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Creative Connections by Sara Aeikens

 

Using the past several months to sort through piles of old messages, including letters, notes and cards, I recalled they were sent mainly through the mail and delivered to our front door by a postal carrier, but not by email. 

I stored most of these mailed connections in a half-dozen large shoebox-sized containers in what I thought at the time was somewhat in an order, so I figured the sorting process to be a manageable chore during the pandemic quarantine until I really got into it seriously.

Each day I set aside up to an hour and a half for this activity, shortly after I arise around 6:30 a.m. and do a half hour of meditation. I sit on the bedside in a guest room with the box of cards I’m sorting and briefly open an item, scan the message, think about it with my brain and then decide with a great deal of difficulty what to do with that memory.

What I’ve found interesting are the friends who’ve sent about a dozen letters during a year, sometimes in response to my letters, for about a half a century. The pattern they tend to follow is so unique to them. Some write incredibly tiny, to the very edges of all four corners of each page. Some write very large and loopy with short powerful messages, and some have very few adjectives and very little information, but straight to the point — signed with lots of love!

Since I have so many cards, I’ve decided I want to save the card designs if there is no writing across it, or on the printed message or the backside. I give them to the YMCA or the Senior Center. Both organizations have groups making new original card creations to recycle or sell. That means I’m turning my scissors in a lot of various directions to save as much of the design as possible. I now have several boxfuls to give to organizations, and I’ve thrown away two large shopping bags full of remnants for paper recycling. I still have several boxes to sort, but it appears I’ll have time to complete them.

I found a few of the card designs so eye-catching, brilliantly colorful and artistically appealing, I decided to keep them with the friends’ letters, with which I am not yet ready to part. I also am surprised and appreciative of the special messages in which friends have stated their gratitude for a specific personality trait or action on their behalf that I may have long forgotten about, but now I can take to heart. And I even have a special pile, from my son’s birth onward, to share with and pass on to him.

Sara Aeikens is an Albert Lea resident.