I feel so old even saying this, but 14 years ago when Kyle and I first met and began our relationship, we corresponded through letters. We met at freshman orientation at the UofA and we had a little over a month left of summer before school began. Talking on the phone was too expensive - there were no free long distance cell phones - plus, I was to spend several of the weeks in between orientation and the start of school traveling - Summit, Florida senior trip....And I'm not sure email really existed then like it does now. The most logical thing for us to do was write letters.

There is something absolutely wonderful about receiving a letter. Knowing that someone sat down with some paper, a pen, and a mind full of thoughts waiting to be released on paper just for your eyes. Ideas, thoughts, expressions reserved exclusively for you - to be read by you, things that occurred to them throughout the day that were stored away to share with you, observations made with you in mind, funny anecdotes reserved to share. And then the act of writing, putting your flesh and blood hand to the paper and individually forming each letter and word, composing sentences, thinking about the perfect word to capture the moment and filling a page with those thoughts. It is so intensely personal.

I remember driving down to Florida with my dear friend, Amy, reading to her the letters Kyle had sent me. Together, we savored every funny thing he said, every clever thing he wrote, sharing an excitement over the pending school year and the untold delights it was sure to hold. At Summit, during mail call, my heart would pound waiting to see if they called my name and if that meant Kyle had mailed me a letter. He had. Several, actually. And I would rush back to my room to savor the experience of that letter in private. I cracked the seal of the envelope with as much anticipation as great explorers do when unsealing a sarcophagus. I just KNEW something delightful and precious lay within those precious pieces of paper. A roomful of gold would have been of less value to me than the contents of Kyle's letters.

Over the course of our relationship, we wrote many many letters to each other, all of which I have saved. During our months apart in the summer, we continued to write letters, until email usurped paper as the standard form of correspondence. When Kyle transferred to OBU, I checked my email practically every hour, hoping for a long email from him. It didn't have quite the same thrill as a real letter, but it was close. And I did print them out and save those, too. As he did mine to him. As a result, Kyle and I have amassed a serious correspondence collection over the course of our relationship. And that correspondence grows- every card, note, post-it, that he gives me, I save in a treasure box. I hope someday our children will read them and gag at how romantic and goofy we were.

They will most definitely know that our love was quick and deep and wide and earned and tested and prayed over and cried over and rejoiced in and a source of sustenance to the very breath we drew and continue to draw.

These letters of ours are brought to the forefront of my mind as I read the letters written by Abigail and John Adams. Bear with me, people. You're likely to hear more than you ever wanted about these two. They are having quite the impact on me. And hopefully will on you, too.

I read aloud to Kyle an excerpt of a letter from Abigail to John: " I have amused myself in reading and thinking of my absent friend, sometimes with a mixture of pain, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes anticipating a joyful and happy meeting, whilst my heart would bound and palpitate with the pleasing idea, and with the purest affection I have held you to my bosom 'til my whole soul has dissolved in tenderness and my pen fallen from my hand."

He marveled with me at the depth of feelings within their correspondence and commented to me, "People just don't talk that way anymore." And he's right. Which prompted me to start thinking about just why that is.

I have a theory: For starters, we no longer fill our minds with literature and poetry as they once did. While we may read books periodically, the bulk of our input comes from television and movies. Soundbites have replaced literary poetry and beauty. Back in the Adams' day, their language was more full than ours because they filled their minds with the classics, instead of sitcoms. Secondly, technological advancements have simultaneously sped things up and pushed us apart. Telephones, cell phones, email, texting, blackberries, iphones...all these marvelous things have constricted our sense of time. We moved from letters to email because it was more convenient and quicker. So the amount of thought we put into our correspondence was reduced. We could just shoot off an email as fast as our fingers could type. No more pain in our hands, but less exercising of our mind and imagination, too. With cell phones and texting, the whole language with which we speak has been reduced to fractions of words, symbols representing what used to be whole words, numbers replacing letters, sacrificing the beauty of words for phrases and sayings that can quickly be punched into a keypad with your thumbs.

How far we've come and how much we've lost. Who has time to even type the word "tenderness" much less apply it to a written sentiment. It is heart-breaking that we continue to butcher our language, hacking it willy-nilly into choppy bits and pieces so as to zap nifty communiques through the air. Not only are we losing touch with the very words we once used to express the depths of our feelings to those we loved, we are leaving no record of the relationships we've fostered. One could question whether relationships really are being fostered...

I know my children and grandchildren may make faces as they read the words written by my love and I to each other, but they will be able to see in great detail the progression of our friendship to affection and the deepest of loves. And they will know that what we shared was sincere and eloquent. Maybe it will inspire them to restore the language we seem to be losing.