When Gloria Allison was a six-year-old Saskatchewan farm girl, she
advertised for a penpal.
The mailbox was crammed with 50 letters in the weeks after her older
sister persuaded her to put their address in The Western Producer.
Gloria continued a letter exchange with some of the young writers
through their teen years, but she clicked especially well with one
correspondent – Regina Michetti of Hilo, Alta. That led to a 32-year
friendship that continues today.
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Two farm girls found support in each other’s words.
“She was the only one that kept writing,” said Allison.
The girls, six and seven, wrote monthly to each other and met the first
time when Allison was 18.
That meeting was “wonderful, incredible,” said Allison. “We had so many
things to talk about. We knew everything about each other. We both said
‘you’re part of my life.’ “
Allison and Michetti still write a couple of times a year – long, chewy
letters. They e-mail more often, with shorter notes about families and
house decorating. But if there’s a crisis like a health issue or a
death, it takes a pen on paper to record the feelings, said Allison.
“People are just so busy,” she said. “E-mail is so different to letter
writing. I type 100 words a minute and can rattle it off. But a letter
… you think, it takes longer and more effort. It’s much more personal
to be handwritten because you get the letter and think ‘this person
took the time to think of me.’ “
Michetti savours the handwritten letters she gets from Allison because
although e-mail is easier, “I find it takes something away.”
The penpals try to meet every couple of years. Six years ago Allison
treasured being part of Michetti’s wedding. Michetti said seeing each
other as adults helped glue their relationship and kept the letters
coming.
Part of their interest in each other is comparing lives, said Allison.
Michetti was a single career woman in Edmonton while Allison married
her high school sweetheart, has two children and lives in Regina.
“We both had a look at the other side of it,” said Allison.
Now that Michetti has a little girl, they share notes on parenthood.
Allison thinks more people should have penpals and she encourages her
daughter to continue the one correspondence she has started.
Letter writing appears to be a family habit. Michetti’s older sister
has been writing a woman she has never met from the Maritimes for 40
years. Allison’s older sister, who started her on letter writing, died
in a car crash, but Allison still keeps in touch with her sister’s
penpal years later.
Michetti sums up the value of 32 years of letters.
“I gained a lifelong friend.”
