There were a few boxes in the corner of my bedroom. It’s been there for a few days and the sight of it was bugging me. ‘Ah, I’ll sort it tomorrow’, I told myself.

A week or two later I finally had the time to organise my stuff. As I decluttered the boxes I realised I was slowly going through nostalgia. Hundreds of postcards and letters were in that box, slowly collecting dusts.

Receiving these letters used to really make my day when I was studying. I felt remembered and loved even though I was far away. Getting this meant so much more then receiving emails and phone messages.

I opened the red tin box that kept all the letter and cards. I read everything, one by one. I laughed, I weeped, I giggled and I weeped even more reading the notes and messages my loved ones sent me.

Some letters were a bit hard to understand…cause it was written by a child….

Some letters made me feel like my handwriting is just shameful….

Some reminded me the phase my dad went through, which was pasting his passport photograph and wrote letters in Bahasa Malaysia…

Practically witnessed my sister’s evolution as she wrote me her first ever postcard when I was in Perth and wrote me many more when she was in London!

Realised that Joe is really not a man with many words when it comes to writing stuff but he is sentimental cause he kept our first movie stub ticket!

How some of my friends have come so far..

Like Nash who used to cut everything from magazines, now she has her own successful event company, Helium & Konfetti

And El, now she sketches like a pro and makes things out of nothing!

Some of my friends are really creative…

Like Amy, who made a collage for my birthday. I wad once obsessed with Hugh Jackman hence the picture.

And Sue made me this for my birthday…

and lastly, going through my nostalgia letter box made me realise how much my mom loves me. She sent me countless of letters, postcards, newspaper clippings reminding me to pray (there’s even a letter from her that told me where exactly where the Kiblat is in my room in England), study hard, be happy and to take care of myself. Reading her words made me teared up so many times because as a mom myself, I can only picture her pain and patience as she was away from her children…and it doesn’t help that I am always snapping back at her. Sorry ma.

All these beautiful memories deserved a good and safe home, so I went through my old stuff and found empty scrapbooks I had collected throughout the years. Finally, I was using them! I organised each letter and cards based on categories, family stuff in one books, friends in the other. I thought the process would be just as easy as copy and pasting stuff but it was more meaningful than that.

Going through some cards and letters made me feel a bit sad, because I don’t keep in touch with some people anymore, but it’s okay, our paths crossed, we were in each other’s past and for that I am grateful

To you reading this, never underestimate the power of a well written letter. My heart grew 100 times bigger as I flipped through each page, one by one.

I hope when Rauf grows up, he will experience the same thing; feeling loved wherever he is, through simple but meaning gestures like this. This is the type of treasures money cannot buy.