When I was growing up- and well into my 20’s before email became a thing, I used to have pen pals from all over the world.

I had pals in Scotland and England, Turkey, Canada and Japan-even Russia.

We used to trade little things  like postcards and recipes, stickers and stamps.

Then email became a thing and for awhile some of my pals and I had fun with the email thing, but after awhile we stopped writing, the magic was gone.

There were no more trips to the post office  to get my letters going out of the country weighed or shopping for fun stationary and fancy ink pens. I was sad about that loss. I still am.

I had a good friend in Turkey we started writing when we were girls and continued to write as adults.  Her letters read like poetry, her style of writing was beautiful, She was going to be moving to England to study medicine and we had plans to meet each other there. I still have photo albums with her pictures in them and all of the little presents we exchanged.

in 1999 Turkey was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of7.0.

I wrote my friend in a panic,  we had never sent emails to each other. So the wait to hear from her was long.

 

I thought my letters were getting through because they weren’t coming back.

It was months later that I got a postcard from one of my friends relatives. I read it and then I sat on the curb outside of my house and cried.

I put it in my treasure box, I couldn’t put it in the albums where I kept all of her pictures and poems and letters and postcards. Maybe one day I’ll put that postcard from her Aunt inside of it. I just haven’t gotten around to it.