Dear Reader, I hope that you will forgive me for getting a bit more personal than usual, but it's Mother's Day this Sunday and I have wanted to post this tribute to my own mother. I hope you won't mind.
The Gift
So the image of my mother quietly sitting at the kitchen table, fountain pen in hand, forming her perfect letters on the almost see-through blue air mail paper, is still clear in my mind.
She would be so absorbed by this activity that as a child, I danced around her in the hopes of getting her attention. The reward for giving her just a few more minutes to "finish the letter so that it can be mailed" was a walk to the post office, where the stamped, addressed envelope would disappear in the narrow slot of the yellow mailbox, her words sent on a journey.
The two women had first become friends in Soest, my mother's little hometown in Westfalia. My mother was 18 and bored to tears with her existence as a secretary for an insurance agency. Dora worked in the same office. She was roughly ten years older, a refugee from the East, who had landed in Soest with just the clothes on her back. As opposed to my mother, Dora had already had too much adventure in her life. Fleeing from the advancing Russian army in 1945, her family had been separated on the train ride West. Her father, hoping to get something to eat for the family at one of the stops along the way, failed to return on time before the train resumed its route. They never saw him again, never knew his fate.
No, Dora was happy having survived with her mother and sister. A boring life in a small town was happiness to her. It meant safety. It meant stability.
So started the correspondence between my mother and Dora, between two unlikely friends who would stay in touch until my mother's death in 2003.
When I called Dora to tell her the news, she started crying. "For me, your mother will always be the beautiful twenty-one year old who hopped on a train to Paris for adventure" she told me, her voice filled with emotion. I envied Dora for having this memory of her, a memory which I could not share. My own memories were so overwhelming that in my desperation to hold on to my mother, her face, her voice, her tales: everything seemed to fade from my mind. I became uncertain of the details and dates of the stories about her youth. I was afraid that I had lost the chance to pass them on to the next generation. And just as I was doubting my own recollections, cursing myself for not paying more attention to her when she shared them, the envelope arrived.There were about thirty letters inside. A note from Dora simply stated: " I have kept your mother's letters for over 50 years. I reread them one more time and was briefly reunited with my dear friend, the young woman who set out on an adventure so many years ago. I am sending them to you and to your sister. They belong in your hands now."
So letters kept for fifty years bridge the gap between generations. Twenty-one year old grand-daughters meet their twenty-one year old grandmother. It is a priceless gift. I stay in touch with Dora, sending her letters which she answers as dutifully as she answered my mother's so long ago. Almost blind, her handwriting has become shaky and too large. But as long as her words still find their way to me across the ocean, I am content. I hope she knows how thankful I am that she introduced me to the young woman who was my mother.
By Katia Kelly
May 2008
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8 comments:
Dear Katia,
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story.
Happy Mothers Day.
Warm regards,
Jackie
A beautiful story, brought a tear to my eye and a smile to my face!
BB.
Hi Jackie,
I am so glad you liked it. I thought that just once, I could get away with not writing about the neighborhood...
Have a wonderful week-end,
Katia
I was very moved to read your tribute.
Thank you for sharing this---your Mother's gift, with us all.
Very much appreciate it, as I do all of your sharings & musings.
A Reader
Dear Katia,
I have not read of something so incredibly wonderful in a very long time! What a priceless gift... what wonderful women.
Thank you, so much for sharing this!
Warmest Regards,
Alexandrea
Hi Alexandrea,
Thank you so much. I take those letters out sometimes and love to listen to my mother's voice through them.
Just a few days ago, I talked to Dora. It was her birthday. I asked her age and she giggled. "25" I heard her say. Then another giggle.
"Born in 1925, that is"
She still rides her bicycle and tends to her magnificent garden with her older sister.
The two live alone and Dora never misses a birthday. Her card to me and to my children is always the first in the mailbox.
She really is a special person.
Katia
What a beautiful story about your mother, Katia. You must have inherited your love of writing, observing, from her! I, too,have a mother who writes copious letters, in her small, beautiful handwriting - handwriting that they don't teach anymore, that you don't see anymore. Before the age of the cheap telephone calls (when telephoning was a luxury), and now internet, people took time to write each other - and the quality of the communication is very different, as I am sure you know. The other day, I saw an envelope my mother had addressed to one of her friends - a letter thanking her friend for the nice time she gave us when we visited her. Above the friend's name, my mom had written: To the beautiful, kind - and then her friend's name. I looked at it, and thought how sweet - my mother does the same when she writes me - To the beautiful young lady ----. My mom invented this - and it comes from a warm heart. About mid-November, my mom gets out her Christmas list, and starts writing her letters. The ones to Europe have to be sent early. She writes about a hundred of them -each personal. She is still in touch with people she knew when she was a child. My mom does not like the telephone or the internet as much as getting letters from friends.
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