These letters require stamps

 I recently discovered The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, based in Swanage, Dorset, UK. It gives me hope and strikes me with guilt.

I receive a handwritten letter regularly from my friend Melvyn, a professor of medicine who is still practicing and teaching at 92.

I reply with a typed letter. I got my first newspaper job when I was 14. I typed my stories, three-paragraph accounts of high school games.

Once you start typing, it’s downhill, I’m afraid. I typed at work, so why not type school papers? Handwriting skills, never good, atrophied. I can make notes that I can read, occasionally, but such an upbringing doesn’t do much for the ability to write a legible hand.

Note that I’m making excuses. I feel guilty because I think that the exchange is not equal, that my friend’s handwriting being more valuable than my typing.

But there’s this: This exchange of letters has been going on for years. Both of us communicate with other people using email and text messages. But these letters we send to each other are on paper and go by post.

As members of the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society say, each one feels like a gift.

I’ve been trying to figure out why. And I’ve decided it’s not the handwriting, although it’s wonderful. It’s the time.

E-mail is quick and efficient. There are rules — written and unwritten — for replying promptly.

All those rules don’t apply to the traditional letters. Above all, there’s no expectation of an immediate reply.

And so I’ll pose a question — about my friend’s life, his habits or his pleasure or displeasure in the book he’s reading — and I don’t expect a quick reply. The reply that comes back is not from impulse. It’s considered and reasonable — and that’s possible only when someone is not in a rush and is taking his time.

That’s the gift, I think. That time.