It has been over a year since my last post on Three Women Walking. How does this happen? Where did the year even go? I only thought about it because one of the walking women made a comment that I needed to post something new. I don't even remember how to tell them to log on and post something. I like my last post though. So in spite of the missing year, I will continue on and try to do better this time.
Tomorrow is my anniversary date. It will be 31 years. A lifetime ago I did that. I was getting ready for a wedding thirty one years ago tonight. So much has happened. So much. A lifetime of events, memories, joys, sorrows, dreams, achievements, failures, deaths, births. Twenty years ago, my mother gave me some letters that she had written to her parents, between the years 1951 and1954. The last one was written about the upcoming events of my first Christmas. I finally put the letters in order. In the process, I did read some of them. The word I use for how I felt reading them is "nostalgic" although that word doesn't capture the depth of feeling that these letters convey for me. I told my daughter that I could get lost in reading them and she said, "Don't." So I didn't.
But in time, I will read them, each one. The hopes, dreams, joys, sorrows of a young woman's daily life, a lifetime ago are on plain, white paper, hand written with pencil in neat, cursive script. My daughter said she didn't even think she could read that kind of handwriting. Who writes in cursive anymore? Who writes 4 and 5 page letters in Todayworld?
Those letters have valuable treasures in them. The treasures of the building of post World War II America are hidden between those lines; treasures of a man who was a war hero and a woman who dreamed of a better life, making that life together. Those two were moving across the country from a small Texas farm town to a new suburb in mid-state New York, planning their first home, dreaming of the future, loving each other, mourning the loss of a baby girl who was carried full term and died never having taken a breath in this world. Then that man and woman, my parents, had the courage to do a brave thing again; the courage to take another chance and go through a pregnancy once more, to experience the hopes and excitement, one more time, along with the terrifying thoughts that what happened before might happen again.
The last letter was written December 9, 1954, after my birth which was in July. While I was napping in my crib, my mother was telling her parents about the excitement in the air with the upcoming Christmas season. She had bought me some toys, acknowledging that I wouldn't know the difference but she was excited, nonetheless. She was hoping to get a good picture, for her parents, of me on Santa's lap, describing in detail, the dress I would wear for the shot. And a lifetime ago the circle began again.
