First posted June 2009
My last blog produced this exchange of emails between my Big
Sister and myself (Middle Sister has not yet joined the information
superhighway)…
“I read your blog to Middle Sister over the
phone - managed to do so without howling, but it was a close thing. In latter years I didn't open Mum's letters
immediately, but used to save and savour the moment after my friend told me it
was the thing she most missed since her mother passed away. I kept some of them, hopefully those which
typified her comments on the weather, the state of washing, lovely descriptions
of the garden and news of family and friends.
A couple of weeks ago two of my letters
written to The Daughter when she was in Australia were in a box of things she
was throwing out. Her dad said she
should keep them but she snorted, saying they'd probably be about the
weather,etc. So I read them to her. First one didn't mention the weather, second
started with it and continued with it, by which time we were both crying with
laughter and had such fun I could hardly get to the end!
Texting and emails will stop all that.
Like you, I intend to read my adult life
story when I eventually put my box of letters into chronological order.
Thanks for the memories in your blog.
Love,
Big Sister”
“Thanks for that and you are most welcome
When I worked at the PGL Adventure Holiday
Camp in the Ardeche I was the only person who wrote and got letters from
home. People noticed me getting mail and
after a while insisted that I read them out to them at morning coffee time,
despite the fact they had no idea who anyone mentioned in the letters was. So of course I had to explain and answer
questions as I went along. It got to be
quite a ritual.
See if you can get The Daughter to read my
blog - she may understand more then
Love
The Baby”
“At the reunion with my college friends last
month, we were talking about how our little group always used to read our mums'
letters to each other. Apart from
anything else, we got to know their idiosyncrasies plus lots about our families
etc. which brought us all closer. We had
many an irreverent laugh too!
I was reminded of doing this when reading
mine to The Daughter. Realisation
dawned. "I'm turning into my
mother!" I cried and could hardly carry on as I was convulsed with
laughter.
It's comforting to know that we all carry
memories of each others' mums around with us and talk about them over forty
years later. And they can still make us
laugh!
Love,
Big Sister”
To explain:-
If I was with Mother, and we encountered
someone she hadn’t seen for a long time, they would sometimes confuse me with
one of my sisters. To which she would
invariably reply “Oh no, this is The Baby.”
Not too bad when you’re 5 but a real pain when you’re a teenager and
beyond words in your twenties and thirties.
The Ardeche is in the South of France just
North of Provence.
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