Under the Pecan Trees

Children's author Susan Lendroth said it best: "To write is human, to receive a letter: Divine!" 

For 15 years I wrote letters to my grandmother. This was all through my college days and "wild twenties". ('Wild' for me was reading Jane Austen when I should've been studying for an exam... but whatever).

Whenever life got hard, I'd sit down and write my grandmother a letter. Whenever life brought me new adventures, I'd sit down a write my grandmother a letter. Whenever life did what life does and twist and turn and tumble... yup, I would sit down and write my grandmother a letter. And as it turns out, sending those letters saved me in a way.

My grandmother's constancy in those tumultuous years of "finding myself" was an anchor. Letter-writing was the ship I sailed as the waves of "adulting" near to drowned me. 

No matter the ever-changing return address I used (NYC, DC, Nashville, Atlanta, London), my letters always went to the same place...

My grandmother's white country home, with its wrap around porch and rocking chairs. It sat at the end of a rural road in south Georgia. Maddox Road.

Near to every day my grandmother took her afternoon walk under a long row of ancient pecan trees that lined her gravel driveway. Past the last pecan tree, a particularly large one, was a gate and rickety mailbox. Chances are, in the mailbox, was a letter from me. 

Long after my grandmother passed away, I found myself still writing her letters. Writing them was for me a haven, a place of rest, a space where beauty was born, anxiety stilled, thoughts nurtured, time slowed, life's noises quieted. 

Writing those letters taught me something: We all need a Maddox Road.  

A place for long conversations, secrets shared, heartaches entrusted to another, deep (deep) glasses of wine. I hope my handmade stationery brings you closer to that place. Closer to your Maddox Road.

Happy letter writing!

Emily