Care Packages and Comfort Boxes for Pen Pals

What IS a Comfort Box? Just another term for a Care package.. send them to YOUR pen pals! Read on and Carol will tell you more!

By Carol Elek

I think the first comfort box I ever received was from my mother when my husband and I were in the Navy while stationed in Japan. I was homesick and missed Oregon most in the fall. I wrote mom a letter lamenting about it.

Before long a package arrived. In the box were a selection of beautiful fall leaves, and the scents of cinnamon and pumpkin from their baked goods and a colorful afghan that my grandmother had made out of scrap yarn. There was even an Oregon calendar with scenic pictures taken all around the state as well as a few small Oregon souvenirs. I cried. She had done it. She sent me Oregon in a box and it was a real comfort.

Over the past years my pen pal, Sharon Arnold and I have started exchanging what we now call Comfort Boxes. We never had a name for it until recently. It is something we just do. And perhaps you do it as well and call it something else. I have heard people call them care packages over the years. But we think calling them Comfort Boxes has a nicer ring to it!

It all began with a bookmark or stickers tucked in a letter to one another. As we became better acquainted, we learned each other's likes and dislikes. Thru letters, cards and pictures of one another including our Bassett Hounds and cats and then eventually E-mail; we have become best friends though we have never met in person! In our letters and messages we share advice, quiet moments and observations and even the catastrophes that we experience. We are each other's cheerleaders and sounding boards. We lament, we laugh and we share secrets. In doing that we have become more sensitive to one another and like to play sort of fairy god mother to each other.

In fact, her nickname for me is Fairy God Writer since we have even gotten inside each other's writing world. Sharon is a writer, editor and publisher of THE WRITING LIFE. I am a writer and once editor and publisher of the now defunct THE MOTHERSHIP CHRONICLES. We both have written for Inky Trails and various small presses. Both of us are now taking a stab at writing that first novel. And this is where a comfort box comes in handy but not always arriving in the form of a box. Sometimes it is a just a postcard reminding one another to write or a big envelope with some interesting articles and quotes cut out of a magazine.

Everyday life can be overwhelming like an unexpected bill or illness that keeps you on your back and out of work for a few days. Or there are those days when you just have the blues and you feel nobody takes you seriously as a "real writer" because you hold down a full time job. A letter or E-mail from a fellow pen/writer friend comes and in it they are discussing your writing and you feel validated once again! Then add an occasional box or envelope with things in it like pretty stamps, a magazine or miniature book on one of your favorite subjects and you have received a comfort box and it has made your day or week more bearable. You in turn naturally respond with starting one for them.

I have found out over the years that small things mean a lot. I once sent Sharon a small knick-knack of a writing desk with books and various writers' tools on it. This to her symbolized that she was taken seriously as a real writer and she admitted she cried over that small gift and it only cost me a dollar. But to her it was priceless.

One comfort box from Sharon to me was the book Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul. Oh how I needed that inspiration and encouragement! It is often lonely to live the writer's lifestyle. Sometimes you get discouraged over writer's block (mine are more like monster concrete slabs) and Sharon understands this and often sends me inspiring quotes or some sort of writer' supplies to encourage me to go on.

We have both on several occasions bought each other a specific book because we knew the other needed the uplifting words that book could bring. I received not one, but 3 gift certificates from her for Barnes and Noble this past Christmas. And that was perhaps at the sacrifice of her being able to purchase something from there for herself. We both love Barnes and Noble. It is a place that we can go separately and yet share the same experience because we feel we are there together in spirit despite the distance from Illinois to Oregon. So it was a way for her to give me one afternoon in the environment that we both love and feel comfort among the books and coffee. She knows I am not able to go very often. This was a major comfort for me. I wrote her and shared the experience.

But it is not always necessary to spend a lot of money or sacrifice to send a comfort box. I once went to the local library and found a cookbook Sharon wanted in their used bookstore section. It was barely used and cost me only $3!

Often we have gone to the local dollar store. There are often pens, pencils, notepads, notebooks and various writers' supplies that are fun to send including our other interests. Sharon loves cooking and gardening. She once mentioned wanting a moon garden in her back yard. The plants and flowers were to be all white. So, one day I was in the seed section at Wal-Mart and found white pumpkin seeds (which I found to be fascinating that you could grow a white pumpkin) and a few white flower varieties and sent it to her in a big envelope. I wanted to be the one who gave her the moon garden. So when she was enjoying her garden she would think of me and know that we look at the same stars every night in the moonlight.

I love ink pens and alien themed stuff since I am a sci-fi nut. Sharon managed to combine the two when I once got the cutest alien ink pen from her. It was a fun present to receive and use! She found it at a gas station convenience store. So you never know where you will find a treasure to buy and send.

Now this year we are starting something new - Comfort boxes with themes. So far I have started 2 boxes. One is a patriotic theme. Sharon was always into Patriotic Americana and now it is everywhere. So, whenever I see a great deal on Americana - like a tea-towel or flag paper (for example) I get it and place it in the box. I also started a spring theme box so I can chase the winter blahs away for her. Just use your imagination and before you know it, you have tons of ideas for a comfort box.

Though we agree that Emails and E cards are great, we still write letters and send them via the postal service. These letters are so uplifting. If you do not have a pen friend yet, I encourage you to get one or more! And once in awhile, send a package of some sort after you become closer friends. A half dozen small items or just one. It does not matter. It is the chicken soup for the writers soul. It is fall from Oregon in a box. It is a heavenly afternoon in Barnes and Noble compliments of a friend. It is a comfort box.

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