[From my Facebook page--but a good message in any event!}
I've shared this story before, but it feels like something I
ought to share again in memory of my dear mother. I had great parents--not
perfect parents, but real parents who in spite of their human flaws and
limitations never gave me a single reason to doubt their love.
My mother was born a year before women got the right to vote
in these United States in a small town in far western Oklahoma. She was the
second child of nine. Her mother was a homemaker who taught her how to
make the most amazing meringue topped pies on the planet. Her father was a
stone mason who supervised the building of the foundation of the courthouse in
Hobart, Oklahoma among a life time of other civic and private works. And just
like me, my mother loved her family and her friends.
Every year at Christmas time, she would set up her prized
sewing table and instead of removing the trap door in which to insert her
Singer sewing machine (perhaps you've seen one of the these mid-twentieth
century wonders), or spread out a jigsaw puzzle for us to work on during the
long cold winter months and rare Michigan school snow days, or even for the
occasional, random Canasta marathons with my sisters and I; she would lay out
her Christmas cards along with the sheets of holiday stamps and address book
and blank note pad and cup with a dozen ink pens--and go to work. Starting in
early November and continuing until the year's events were completely retold
and sent, she would sit at that table and write out her love to dozens of
family members and friends. Remember this was before the days of the ubiquitous
Holiday "Letter"--that one-pager, mimeographed, then xeroxed, then
printed and/or now just emailed generic description of the events of one's life
from the previous year. I often wonder what my mom would think of this
evolution from a labor of love to a convenience of technology!
By now, you've come to realize that I am but a shadow of her
greatness in this respect. And yet, I want you to know that in my feeble
attempt in sending out Holiday cards, I am among other things honoring her
memory first and foremost. It is her example of a Diaspora
"community" that I cherish and am such a benefactor of with the love
and grace I know with each and every one of you.
So you see--there is so much more happening behind the fact
that you might get a little card from me each Christmas. Here are the places
that I sent cards to this year--perhaps yours is among them. Each goes to a friend or relative with
the same sincere appreciation and desire for community that my mother first
taught me to cherish.
