Pat Taub
GUEST POST by ZOE FITZGERALD-BECKETT
Texting, and tweeting, and all the social media posting apps are a part of life now and serving in their way to keep us informed and in touch. But as a prescription for healing and strengthening our spirits during COVID-19, I recommend picking up a pen and writing a letter.
Two years ago, a health scare landed me in hospital where I underwent emergency heart surgery. Once home and recuperating, friends and family all asked what they could do to help. Their offers of home-cooked food, and help with shopping and gardening were appreciated, but not what I needed to help me deal with my health trauma’s after-effects.
None of us like to be needy, to feel a bother to others. I felt a modicum of shame about being in that position, for as a mother and activist and volunteer I was always the one giving and helping. And now I was being asked what did I need?
When I was in the CCICU in hospital, Raymond Carver’s poem, “Late Fragment” kept running through my mind.
I realized that while I was fortunate to have the love of good family and friends in my life, I was needier now, and the most important thing seemed to be finding a way to connect in a more heart-felt way with others. So I let it be known that what I needed was letters. Real letters, handwritten, posted and delivered to my mailbox.
What I learned from the response was that being needy gives others an opportunity to give free expression to their best selves. As letters and cards started turning up in my mailbox, I was filled with a simple sense of joy. The anticipation of what I might find there each day had a Christmas morning feel to it.
Well, the “heart wants what it wants,” Emily Dickinson tells us. And I wanted it to be Christmas every day in my mailbox. So, I began to actively cultivate a “personal correspondence” habit, a phrase which gave me the pleasant feeling of living in a Jane Austen novel.
The more I wrote and received letters, the clearer it became that real letters open up the possibility of richer, slower conversations and can provide a much more visceral and personal sense of connection with others based on thoughtfulness and a generosity of spirit. What gifts!
Once written and posted, there is also the gift of delayed gratification. Trusting the mail will get through. Wondering how your letter will be received. Waiting for a reply, not knowing what it might contain. All of which calls for what are now promoted as mindfulness habits so key to good health. Letting go. Surrendering the need to control. Acceptance of what is. And patience. These things don’t fit easily into the container of on-line communiqués. I am writing to a six-year old in England, who thinks the whole process is quite magical. He may not be far off.
George Walker, 6 y.o. from London, proudly holding a letter from the author
A fragment of a poem of my own speaks to the magic I find in my mailbox:
…Picture me on my long walk down my long drive
where my mailbox waits. See me sifting through
the usual nothingness it holds and then, finding you
there. Your letter, gleaming, glowing.
…Your words may prove playful, profound,
provocative. Picture my pleasure in the gift of them,
holding them in my hand, pressing them to my heart.
As inscribed on the National Postal Museum building in Washington, DC, a letter can play many roles in our life – and all of them good medicine.
Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and Goodwill Among Men (and Women*) and Nations.
Zoe FitzGerald-Beckett lives in Appleton, Maine, where she writes, collages and gardens. Her work has been published on the Farnsworth Art Museum blog, in Dreamers:Writing, The Healing Muse, Mothers Always Write, The Sun, Zest: Maine and Sage Woman Magazine. In 2017, she was the recipient of the first prize at the Plunkett Poetry Festival at University of Maine Augusta, for her poem, On the Edge. If you would like a copy of her poem, Write to Me, Zoe can be contacted via the U.S. Postal Service at 2526 Sennebec Road, Appleton, ME 04862. She welcomes your letters.
*added by author
