The New Neo

[NOTE: And in honor of the occasion, I’m reposting this essay from 2021.]

One of the tasks that fell to me since my mother’s death years ago was to go through her papers and photos.

Some “getting rid of” candidates were obvious. Medical records, of which my mother kept very many. Not needed any more, now that she was gone. Ditto her lists of things to do, address and appointment books, and random jottings.

But the rest! A few letters from me in high school and college. Greeting cards. At least a hundred letters from my father when they were dating in the late 30s when he was traveling constantly while working for the government as a lawyer. Those tend to take the form of descriptions of cities and small towns visited, but here and there are some more personal nuggets. A scrapbook of clippings about her activities in the community. A similar one made by her mother my grandmother, and one compiled by her grandfather my great-grandfather. That last one contains his wedding invitation, circa 1883.

Yearbooks. As an only child of an only child, my mother also inherited all the family photos going back to Civil War times and earlier. Some are of people I knew but many lovely ones are of the total strangers who must be my ancestors, and whose identities are lost.

Sorting them out has been time-consuming, and the task is still incomplete many years later. But I try, especially with those things that seem of special interest.

For me that includes my mother’s writing – because she was a writer too, an essayist whose work was often published in local newspapers and who’d written poetry as a precocious child and young woman. I had seen many of her poems and essays before, but some were new to me.

Here’s an essay of my mother’s that I found and read for the first time about a year after her death. I thought it might be fun to publish it on the blog; I don’t think that would have bothered her in the least. It appears to be something she wrote at the age of 80 (during the 1990s) for a writing workshop in response to an exercise staged by the teacher. It’s written in longhand, with various cross-outs, but I’m impressed with how few corrections she had to make in the flow of her thoughts, and how graceful her expression was under the circumstances.

And she seemed to like the dash, too—just like me.

It appears that the teacher had played music for the class, lit some candles, and given the students a sheet of guidelines (these were not saved; I have a hunch my mother didn’t think too much of them), telling the students to write for a few minutes. Here’s what my mother produced:

80 years of living has immunized me somewhat to candles, music, and yes, even meditation—so I looked with a somewhat jaundiced eye at first on Guidelines—and what strikes me at once is the word “Proprioceptive”—what does it mean and where does it come from?

Isn’t that awful—but I do like words and I keep wondering about that one—

The music is delightful and I wonder what is making me put words on a yellow legal pad anyway—and why am I resistant—

Probably because I tend to have used humor as a shield all my life—it helped me overlook hurts, and raise children without going crazy, and a laugh has been like medicine—the best for me.

As an only child I looked for friends—-and it helped me acquire them and saw us through good days and bad.

My husband liked a “light view”—but now it is more difficult because people are different—more violent, angry, and sad. I cling to humor—if and when possible—and its not always possible anymore to find it.

Why am I writing about fun and laughter when I could pick anything? Perhaps it keeps me sane when the alleged golden years have crept up and facing the inevitable is too much. Like Scarlett O’Hara—if it’s unpleasant “I’ll think about that tomorrow”—

Writing fiction is almost impossible for me because “truth is stranger than.” Coincidence, friendships, travels, the endless variety in people who cross your life are enough—there is little laughter these days and I plan to hold onto just as much as possible.

Now I have made a neat ending but the time is not up and the music and candles are still with me—and with them go gratitude for good luck and good health and the ability to cope with what comes—so far so good.

My mother and I were temperamentally very different, although we both liked humor. One of the things we shared was writing, and perhaps that’s why her essays mean a lot to me. I was especially struck in this one by her saying she couldn’t write fiction. I’ve written quite a few short stories, but they’re not my natural genre and I gave up writing fiction about fifteen years ago and it’s been essays ever since.

Some of my earliest writing memories involve my mother helping me write. She was a fabulous typist (she could even use carbons, and boy was she fast on a manual!) and a good editor. When we were young, my brother and I would leave our essays for her to read and correct for grammar errors, and she knew what she was doing.

My mother was also an excellent natural untrained dancer. But even though my mother couldn’t really sing, when I saw Bebe Daniels in the movie “42nd Street” on TV as a child, I was transfixed because the actress reminded me so very much of my mother. Here’s Bebe:

And here’s my mother, at the time of her graduation from college:

I thought everyone had an editor for a mother. I thought everyone had a mother who could write. Turns out they don’t.