Im dedicating this Friendship post today to Helle, formerly Pedersen, now Andersen. As some of you may know...or may not know...Helle was one of my pen-pals back in time when i was devoted to this hobby, ive mentioned her at some of my previous posts when i had posted a card she had sent me.
Well, yesterday, i got a letter....from Helle...and that was more than enough to entirely brighten up my day to the fullest. So thats why today, im dedicating this dedicated to Friendship post, to her. Along with the 4 cards she included in the letter :)
Well, it all began not that long ago...several months...ever since i discovered postcrossing, ive been more than delighted that after many years catching dust and spider webs, my mailbox was being fed again with stuff which are not bills, leaflets, propaganda material, and such....my mailbox was getting lively again. For someone who had enjoyed receiving mail over the years, this was just a treat of a kind. Which you could have noticed thru my blog, each time i posted a card.
Cards are a delight....but....there always has to be a *but*...one day, after reading how some people say, hey, today i received 5 postcards and two letters...or, i received a letter from my pen-pal in Germany..or im writing a letter to a friend in Poland etc etc etc, a small hole of emptiness started creating inside me...and it grew bigger and bigger...all of a sudden i realized how much *I* miss writing/sending/receiving letters....email never grew on me...online chats for hours are annoying to me, unless i have to talk to someone with whom there is no other way to talk to, and yet, communication is required/wanted...plus talking to 5 people at the same time is just not a way to be able to dedicate your attention properly to all of them....so, as i said, inside me, i started longing for real letters...a LOT...i just dont know why i havent got that itch earlier...
So i decided to do something about it...and of course, there are (still) many people around who enjoy snail mail, and who love taking their time to write and post a real letter every now and then...so i looked around and saw that there were some really nice and interesting people....but...yeah, here comes the inevitable *but*..something inside me STILL felt missing. The desire to actually write letters with people i used to write to, and who were very dear to me....so thank God to the internet and its vast opportunities, i decided to look for them...and can you believe it that i found 4 very very dear ladies??!!! Can you even imagine my heart-beat when they said they remembered me and that they would LOVE to keep writing real letters to me??!
I know i give myself no credit, for a lot of things....this was no exception, and i just didnt really want to interfere with their lives and impose some demands after all these years, now that they have families and are busy...why should they write to me, just because all of a sudden i got this desire for it...i mean, where had i been TILL now? But i thought there is no harm if i just ask, and if they dont want to or cant, thats ok..but they all said they wanted to write to me again...real letters....Helle was one of them. And yesterday her letter arrived...her first letter after all this years....my mailbox felt so content....me, more than that...
Helle was one of my first pen-pals ever, when i started pen-palling back in 1993....she contacted me thru this programme...there was a programe on the Brtish Supper Channel back than, which aired every day from Mon-Fri, with Clive Pears (gee, i remembe his name :)) and each day was a thematic day...Monday was pen-pal day...and after watching many pen-pal day shows, i decided to enter...and there one day, another pen pal day comes, i sit to watch it...and then he says ' and here is pen-pal number 4 for today, and thats Ana from Macedonia..and i see my picture on TV! And he reads my intro letter while my picture keeps staying on the screen and i smile to the viewers...hahahaa, my 2 mintues of fame!
So after he read my letter and all, people were supposed to send a letter to Supper Channel, write on it who is the pen-pal they want to write to, and inside they actually write a letter to me...so after waiting as long as they consider is enough, Supper Channel gathers all the letters for the particular person and mails them...so one day after like two months i appeared on TV, a huge brown envelope arrived to me, with 12 or so letters for me inside...so thats how it began....and i was addicted to it immediately...as if its been in my blood...in my veins...it just needed to be unveiled...Helle was one of the girls whose letters was inside...
Helle said that she had collected these cards for me...and i love them ALL! Im not entirely sure what each of them represents but to me, they represent Friendship and thoughtfullness...and im so happy to have found Helle after all these years! She's been one of my first and dearest pals...it feels incredible to be in touch with someone youve known for over 15 years...
Well, in case someone had had the nerves to manage reading this until here...if you are interested in pen-palling and if you think youd be able to cope with a 28 year old lady, who doesnt have an exciting life...who rants a lot...who skips from subject to subject, who talks of both too serious and too boring and 'why the hell is she telling me this' stuff..who will definitely talk of either F1, tennis or Depeche Mode in each of her letters...who will complain about work in EACH of her letters...her cat probably as well...if you think you can endure that, then just feel free to write to me...age? doesnt matter...as long as you have something to tell me, and want to hear what i have to say, you are more than welcome...dont ask for permission...just write to me...me and my mailbox love surprises...if you wanna write to me, but feel reluctant about it, please, write to me :)
Helle, i know you probably wont read this...but thank you...for being a friend...for wanting to be my friend...thank you for all those letters, postcards, greeting cards you had sent me throughout the years...thank you for being here after all these years...i know lives are way too busier than when we were teenagers, but what im glad is that we are in touch again...i hope we wont lose contact this time....
9 comments:
Hurray for Helle! How wonderful to have had a penpal for so many years!Francois lost contact with his penpal from highschool and still talks often about how much he misses him! Penpals from teenage years are such a treasure!
How great that you've been able to keep in touch with Helle all these years. I'm not so good with long letters, I'm sorry to say. PostCrossing fits the bill perfectly for me, though I'd quite like to establish a friendship though it, rather than always random people. A lovely post, thank you!
I anjoyed your post--I read the whole thing! But, I am one of those people who got tired of writing letters. And the international mail rate is so high that I don't feel like exchanging cards. Blogging is more fun for me.
lovely, Ana!!
penpalling is truly amazing that I regret so much for not keeping it again earlier. hey you got your penpals through TV, how cool was that?? lol. my longest time penpal for 10 years she's my "Helle" in this case,we knew each other from the International Youth System (by mailing form).. I still remember clearly the very time I received her first letter..all the things and dreams we needed to tell each other.. and apparently we shared craze of Savage Garden :)) she's the only pal I knew that time who wrote so much as I did lol..sadly we lost contact a few times coz of moving to uni, the so-called busy life etc,.. but got back again after a year or two, but that time why her letters were so prone to get lost :(( it was a terrible reason to lose contact again. and early last year I got her letter again finally she wanted to continue writing letters, and I replied with all those excitement as you are having now, but I didnt know she replied back coz the letter got lost again.. which I only found out last january!! I'm trying to get back to her again by letters.. we're in the meantime for once-in-a-while emails coz can't bear with another letter-missing crime again. sigh. what to do?
lol I didnt mean to write a long essay here :P just to let you know I truly understand the excitement of reunion of someone so dear for years.. wish everyone wonderful pen-friendship!
The wonderful thing about letters is that in future years they can send you back through time. And another thing is that they are such a wonderful thing to leave to our heirs. I have letters my husband and I wrote to each other when he was in the Italian military, and between my parents and I when we were separated by an entire ocean!
Recently I received two letters my father had written home to his mother during WWII - what an exciting thing for a family historian to get!
Evelyn in Montreal
My grandson would absolutely steal these cards from you, especially the green ones. I always like it when the postman brings me such surprises, too.
Beautiful cards and a lovely dedication to Helle!
hey great looking postcards.keep up the good work
thanks EVERYONE for stopping by and for your comments and for actually reading the WHOLE thing! :)
you made me glad to have shared this story with you!
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