Every December, I do an annual address round-up.

I go through the little metal box that contains the addresses of all of my friends, neatly written on 3-by-5 index cards, and e-mail the friends who have moved or who might have moved, and ask them for their new addresses. I do this, ostensibly, so that I can mail them holiday cards, but my true intent is to browbeat them into staying in touch with me. The holiday cards are just a good cover.

I know a lot of people who scoff at the idea of holiday cards. They’re superficial and expensive and pointless, these people say, and not nearly as meaningful as a real letter, or phone conversation or visit. That may be true, but I don’t really care.

I like having a designated time to sit down and evaluate my relationships and reach out to the people I care about, to reflect on the good times I’ve had with them and send out a nice little greeting saying hello. And I like knowing that other people are doing exactly the same thing. It’s one of the things I genuinely enjoy about the holiday season — that in the midst of all the mania, and all of the hype, we still manage to think about the things that are truly valuable. That we connect with the people who are part of our lives.

The fact is, I’ve always been borderline obsessive about staying in touch with my friends. I’m sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day explaining why this is — is it because I was traumatized when I moved to another town when I was 14, and vowed to stay in touch with all of the friends I’d left behind, forever? Is it because I’m a reporter and like knowing what people are up to? Or is it because I have too much time on my hands? Like, maybe if I had a husband and a child, I would be cured of this compulsion to stay in touch with all of my friends.

Who can say? But at this point, I view staying in touch with my friends as an interesting hobby, something that’s more fun than scrapbooking, say, or collecting spoons, but not quite as fun as traveling or going to a concert. And it’s one of the few things I’m actually good at.

I first realized this after attending an academic summer school program prior to my senior year of high school. I met great people there, and the thought of losing touch with them was, to say the least, very upsetting. And so I made a vow to stay in touch with them, forever. At get-togethers, I would provide updates on how various members of our class were doing, and once, when I mentioned having received a letter from a particularly nomadic member of our class, people gasped with amazement.

“Wow, I can’t believe it!” someone said. “You are The Correspondent!” someone else exclaimed.
Well, there are worse things to be. And although it’s tough to uphold a vow to stay in touch with everyone you’ve ever been friends with, forever, e-mail and Facebook are valuable tools. In fact, it’s never been easier to stay in touch with people, which is why I’m always shocked to discover how bad at staying in touch with people most people are.

But, you know, I’m bad at math and housecleaning. We’ve all got different skills, and one of mine just happens to be correspondence. And when you’ve got friends strewn throughout the country, it’s a useful skill to have. Because without it, I would have lost touch with some of my closest friends, and what good would that be? So there’s really no alternative. I have to stay in touch with all of these people.

One of the benefits of being a good correspondent is that people correspond with you, even people who are typically bad at correspondence. Most people give up on these delinquents, and gradually lose touch with them, but not me. I am not easily deterred. I harass them. I send them dozens of e-mails demanding to know if they’re still alive, and most people eventually respond. I mean, what do you think is more annoying — writing a short reply, or continuing to receive those e-mails? (Count “being annoying” as something else I’m good at.)

Even so, sometimes people try my patience, and earlier this year I reached the conclusion that the time had come to write off one of my old friends.

I hadn’t heard from her in a few years (she lives in Alaska; we worked at summer camp together), and I decided that maybe it was time to close that particular door. But then, out of the blue, she sent me an e-mail. It wasn’t very long, but it offered an update — a job switch, a miscarriage, a birth — and made me remember why I’d been so sad at the thought of losing touch with her, and so stubbornly persistent about writing to her. When her Christmas card arrived a couple of weeks ago, full of pictures of her and her husband and their young son, it brought some joy on an otherwise hectic December day.

Will I remain in touch with this person for the rest of my life? Well, I have no idea. But I don’t see why not.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print in Saturday’s Lifestyle section.