Maggie and David Swanson have taught me many things in the ten years we’ve known each other.  On that list is now year-end letter writing. 

Even though we’ve received these year-end missives over the course of our marriage from missionaries and random organizations, the Swansons were our first letter writers, and Dawn wanted to add the gesture this year.  She brought it up after we got a slew of beautiful greeting cards, several with snapshots of children, and, well, letters.  I think she’s more interested in sending people a picture of our boy than anything.

If you’re unfamiliar with the communication, it’s a letter, usually typed, that captures a person or family’s year.  It’s like a one-page summary of life lived. 

We are writing ours.  That’s important.  Because when we do things, it’s not like one of us doing things.  Dawn is taking a part.  I’m taking a part.  I’ll inevitably edit both parts.  And then Dawn will edit my edit.  I love to cut words when she loves to add them.  I choose a word to capture a sentence, usually her sentence, and she’ll tell me I should have included this or that recollection.  It’s going to be fun. 

She’s the type of writer who writes for a long time.  I’m the type who says I’ll work on a thing from this time to that time.  She will probably want to work on this into February, and I’ll have to remind her that we wanted it to go out at the end of December.  She’ll keep writing the same thing and may get a bit upset when I’ve offered my last feedback–because, well, my time is up for it.  We’ll compromise.  Because I’ll print the letter and start stuffing envelopes.

I’ve been thinking about my two paragraphs for a week.  I’ll write them tomorrow, I think.  It feels like querying for a novel, boiling down an entire story to a pitch paragraph or two.  It already feels like next year we’ll decide that quarterly updates are best, but who has time for that?

Do you write these letters?  Why do you do it?