I'm a Woman of Letters

I know I'm sentimental and a bit of a packrat when it comes to things people have sent me, but sometimes I amaze myself.

I've been setting up a desk for myself in the pantry this afternoon (In fact, I'm typing away on the laptop at said desk right now. And the room gets sunlight! And it's warm!). So I took the opportunity to unpack a couple small boxes of 'desk stuff' that have been languishing upstairs for some time.

Hoo boy. Along with all the stationery-related ephemera, I found stacks of letters. You know, the paper kind that we hand-wrote and popped into the post, back in the days before e-mail. By the time I'd sorted through them all, they littered the floor and I stared at them in amazement. They all date from 1994-96. I had forgotten that I never used to throw out letters - it seemed disrespectful to the friends who wrote them to me (most of whom I still keep in touch with). Plus, as a historian, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time poring over the letters of others, and what seems mundane and trivial to us now could be immensely interesting to someone else in future.

So I'm ashamed to say that my first impulse was to chuck the lot for recycling. But I decided on a reprieve. After all, I've kept them this long. So they've gone back into a little box, to be put away with the rest of the sentimental flotsam and jetsam of my life. They're to be kept, just for the sake of keeping.