Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 / 7:40 p.m.

~Old Letters~

We finally got some rain, a brief shower with a lot of lightning, very loud cracking thunder, car alarms sounding, etc. The temperature has cooled considerably, and this is very nice. Live WeatherBug says 73. Nice.

I barely have energy to lie in one place, and cramps are coming and going, making me wince at times, but I'll survive. I took some Kava Kava at work and it made me relaxed, sleepy even, and still I was cranky, listless. Fun.

Last night I read more of my mother's old letters, as I listened to the live feed of "Big Brother 4" on the PC. It was 1947, she was 21 years old, living in Mexico City with her first husband. She picked up stray dogs off the streets, took them to the vet, got them vaccinated and cleaned, kept them as best she could. And cats, and birds. She had maids, apparently more than one, maids plural. And she wrote to her mother often - the letters were all to her. She called her mother "chum", and probably "pal", and "Mother" and sometimes "Mom". She didn't really sound 21, and I couldn't really tell it was 1947 at the time she wrote the letters, except for maybe a few odd expression, like saying something is "top dog", or maybe it was just "tops".

She asked her mother for money, which seemed really odd since she was married and hiring and firing maids. She also mentioned that contrary to rumors back home in Chicago, which she knew EVERYONE was talking about, she was not expecting a child, even though, and she was a bit bashful in defending the following, they were 'trying'.

Her husband was so much older, maybe late 40s, though I've yet to know exactly. And she left him, went back home to her mother. I have the letters he wrote to her mother, yes, her mother, telling her he wanted to make my mother happy, but he couldn't, but he loved her so much, and he wished he hadn't spent so much money on the trip sending her home, but had kept the money to make her happy there with him. And how fortunate he was to have a mother in law like her.

I'd open some letters and find photos, and some letters were written by hand, in her famous green ink, which she used when I knew her, always green ink, the way I like to use purple. Her handwriting was always difficult to read, and I was amazed as I read some of them aloud, thinking saying it aloud was easier, made it easier to read somehow, that I could decipher the letters, make them form sentences. The typewritten are so much easier, even though she used her cursive font typewriter, the one I have displayed on a bookcase in the living room. She really used that thing, a lot.

She obviously loved to write, and was quite good at it. But she was a letter writer. No journals, or diaries, a little poetry, but not much. All of the poetry filled with romantic longing. I kept opening these letters, last night, not wanting to go to bed, thinking I'd hit some sort of pay dirt, I'd find something I didn't already know, I'd find THE letter, or come across a Last Will and Testament from some relative I'd forgotten about, or some treasure, written or otherwise.

One big envelope contained some of my sister's things, like anthropolgical artifacts, carefully preserved therein, her wallet, still containing the items there when she died. Untouched really. And I pulled out ticket stubs, and photo booth photos of her, and me, and a picture of my brother as a kid holding our Old English Sheepdog on a leash, and pictures of high school friends, her smoking permit, and many pink slips of paper, notices of demerits at school. She got in a lot of trouble. She was a rebel.

I put everything back exactly as I found it. Funny that.

It's really all just one box of stuff, and I'm thinking I'd like to replace the box. Now, it's an old Blue Nun wine box, from a liquor store, something I probably acquired to contain the treasures therein, but maybe something plastic, Rubber Maid-y is in order. And if I just put it back in the closet, as is, and forget about it, it will be gone. Out of sight, out of mind. I get so lost in my mother's life, sort of switching back and forth between seeing her as a stranger, and seeing my mother in the stranger, then wanting to preserve it all, give it its due, all the artifacts and photos, some sort of reverent tribute to her history and my sister's, tell the story, but I don't know how, so I put it back, just as I found it, fold each letter just as it's been folded for almost 60 years. For later, I guess.

Politics are making me angrier every day. This whole anti-abortion legislation, and the disabling of the Clean Air Act, and the billions and billions being spent on occupying a nation that never needed nor wanted us there, and Bush asking Congress for more billions to rebuild it, while people in this country are out of work and hungry and schools are under funded, and teachers are underpaid, and it's just all so insane right now. Every day it just seems worse and worse, and I got on my soap box at work because Q was soliciting funds for her granddaughter's PRE-K graduation at year's end! Selling cookies. In her name. It all seemed so wrong, I blew up. Ranting and raving about our tax dollars, and how much comes out of our paychecks, and doesn't she care about where that money goes, and does she know how much is being spent on this fiasco in Iraq, and why does her granddaughter's PRE-K (I can't help but put it in all caps, as it's absurd) school advocate requiring its children, children, 4 year olds!, to sell cookies to fund raise for some caps and gowns at year's end? Shouldn't they be finger painting instead?

I'm sick inside. And I'm obsessing over my own mortality and the fleeting nature of life, and all the stuff I have, and all the documenting I've done, and all my mother did, and the stuff, stuff, stuff, inherited, accumulated, etc. Too much, and who will preserve it when I die?

I want to watch the MTV Video Music Awards, but it's all rap and R&B on the charts right now, and I'm fond of neither. I only want to see if they show Jun from the "Big Brother" house. Last night on the live feed they wondered where she went. But their hunger was more important, and I listened to them eat as I read my mother telling her mother about the stray dog that escaped and how heartbroken she was, and the poor little Indian children on the streets in Mexico City, and how ostracized and poor they were. Life has always been hard, hasn't it?

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