Found: Writing ideas? Dreams? Observations?

Today would have been my mother's 77th birthday. Each year on her birthday, I go through her collection of photos or her boxes of things, her writing. I have so many that I will likely never run out of material; she was a writer, after all, and a saver, collector of significant bits and pieces.

Today, I opened a box labeled in her hand "Personal NYer Notes." Among a collection of postcards of New York, art works, newspaper clippings, various things that spoke to her (the postcards are unused, blank), I found these two yellowing pages dated 1972 and numbered 25 and 26. I don't know if they are story ideas, dreams or observations. They are mysterious bits and pieces, "NYer Notes."

I wonder if I will find pages 1-24, or pages 27+ as I keep looking. 

Sending love into the ether for my mum. I am forever grateful she was mine. I do not claim she was perfect, and I was certainly not always a good, dutiful daughter (understatement...), but she was brilliant, quirky, loving, awkward, open-minded, kind, thoughtful. She was beloved by many, missed by them all, and none more than by me. We were quite the pair (single mother, only child), and I will always carry her memory and cherish the bits of her that are a part of me. Love you, mum.

The photos for today? Two from 1940, when she was three months old and her brother Graham (my dear uncle) was three years old.

And one from 2006, in the Sydney, Australia at the Royal Botanic Gardens, with her pixie hair cut, growing back from the chemo of the previous year, taken less than a year before she died. 

an entry for her 73rd birthday

Out running on this blustery winter day, I considered how to honor my mother on what would have been her 73^rd birthday. But where to start? Back at home, clean and in comfy clothes, I have dug out her journals and found a birthday entry from around when she turned the age I am now, 41: December 30, 1980, the very day of her 41^st birthday.

Overall in her journals, she does not write about me constantly, or even often, despite our closeness, but I seem to pop up as a topic on her birthday entries. Perhaps this is because it was always the holiday break, and we were spending day after day together (and I know how challenging that can be with my two kids).

In this birthday entry, she worries that her friends, with whom we were on holiday, were disapproving of my suddenly immature behavior (the usual: bathroom and sex humor) and new use of the word “homosexual.” (She does not describe how.) Though she thought I was being immature and inappropriate, she wanted to defend me.

“As I write this, it sounds as if I am the child. This sitting apart and writing is something I did, too, as a child.” She didn’t know how to confront the issue, so she got it out in blue ink on paper in her lovely (but hard to read) cursive. I understand this disappearing, finding a space to express and create alone. I am doing it right now, as my husband and kids play with Legos in the next room.

I want to remember her, celebrate her and connect with her today. That requires quiet moments and writing. I am the apple to her tree in so many ways. Despite our likenesses, I have been thinking about where we differ: She disliked much of the music I like (“All I can hear is the pounding.”), she would disapprove of my dark purple hair (“Oh, Caity, it looks so harsh.”), and she wondered at my dedication to running (“I am just so impressed!”). I can hear her in our dis-connections, too, and feel close to her.

My favorite line from this journal entry? “My new awareness and acceptance of the tadpole qualities of men.” I don’t (necessarily) agree, but I laughed out loud. A great line, if a tad, um, sexist. Then I think of my house, in which I am the only female (even the dog is male), and I wonder if she might have a point. Sometimes. Maybe. “Tadpole qualities.” *Giggle*

my mother's ski sweater

In honor of what would have been my mother's 72nd birthday, today, I wanted to write something thoughtful to honor her. I wrote some notes about what she called the "clothing museum." It included clothes of hers and mine that were special in some way. I have not finished this piece for many reasons. I will get to it, soon. For today, I will post one photo of one item from that museum: my mother's ski sweater from the 1950s. It was handmade, tiny and wool.

I would never have worn it--even if it would fit me--because wool makes me itch. And I never saw my mother wear this sweater. But I picture her in it when I read her short story, "The Circle," in The Hottest Night of the Century, which revolves around a skiing trip.