The art and act of letter writing is gone. We live in a world of email, text messaging, blogging, and blackberries, to name a few conveniences that keep us from sending and receiving letters with personal messages.

It's the Christmas season and many of you are fortunate enough to still have parents and grandparents alive to be with you at this special time. As for me, my precious parents are gone, and I never had the honor of knowing my grandparents, since they died before I was born. I wanted a grandparent so badly that I would "adopt" my friend's grandparents when I was a child. All I wanted was a grandparent's arms to reach around me any day of the year.

Although I do not have personal memories of my grandparents and their parents, what I do have is bundles of letters written by them. The oldest of them are letters written in the 1860's and 1870's by my great grandparents-- Florida pioneers. Tales of alligators, the heart ache of a still-born baby, and farming in "God forsaken Florida". The words as they described their toddler and how he laughed and danced when they received a Christmas letter from family in South Carolina are as clear to me today as the first time I read them.

I've found the graves of these Florida pioneers--still in land near here that some would call "God-forsaken". As for me, I call the land and the rest of Clay County hallowed ground. Land where my great-great-great grandparents settled in 1820. Land that became known as Whitesville and Middleburg, and later deeper into the woods to start anew.

So, as Christmas draws near, I'll take the red bow off the bundle of letters, read them one more time, holding the words in my heart that have traveled in time to me, their grandchild. Maybe today will be the day I write a Christmas letter to my grandchild and those to come...