Dear Family: What It’s All About

Grandpa Webster, sitting at the massive desk, where he composed his sermons and wrote his DFs.

April 29, 2025

There’s nothing like a good mail day, am I right? I do not write letters anywhere as regularly as I’d like to receive them, but I come from a people who do write letters. When I was a child, my Grandpa Webster had a weekly practice of writing what he called “DFs,” which is to say “Dear Family” letters. He typed them on his old manual typewriter on onion-skin paper in multiple copies, and mailed one to each of his three children’s families along with who knows how many others in his life. His letters contained the quotidian details of his and my grandmother’s shared life, to be sure, but sprinkled throughout were his musings: theological, philosophical, poetic, and pastoral. Ministers just can’t help themselves, in my experience. And I looked forward to those letters! It became a family thing, in that his son (my uncle) Harris and his daughter (my aunt Susie) also wrote regular letters. My dad intended to do the same, I think, but in that vague way that intentions don’t always lead to action, he only wrote sporadically.

I share Dad’s intention, but these days I keep up with my own siblings far more regularly through a family text thread ~ I’m not sure there would be enough news to share with them in a letter, given the regularity of our contact in that context.

But here’s the good news (for me, at the very least): there are many ways to understand the word “family,” so if I were to write a DF of my own, couldn’t I draw the circle wider, and therefore keep in touch with you who are my family in a larger sense?

And so … I begin. I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

~Susie