Postmarks told our readers about the contest (you can see that post by clicking here), and what do you know, one of our Alabama co-workers was one of the lucky winners!
Birmingham Vehicle Maintenance Manager Jan Woodruff remembered when her children were little and how much they enjoyed receiving letters in the mail from their grandmother, so she asked her daughter, who is now an adult, to submit her story.
Here is what she wrote:
From as far back as I can remember, my grandmother would write me letters. She would use stickers to tell a story or ask me questions when I was too young to read and write .
I remember asking my Mom
if I received any letters when she went to the mail box and later
checking the mailbox myself. I would be thrilled when I had mail.
My mom would read the letters to me, and when the word was
replaced by a sticker, my mom would ask me what that was a sticker of. My grandmother would fill the pages with stickers.
Some examples were "When you and your Mom went outside to play, did you hear the
birds singing?" She would replace the word "play" with a sticker of children
playing and birds with a sticker of birds, so we were reading the letter
together. This is how I learned to read.
These letters are so special to me that I still have them tucked away in my baby book 30 years later. My Grandmother died before I was 20 from complications of Alzheimer's. This makes the letters more precious to me because I can always go back and see how much time she spent writing me letters before she got sick. It puts a tear in my eye when I read these and think of the love my grandmother put into words and stickers.
Candace
Woodruff-Craig
