Mother's Mail

Twenty-two years ago, when I first set off on my life of adventure, I think I was mad at my mother. I’m not sure she had actually done anything wrong. With the benefit of more than two decades of hindsight, I now believe that in order to become a woman, I felt like I needed to rebel against something, and so I picked her. I took a backpack and went to Europe, and made excuses to not write her anything but the spare (and all too infrequent) postcard: “Yes, Mom, I’m still alive.”  Even after returning from Amsterdam, what paltry bits of communication I’d been doling out tapered off to a tiny little drip.

That went on for an eternity – something like eight months. Then, fully fledged (and I hope a little less self-absorbed) (though probably not much), I gave a little more to my mother. Years passed. More travels ensued. But in those passing years, I learned to stay in touch with my mom because I wanted to – not because I felt obligated.

For years now Mom and I have emailed and facebooked and let that suffice (along with a couple of visits to each others' far flung states each year). Then, what with saving the U.S.P.S. and all, my mother and I started corresponding by post again. At first it was a postcard or two. Then I got a one-page note with a clipping from her small town’s newspaper. After my parents’ spring visit, a four-pager arrived, and this was the first sentence: “I want to tell you thank you for so many things that I fear I will take up too much of your time…”

You could dismiss this as finely-honed guilt-tripping – all mothers know which buttons to push, especially the ones raised Catholic – but I didn’t read it that way. Now that I’m just about the age she was when I rebelled against her, perhaps I’ve developed a little empathy. Perhaps she thinks that I still think I’m too important or special or whatever it was I believed way back when to sit down and read a letter from her. 

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, Waving Girl.

I want to assure her that is not the case. I am learning, from my little experiment, that we all write better correspondence when we write by hand, but my mom? She really knows how to write! She can tell a story on paper as well as anyone, and her letters are fun to read.

I’m also old enough to recognize the good fortune I have that my mom is alive, and healthy, and reasonably sane, and loving toward me. She’s worried she’ll take up too much of my time?

Mom. We have all the time in the world. Let’s not waste another minute of it.