Letters I keep rereading

The letters are in a shoebox under the bed. I keep meaning to find a better box, one that doesn't advertise shoes I stopped wearing years ago. Whenever I open it to measure the contents, I end up reading them and forget what I came for.

There are fewer than I remembered. A bundle from my mother, birthday cards from relatives, postcards sent by friends who have since moved again. Some envelopes contain several pages. Others hold a note short enough to fit on the back of a receipt.

One of my favourite letters has almost no news. A friend writes that her train was late, that the apples at the market were disappointing and that she has finally bought a lamp. She asks whether the book she lent me has arrived. It had. I still have it, which makes this an uncomfortable document to reread.

I remember receiving that letter in a flat with no proper table. I opened it on the floor while eating toast. The letter brings back the room more readily than the photographs I took there: the low socket, the stack of plates, the window I couldn't close without lifting the frame.

Handwriting helps. My mother starts neatly and gets smaller as she approaches the bottom of the page. A school friend fills the margins after signing off. My grandmother put the date in the top right corner and underlined it with a ruler, even when she was writing to say she would see me on Saturday.

I keep emails too. There is a folder with messages I would be sorry to lose, including one written in a hospital waiting room and another consisting entirely of a very good joke. I don't think paper has a monopoly on anything. It simply survives my habits differently. I can rediscover a letter while looking for a pair of shoes; an old email needs a search.

This winter I scanned several fragile pages and wrote dates lightly on the backs of photographs. Some dates remain approximate. I asked my mother about one postcard, and we spent most of the call disagreeing over which holiday it came from.

The shoebox went back under the bed afterwards. On top I left the letter about the lamp, with a note reminding me to return the borrowed book. We have dinner arranged next month. I am taking both.