Toni From Montana

Christmas is around the corner! It seems early this year as we already celebrated the first Advent Sunday at the end of November!

Before the internet, this would be the time I would get out my Christmas cards or special stationery and begin to write a letter, reviewing our family's activities throughout the year. Sometimes I just sent cards and wrote a letter in the new year, but there was always a letter!

That doesn't happen anymore. Letter writing is a thing of the past and I must say I miss it. It's so convenient to send off a quick email. Even if I want to convey more than a short hello, an email doesn't require a stamp or a trip to the post office, and the answer is minutes away, depending on the person at the other end, of course! I still walk to the mailbox a block away every day with a sense of anticipation, but personal missives are seldom found there!

Recently I read an article in the Winnipeg Free Press that sparked a memory for me. 

The Free Press published a photo of two girls (Margaret Hunt, left, and Marion Sheppard, right), taken in 1960. Both were born on the same day of the same year on farms 500 kilometers apart and have been writing to each other since 1951! They met several times over the years as well. They attended each others' weddings and exchanged photos of children and grandchildren.

I was probably 14 or 15 when I answered an ad in our church Sunday School paper requesting a pen pal. Her name was Toni Adkins and she lived in Montana. Unlike the girls in the picture above, we never met physically, and our lives were quite different from each other. Toni's father was in the military and the family had moved a lot. My family was Mennonite and we were conscientious objectors, but we too, as refugees and immigrants, had done our share of moving. Toni was a black American and I was a white Canadian. 

We wrote to each other all through our high school years. We didn't write about our differences but rather about what we had in common as teenagers. I wish I had kept the letters but I didn't. Somewhere I have a picture of her wedding but I can't locate it. She had a huge wedding with a bunch of bridesmaids and best men. After she got married, we stopped writing. Life got busy and we moved on. 

I wish I could write Toni and thank her again for something special she did for me one Christmas. I didn't wear makeup, I knew my mother wouldn't approve and I wasn't particularly drawn to it, otherwise I probably would have. Toni's present to me that Christmas was a nail polish kit, with assorted colors of nail polish, nail polish remover, etc. It made me feel like a princess and I loved it. Mom never said a word when I used it. To this day I can't be bothered with makeup, but I do wear nail polish on special occasions! And when I do, I remember my friend Toni, who added sparkle to my life one Christmas!

What unexpected joy has been brought into your life 

this Advent/Christmas season? 

Pass it on!