Circle Letters

Several times a month an envelope filled with letters would arrive and Mom would take a few moments to read all of then before continuing with her work. She was a member of numerous circle letters. One of them was for all her Mast girl cousins close to her age, another one was for her siblings, several others were for some of her school friends, and a variety of others. And hardly a Sunday afternoon or evening passed that she didn't have to write a letter for one of the circle letters.

I dreamed of the day I would be old enough to be in a circle letter. Mom told me I would have to be able to write well before I could join one so when ever I had spare time in school I would often write a letter to Mom and Daddy or my Grandparents.

I kept hoping that Mom would announce that I was ready to join a circle letter but she didn't say anything about it and I knew it was useless to beg for one. But on the morning of my tenth birthday as I came into the kitchen I noticed a gift bag beside my plate on the table. I hurried over to see what I had received. The first thing I found was a box with three of the cutest little "dishes" that I would use to keep my pins in since I now wore cape dresses regularly.

I was thrilled with them, but the next packet I found I could barely contain myself with joy of having one of my most cherished dreams realized. There was a tablet of paper, a box of envelopes,  a book of stamps, and a pretty piece of paper that Mom had written Address Sheet along the top and the numbers from 1 to 10 written along the side. I quickly sat down and carefully wrote my name and address beside the 1 and then entered names and addresses of several cousins and best friends in the remaining slots.

That day in school I wrote my first letter for a circle letter, and mailed it the next day. Several weeks later I received an envelope nicely fat from being filled with letters from nine of my friends. I read everyone's letter and removed the letter I had written and put it into a box to keep like Mom always did with her letters and then quickly wrote a new one so it would be ready to mail the next day. Years passed and I joined lots of other circle letters but none of them were ever as exciting as the first one I had.

The first one is still going in it's journey from house to house and I find it quite entertaining to go back and read all the letters I wrote from the day I turned ten up to a few years ago.