If only you could hear me now I know that it would surprise you to know that there are many people who miss you and love you - but nothing could compare to how much I do. I live in the house that you made a home for us and now it is my refuge and secure place... I haven't done much to change it because it would mean removing the things that remind me of you... but now it's time to move forward and I know that you'd want me to make it my own.
All three of your kids have you to thank for sacrificing your dreams for the sake of family. I don't know if it was hard for you, but you did and I never got the sense that you regretted any of it.
As I go through your personal things and decide what to keep and what to let go of, I see your love of family everywhere. It seems that you saved every thing that we kids ever made from lumpy ceramic animals, the ever heartwarming homemade card with I Love You Mom scrawled across it, to coil pots constructed in high school and handmade paper beaded necklaces. You saved EVERY SINGLE card and letter that anyone ever sent you (including the envelopes for their addresses) and you had several files with news clippings that were about Uncle Don's (your brother) war stories, editorial comments from anyone that you even remotely knew that made it into Voice of the People, high school sports statistics and work related articles of your kids. If there was even one mention of our names, you clipped it and kept it in a file with our name.
 |
| boxes and boxes of letters |
Then, there are the boxes of news clippings, recipes, historical articles of places you knew or were somehow related to someone you knew, a file for obituaries and drawers with boxes of pictures. Oh, the pictures are fun and amazing and all mixed up with very little order or explanation. They will be there I'm sure, for a few years waiting for me to go through them.
I found myself a bit stuck with all of this, not knowing what I should do with it. If you kept it for all these years, there must be a good reason, right Mom? Or, did you keep it because you grew up with a minimum of things, moving from place to place, leaving most things behind back then. Did you not know what to do with all of Dad's things, treasures and relics from past days? Meticulous accounting of every penny earned and spent, mileage and gas bought for family vacations, programs from theater productions, high school year books, old keys, photos and Grandmother Chaney's beauty shop records? There are old photos of Hollywood movie stars signed to her, letters that document family history providing a picture of those days better than any history book and there are things that show me the sacrifices that you made as parents, to provide for your children's future.
 |
| Cute cards but so many of them! |
Which is one reason it has taken me so long to move through these things. It cuts to my heart, deeply. Have we disappointed you? Have I disappointed you? You changed direction to have this family when you were on course for a career in fashion design.
Yes, you wrote that in some of the things I found. I know that you played the violin, loved to draw and had a creative knack for fashion. and when your grandmother decided that art school was no place for a young lady like you, you up and joined the service. There would be no respectable business school for you if you could help it.
 |
| In the Waves |
 |
| A girl with dreams |
It's not a problem Mom. I just need to figure out how to do this. It's been a while now and I am still working on it. How much longer? I can't say, but I have learned more than I could have ever imagined.
I love you,
nadine
