of refreshing to meet someone with this train of thought, because at that time in my life I was heavily dependent on my phone and I’d probably say I was addicted.
Instead of texting or talking on the phone, we passed letters to each other. We worked at the same agency in Bangor and we would often cross paths throughout our 40 hour work weekends, and we would hand off our letters. I still have those letters, and what eventually turned into journals, that are full of stories about our days, our hopes for our life (eventually we were dreaming of a life together) and all sorts of other things! Our travels and jobs would take us apart from each other for weeks at a time sometimes throughout that first year, so we continued to write.
To this day, I still write letters to Steven. It may not be at the same volume as when we first started dating, but I love putting a colorful pen to paper and just writing down what’s on my mind. Some of these letters turn out to be really mushy, some are really deep, and some are just everyday topics, but I keep them all in a climbing shoebox under the bed, and I love it! I know Steven enjoys coming home and finding a letter waiting for him! It’s so sweet to be able to sit down when I’m feeling nostalgic and pull out those letters and those journals and just re-live different times in our lives.
We’ve gotten to a point in our relationship where we actually don’t text (or voxer!) each other much during the day, and instead we save it for when we can just talk in person while we sit on the couch and watch Lily play.
It makes me sad to think that writing letters is sort of becoming a lost art. The phone and social media has completely overtaken that, and I wish more people wrote letters! I plan to write Steven, and Lily, letters until I can’t anymore, because it’s part of the legacy I want to leave behind.
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