Snail Mail Blessings

I hardly ever get anything personal, fun, or exciting via snail mail anymore.  Most of my correspondence these days happens via cell phone calls, texts, or e-mails (or even blog comments, but not tweets--I'm putting my foot down about the whole Twitter thing).   I guess this just means that I'm exactly like any other human living in the 21st century, but it makes me sort of sad sometimes.

I can still remember--vividly, although it was over 30 years ago--making trips to my campus P.O. box at the College of the Holy Cross, bursting with hope and excitement.  (I can't remember anyone's phone # anymore, because now that I have a "contacts list" on my magical iPhone, memorizing those seven digits is as passe as pet rocks and disco music; but I can still remember my college P.O. box #: 981.)  As I approached the campus center, my pace and my heart rate would both accelerate: would there be a letter in my mailbox from my handsome boyfriend out at Notre Dame (now my husband)?  One written in his rushed and crazy-jaggedy, manly cursive?  "Please, please, please, God--let there be a letter!"  Every time I saw that inimitable handwriting on an envelope, I left that place floating on a cloud.  I still have my husband's college letters stored away in a cardboard box, and I don't believe I'll ever be able to throw them out.

So I have a question for all you young'uns out there: do you print out and save e-mails from your sweethearts in little treasure boxes?  Do sweethearts ever even write actual letters anymore...with pens, on paper?  I hope they do, but I'm concerned that the practice is going to die out just like the dinosaurs, because my husband and I heard a news report recently saying there was a movement to stop teaching cursive to students at school.  When I hear things like that, I think perhaps I'm getting too old for the world we live in.

Anyway, there have been some treasures in my mailbox recently that I thought I'd share with you.  First of all, we have been receiving so many St. Padre Pio-related mailings as of late, most of them addressed to me rather than my husband--and you may recall that he is my patron saint for 2013 (the one randomly chosen for me using the Saints Name Generator).  My husband and I receive lots of religious items from various Catholic organizations (prayer cards and small prayer booklets, holy cards with pictures of saints on them, souvenir Rosaries and saints' medals, etc.).  But I don't ever remember getting so many mailings so close together with information about and small gifts from St. Padre Pio. I am taking this as a sign that my patron is trying to get in touch with me, and when I open up his missives I am almost as excited about them as the lovesick young college girl who ran to P.O. box #981 to look for letters from her boyfriend.

Also, yesterday I received a beautiful hand-crafted Rosary in the mail, a prize I won from a giveaway contest over at a blog I follow called These Little Blessings.  Along with the Rosary she'd made, my blogging friend Sarah Therese included the most lovely handwritten letter, and even her stationery--with a beautiful image of St. Joesph holding the Christ child on it--was a treat to behold.  What a wonderful surprise it was to find this kind of treasure in a pile otherwise composed of bills and junk mail!

Thank you, Sarah Therese!  A handwritten note is on its way right back at ya!