Well, there are no new letters to post until the 24th, so that gives me a chance to reflect on this letter-writing thing Dot and Dart had going on.

When I spoke to Mom after posting the first letter, she was a little nervous, but mostly excited. “I could never have imagined when I was writing those letters on my bed in that freezing dorm room, that 70 years in the future, people would be reading them,” she said. “It’s still hard to believe that images of those old pages are showing up on my computer.”

That got me thinking once again about the differences between the hand-written correspondence of a past age and the electronic communication we rely on now.  I’m trying not to judge which way is better, because I see the advantages of each method.  In years past, the recipient of a letter had a more direct connection to the writer. They could study the hand-writing and maybe catch a whiff of perfume oR after shave lingering on the pages. Can we feel that connected by the choice of font an email  writer uses?

In the old days, the time it sometimes took between a letter being written and then answered allowed both parties to reflect on what was said. Responses could mellow or evolve over the course of a few days. Today we have “instant” communication.  Skype and FaceTime even allow us to see and hear each other. I’m so grateful for those advances when I think about our military families today. How blessed they are to have almost face-to-face chats while separated by continents. Wouldn’t Dart and Dot have given almost everything they had to share that kind of closeness during WWII?

I have to wonder, though. Will someone be reminiscing in 2083 over a string of emails and texts sent by their loved one way back in 2013? Will families preserve them in a special place and count them among their greatest treasures?