Love letters

Do you write real true to goodness letters? Not emails, not cards, REAL pen to paper, pour out your heart, letters?

I actually do from time to time. My grandma has email but who doesn’t love getting a letter in the mail every now and then? So sometimes—even though my handwriting is horrible-I will sit down and send her a letter. She has never mentioned them to me directly but apparently every time she gets a letter she calls my mom and goes on and on about how much they enjoy getting letters from me. I don’t send them nearly enough but about 3-4 times a year I sit down and for no reason other than because I know they will appreciate it, I write my grandparents a letter.

But what about love letters, I have no idea how to write a proper love letter but I do love my husband very much, and I do send him letters on a regular basis.

Let me start at the beginning:

When my husband went to boot camp I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t know how often he would have access to email, and I knew how many spam emails he received so I didn’t want to risk him missing my quick notes to him buried in the spam. So instead I started writing him letters. I knew he would get mail on a regular basis so I wrote him a letter every day (almost) and mailed them at least 3X per week. He said between me and a few old ladies from the church he received some sort of letter or card almost every day at mail call. These notes and letters helped keep him from getting as homesick and made the time pass a little faster.

My husband also sent me letters while he was in boot camp, and boy oh boy did I LIVE for those letters. He usually mailed them once a week(ish) and if I hadn’t received one by the time the mail man came on Thursday I was pretty antsy at work on Friday knowing there should be a letter waiting on me when I got home. There was something about seeing his handwriting that just made the separation a little easier. I carried the letters around with me in my purse and would read them over and over again.

After my husband graduated from boot camp I took all of the letters from boot camp and created three binders full of letters, notes and cards in page protectors so that in 20 years we can look back on that time and remember (or in 100 years our great-great grandkids can talk about how funny cursive handwriting looks!) One binder is letters from me to hubby, one is letters from him to me and the third is all of the other notes and cards and letters he received from friends and family. I did my best to arrange the binders in chronological order but of course not everyone dates ever card/letter so the third binder is arranged more by person than time line.

Now my husband is gone on his first deployment. We are lucky because his job gives him constant access to internet (as long as they aren’t in River City) and therefore we can send and receive emails throughout the day. However there is still something special about a written letter, so I have once again started the practice of writing a letter every day. I hope that they mean as much to him as they do to me and he keeps them again so that I can add them to the collection. I’m also anxious to see if he sends me real letters again, I hope so because I did love them so much during boot camp.

But the question still stands…How does one write a proper love letter? In my head I envision myself writing flowery prose about how my heart flutters at the sound of his name like something from Jane Austen, in practice I when I reread my letters they sound more like a note passed across a kindergarten classroom, do you like me check yes or no. In reality I am sure I fall somewhere in the middle…so how about you? Do you write love letters to your significant other? Any tips on how I can make my letters something that would make Jane Austen proud and a Nora Roberts blush without being embarrassing? I promise to share any secrets I come up with over the next XX months while hubby is gone.