Flooded

More than a week ago it rained.  Allot. The new Patio that we had poured last month did NOT divert the water away from the house as promised, but directed water IN to the house.  Fortunately, we were in the process of pulling up flooring anyway, but the shop under the Family room  was taking in more water than before we poured the new patio.  Like 100 times more.  We started to move totes and boxes out to clean up and put sealant where the water was coming in.  It looks like we will be putting in a nice patio cover eventually, but for the time being our efforts to stop water from entering in have worked.
  We have cleaned up that flooding, but now I am dealing with a whole different sort of flooding.  Emotional flooding.  One of the Totes had all of my letters and notes from everyone except  my husband Paul from Jr high all the way into College.  I keep Paul and my letters together in their own tote, and get them out once in a while, but this one I have not gotten out and gone through in the 15 years that we have lived here.  I vaguely remember transferring  them from a cardboard box to a plastic tote about 10 years ago, but they have remained  tucked away in the corner of the shop and out of my thoughts until last week.
  I took a day and sat down and pulled out some of the boxes of letters and my journals and spent a rainy afternoon being a teenager again.  I would occasionally read some of the funny things aloud, which really annoyed some of my kids, but I wanted them to know some of the things that happened to me when I was their age.  I laughed, I cried, but most of all I was flooded with gratitude for my life and for those who came into it and touched it for the better. I counted more than 300 hand written letters, notes, greeting cards and postcards total. How touching it was to see physical evidence of the friendships that I had.

A lost art?

 
  To sum things up. Girls love letters.  They cherish them.... even the heartbreaking ones.  Write someone a handwritten letter, card, note or postcard today.  Everyone loves to get mail.