THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

We had a family reunion this past week.

My mother and uncle were the only representatives from the older generation. Everyone else was a cousin of mine — except Grace. Grace is the daughter of my cousin, Mary.

Grace is getting married in Ireland soon, but she took time off work to be with relatives, telling family stories and building puzzles at the dining room table. I don’t think I’d have driven across the country when I was her age to spend time with people so much older than myself. But Grace is a special person, and somehow Grace and I got to talking about the round-robin.

The round-robin was a circulating letter that began when my mother was still in college. Before email, when long-distance telephone calls were still expensive, my family would read the letters from everyone on the list, take out their old letter, and send the robin on with a new letter. This went on for years and years, and the list grew longer and longer as more of my cousins joined the list.

Then email became commonplace, and the family started a private Facebook page, and everyone knew what was going on pretty much when it happened. The robin seemed to have outlived its usefulness. It was lost on several occasions, only to be discovered months later in a pile of mail or under a bed. Finally, it disappeared for good. No one knew who had the final batch of letters in their possession. The round-robin never resurfaced, and that was several years ago.

“Why don’t we start it again?” Grace asked.

“Do you think people would want to write?” I said.

“I would.”

And I realized that a person Grace’s age may never have received a letter in the mail. Bills and birthday greetings and news and gossip are all delivered digitally.

“The news was always so old by the time it arrived,” my cousin Jill complained.

“I don’t think it’s about news,” I tried to explain.

“I think it’s about getting to know each other better,” my cousin Susan said.

I think she nailed it. Because we are good about letting one another know about the big stuff — the births and deaths and weddings and moves. What the robin did was provide an excuse to simply share what we were doing that day. It was always a little late and incomplete. But somehow, because it was, it made more of an impression.

“Should we ask if people would like to restart it?” I asked Grace. And Grace said we should.

So that night after dinner, Grace stood up and asked if anyone would like to write in the round-robin again. A few people said no, they didn’t want the stress of having that pile of letters show up. A couple said they already knew what was going on and didn’t need it. But a surprising number raised their hands and said yes, they’d like to have the old bird flying again.

I wrote a letter, put it in a big envelope and sent it to Grace. We will see what happens. There are no guarantees that this old form of correspondence will survive.

But I am hopeful. I am hopeful — not because my remaining aunts and uncles will enjoy it (although I’m sure they will) and not because all my cousins will participate (I’m sure many of them won’t). I am hopeful because there are now a lot of us who, once again, believe it is a very special thing to get a letter in the mail.

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