As a father of the bride last year, I renewed my acquaintance with the U.S. Postal Service. In an age of texts, email, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there apparently remains only one preferred way of asking someone to a wedding. You print an invitation and stick it in the mail. Here in Louisiana, where traditions die hard, those printed invitations seem like a bit of etiquette destined to endure.
We could have ordered wedding invitations online, but I wanted to handle something that important across the counter from someone I know. I also like to support local businesses, which is how we ended up at a stationery shop just down the street.
The presence of any store that specializes in designer paper can seem like a minor miracle at a time when so many of us announce major life events through our laptops and smartphones.
Even so, some things still demand a note folded within an envelope, as I was reminded recently when I set out to write a condolence message to my friend Betsy, who had lost her father. That’s when I realized I was out of stationery. Like most people, I write very few personal letters, and I had forgotten to restock.
Because of last year’s connection with our neighborhood stationer, I knew just where to go. I asked for the same paper I’ve used for decades now — ecru stock with a letterhead in indigo blue. I assume that when friends and loved ones see that bit of blue peeking from their mailboxes, they know I’ve sent greetings their way.
The only point in sending anyone a handwritten letter is to include a part of yourself in the gesture. As I sat down to write my small note of condolence to Betsy, the morning newspaper had brought headlines about the growing cleverness of AI programs that can deftly simulate how humans write.
Maybe a chatbot could have offered a few persuasive sentences of sympathy to my friend enduring loss, though the computer would have been hard-pressed, I think, to perfectly capture how imperfectly I write by hand.
I’m talking about the little hesitations here and there where the ink pools as I’m working out how to end a paragraph. Or the way that my letters slant as raggedly as socks on a clothesline, an irregular cursive that made the poor nuns who taught me handwriting reflect on my worthiness for redemption. There’s also my habit of writing much smaller as I reach the bottom of the page, resolved to squeeze in more sentiment in the closing than the paper can reasonably hold.
I mailed off my letter to Betsy, who had sent me one of her own to say thanks for some small help I had offered with her father’s funeral. What a treasure to find it in the mail — a gift, I hope, that no machine will ever replace.
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