From my hands to yours

I love snail mail.

Sending it. Receiving it. Stamps. Envelopes. The whole ordeal.

Obviously, we live in a world where there are much more efficient ways of communication (says the girl who's writing a blog post...). Email, blogs, text messages, and social networking have streamlined communication in ways that no one a hundred years ago could have anticipated. And don't get me wrong, I am all about internet-centered communication.

But there is something special about letters. Real letters. The ones that come in an envelope with a stamp and magically appear in your mailbox. Your real mailbox, that is.

It's that it is coming from my hands to yours. The paper was held by me, written on by me, carried around by me. There's an element of physical touch, that by definition, cannot be experienced in e-communication.

Every other minute there's some new communication technology at our doorstep. And it is inevitably skinnier, faster, awesomer than the one before it. I, myself, just got a new phone for Christmas. It is pink and has a keyboard and lets me communicate faster and better than my last one.

But I will never be able to give up snail-mail. Old-fashioned, maybe, but totally worth it.

On Birthdays

Last week, Monkey celebrated his 7th birthday. It was a big deal. Days and days of anticipation, the purchasing of gifts, the making of a cake, culminating in birthday crowns, candles, and a good old-fashioned party.

I remember so many years of that youthful anticipation and excitement. Birthdays used to be a month long endeavor, filled with so many "I just can't wait!!"s that it felt like I would die before the day would ever come. And now I wonder, when did that end?

This year, my birthday fell amidst returning home, a wedding, and a lot of random busy things. There was a special Skype call with friends across the ocean. There were family and friends and ice cream. There were cards and a gift (that definitely fell on the "need" list, as opposed to the "want" list). There was a surprise breakfast with old friends. But it just sort of slipped passed. No big hurrah. I wonder when it was that I became okay with that.

I don't care about the excitement anymore, which I suppose is an inevitable landmark of "adulthood". I'm a little nostalgic for the days when I cared, but I'm also not terribly torn up that they have passed.

Which is precisely why it is so great to be around kids, who feel the excitement, who induce anticipation, and let it spill over until you can't help but be excited with them. So instead of pining for the excitement of birthdays past, or feeling the pressure of fabricating excitement for future birthdays, I am content reveling in the pure joy shared by the young ones.

Scars

Scars tell stories. Stories of pain, clumsiness, danger. They are reminders of when things have gone awry in the past. Some are amusing and entertaining, others are simply painful. But no matter what the stories evolve into, they all start in the same place. They all start with pain.

The scar up the side of my leg tells the story of the time that I had an unfortunate run-in with a pick axe. The blob of distorted skin on my knee is from that one time I was visiting my eldest sister in Philadelphia when I was probably 7 or 8 and I tripped on the sidewalk. Those white lines there above my knee? Those were the work of an overly enthusiastic dog. That one shaped like an ice cream cone/Santa's head/speech bubble is the reminder of the best vacation I ever had. The streak across my pointer finger is reminiscent of touching a hot frying pan.

Physical healing is amazing. Days and days go by of new skin cells forming and overtaking the old damaged ones. Then one day, the pain is gone...no more stinging, itching, burning. All that's left is the faint reminder. And the story.

Emotional pain and scars are a different story. That is a healing process that is very much hidden, not seen by the eye, only felt by the heart. When a heart is broken, it leaves a scar, and that scar tells a story, and that story starts with pain. But the pain needs time to heal, often times more time than an external scar.

The realm of broken hearts is a dangerous one indeed. We would prefer to avoid the pain, speed up the process, and lure ourselves into a false sense of healing. There's one good day when you don't feel the brokenness and you hope against all hopes that it is gone for good. And because you can't see it, you try to believe it. Until the next day when the pain creeps up again, and your heart feels like it's being broken all over again.

Healing is an amazing thing. To be able to look back at pain, and not feel it's sting anymore, but simply acknowledging it's presence and influence on your life. Some wounds seem like they will never heal, but given time and love, anything is possible.
 
In the end, when the pain starts to fade, you are left with an opportunity for maturity and growth, a lesson learned, and of course, a story.