Friday

A recent conversation reminded me of my mom and my mom's room. My mom had her own room, separate from my dad. My mom hoarded mail and magazines. There would be stacks of mail and magazines everywhere. Her bed would be covered with opened letters and letters she was in the process of writing. She loved to have candles burning too. It drove us crazy with worry, the fire risk.

She was interested in so many issues, and she was always writing to congressmen and to organizations and to all kinds of advocates. She got herself on many mailing lists and newsletter subscriptions. My mom's internet was all paper. She never got on a computer, she distrusted them (she hated TV too).

After I was old enough to drive, she would often send me out the door with hands full of responses she had written to all of these organizations and officials. Sometimes I would forget to mail them, or I would get lazy about it. Then, we would decide to go somewhere, to eat or something, and she the letters still in the car, and she ...would be a little disappointed. We would drive straight to a mailbox (this was back when it was actually easy to find a mailbox somewhere).

My mom had beautiful handwriting. I love it when I find something she had written among the stuff from the old house. I actually have a bag full of correspondence that my mom and her sister were sending back and forth. I've never opened it though. My mom and her sister were in a major feud for years and years...too many years...and I'm not sure what is being written about in those letters.

3 comments:

Anne said...

How special that you have letters she wrote. I'd love that!

laura b. said...

Your mom sounds very interesting! Now it is so easy to sign an online petition or peruse emails or stories about the latest political drama. It took a lot more work pre-Internet to become involved and it was a lot more personal.

Bobby said...

Yeah, I miss her. We were buds.