What do you say to a pen pal when you finally meet after exchanging letters for 35 years?
“We just talked about our everyday life – our jobs, our kids,” said Carla (Gianetta) Murphy after her first face-to-face exchange with her Italian writing partner. “I was nervous – 35 years is a long time.”
Murphy, a 1995 Bedford High School graduate, lives south of Boston now, but the reunion took place at a restaurant near Lake Winnipesaukee, NH, where the Gianettas have vacationed for close to a half-century.
This story begins in the fall of 1989 in Marjorie Eickel’s seventh-grade English class at John Glenn Middle School. The teacher gave every student the opportunity to choose a pen pal and start a long-range conversation by mail. “We were able to pick the country that we wanted the pen pal to be from. I have Italian background, so I chose Italy,” Murphy related.
Her pen pal’s name was Elena Rotondi, and she lived in Cannobio, a lakeside town not far from Milan and the Swiss border. The hand-written letter exchange began two or three times per year for the next 15 or 20 years.
“Her English was definitely rough” during those early years, Murphy related, but it was better than Murphy’s Italian, which was “minimal.” “As the years progressed, we wrote more back and forth,” Murphy said. When they were in their mid-20s, Elena moved to Rome and soon “her English got a lot better.”
Even though the letters were few, they involved an investment in time that seems hard to appreciate during the era of electronic communication. “It takes time to hand-write a letter, and to send it,” Murphy said. The friends also exchanged Christmas cards and postcards from vacation spots.
Murphy said that 10 to 15 years ago the letters stopped, replaced by technology. “Social media took over,” she laughed. They switched to Instagram.
Through the decades, they mused about actually connecting. “I always said I want to go there. She always said she wants to come here,” Murphy recounted.
Then about six months ago, Elena wrote to say her 10-year-old son Mateo had a “big dream” about visiting New York City, and the family decided to make it happen. “She said they were coming for two weeks and wanted some help finding places to visit in New England. “I gave her some ideas — hotels, restaurants, places to see. She wanted to visit quaint, charming New England towns.”
The family drove to New Hampshire and met Murphy, her husband, and the youngest of their three children in Wolfeboro. “I just knew I was going to recognize her,” she said. “She was in a different town every day – she was exhausted from her itinerary.” Her pen pal talked about the slower pace of living in Italy, Murphy noted, as they talked at dinner for a couple of hours. And “she brought the first letter I wrote to her.”
Murphy said she hopes to reciprocate and visit Rotondi in Italy, maybe in two years. Through their years of communicating, “I’ve already learned a lot about the culture. Now I want to see where she lives.”
After posting pictures of their reunion, “I had so many comments from friends who remembered the pen pal exercise in the seventh-grade class. But most kids didn’t continue past middle school.”
How did the relationship last so long? “I think we were both very good about writing back,” Murphy said. “It’s very easy now online, but I miss the feel of paper and pen. And after our meeting, I wrote her a handwritten note.”
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