A few weeks back, there was a post at the Plurkette Hencircle to sign up to get a penpal. As in, a real pen penpal. As in, pen and paper. No e-mails. Just good, old fashioned, personal letters. I thought it was a fantastic idea.
I signed up and received my penpal assignment earlier this week. I was delighted to find out that my penpal is from the U.K.! I’ve already written a letter and it’s sitting here on my desk at work till I have a chance to run down to the post office and mail it. I’m really looking forward to having a penpal to correspond with.
When I was in grade school, I had a penpal named Katie who lived in England. She was the granddauther of a family friend. She and I used to write to eachother all the time. I loved reading her letters and once we even exchanged tapes we recorded with a mix of talking and our favorite songs. Over time though, we grew up and lost touch. And our friend Betty, who was her grandmother and our dear friend, has since passed away. So I’ve really lost touch with her. I’d love to track her down again someday though, and see if she remembers her childhood penpal in America, as much as I remember her.
When I got this penpal, I went to the Hallmark card store in search of some pretty stationary. They had two options: plain white or plain cream. Wow, how times have changed! I remember when I was a little girl and wrote to Katie, I had a 101 Dalmatians stationary set and a Lisa Frank-designed unicorn stationary set. I probably had others too, but those stand out in my memory. I remember the stores always had all sorts of pretty sets of writing stationary — with sayings on the bottom and pretty pictures and borders. Now it’s a real challenge to find stuff like that. Several people suggested to me to try dollar stores, so I’m going to check there. But I guess it’s a commentary on our lives today: no one hand-writes letters anymore. At best, we sometimes type a letter, print it, and mail it. But more often, we just type an e-mail and shoot it off instantaneously across the world. And while that ability to communicate in milliseconds is absolutely wonderful, I think there’s still something to be said for old-fashioned hand-written cards and letters. I know it means a lot to me when I get a card in the mail where someone took the time to write a paragraph or two, rather than just doing a mail-merge and stamping out form letters.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned that way, though…
You might be asking yourself, what IS a ‘farmgirl’, exactly?
I asked myself the same question when Miss V. started talking about it on Plurk. (And subsequently began the Plurkette Hencricle, which I’m proudly a member of!)
Well, taken straight from the farmgirl’s mouth:
A farmgirl believes in the strong arms of friendship, community and the just plain fun of being together. A farmgirl takes joy in the quiet satisfaction of making things with her own hands. She exudes kindness, grace, humility, gentleness, patience and generosity, and loves the simple pleasures in life. A farmgirl is loyal and caring, especially when it comes to her family, friends and community. She gives generously of her time and talents. Farmgirls love to get together to share their ideas. She can be with or without fields and stock. Farmgirl is a condition of the heart.
This struck a chord with me.
I can’t say that I’m a true “farmgirl” in the sense that I was not raised on a farm. My mother lived part of her life on a farm, and I loved to hear her stories about it when I was younger (actually, I still do), and I’ve always dreamed of living on a farm someday myself. It’s still my dream to buy an old farmhouse and have a “hobby farm”. But that’s in the future…
Though I wasn’t raised on a farm, I was raised in a family that did lots things that we always termed “old fashioned”. It was always kind of a joke among the women in my family, that we were a few generations behind the rest of the world — but I never thought it was a bad thing. Together with all our female family and friends, we bake, canned fruits and vegetables, made jellies, planted gardens, sewed, quilted, crocheted, and knit.
Like most teenagers and twenty-somethings, I lost interest in these activities for quite a few years. But now, at the age of 26, I find myself drawn back to it. I’ve taken up knitting avidly. I sew. I cook and bake. I want to go back and have my mother teach me to do canning and things that I helped with as a child, but never really learned to do myself.
I suppose it’s because now my husband and I are planning our own family and I realize just how much all these things meant to me, and how they were so important in shaping the person I’ve become. I want that same experience for my children: the simple life, far from the “rat race”, where a person can appreciate the pleasures of all things handmade and home-grown and hopefully live a life of peace, love, happiness, and health.
