The letters don't come anymore

But the voice remains strong

Before we begin…

Do have letters or notes from anyone that mean a lot to you? Why do they matter? Do you keep letters or throw them away?

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My mother, at 90

In ten days, my mother will turn 90, a fact she may or may not appreciate seeing here when she checks her email as she does on Saturday, ready to print out whatever I’ve come up with for a post that week. On a recent Zoom call, she peered at her still striking face on the video screen and said, “I look so old!”

Well, I said, you are. A small silence fell as we both let this sink in. I don’t know what she was thinking. I thought of everything I’d managed to learn about her and realized I could have another ninety years and still never know everything that has made her who she is. Her face, still beautiful, is familiar and strange to both of us. Her body, always sturdy, has been giving her a hard time lately. Her voice, though, hasn’t changed. It conveys her strength, her fears, her laughter, her wisdom, her unique way of looking at the world with the same vitality it always has.

So many of my friends have arrived at my age motherless, separated by death or by barriers neither they nor their living mothers can surmount. Somehow, my mother has not only endured but has found a way to keep us close, if not in miles then in the ways it truly counts. This week, I will share one of the ways she did that. When my mother checks her email today, she will find her own words, not mine. They come from a post I wrote a while back on another site and usually link to on Mother’s Day. Since next week is an off-week for Spark, I’m sharing it in full this week.

Monday Letters

The "Kitchen Sink" shortie: all the essentials in a hurry and with love.

It's five o'clock on Monday morning and my mother sits in bed, knees up, a pad against her thighs, her second cup of coffee steaming within easy reach. Her pen flies across the page in front of her leaving behind a trail of thoughts that have been on her mind for days, minutes, or take shape as she writes.

I can reconstruct this because on more than one visit home back in the early days of my adulthood, I found her there, often with my infant son tucked into the pillows next to her after she'd swooped him up so that I could have a rare extra hour of morning sleep.

"Happy Monday. Hope between you and the numerologist you had a good weekend." Monday, 1980

These were her "Monday Letters." She wrote her first one when I left home at 17, “just so you’ll have some mail,” a line that was vaguely insulting to me then, even if her assumptions about my empty mailbox were correct.

As the rest of us tumbled out of the nest, one or two a year, she wrote more. She has written over 1,500 Monday letters to me by my estimation. Add my siblings, step siblings, her godchildren, and fellow travelers she adopted along the way, and we are talking serious writer's cramp and the death of a forest or two before the advent of email and texts.

"Dear Betsy, a day late and dull stationery to boot and oh dear a lousy pen. Not a very good way to start the day. It's 6:15."

Not long ago, I was rooting around in the garage and found a battered cardboard carton labeled "Mom" in black marker. The seams of the box were worn; the top barely able to contain the letters jammed inside. The letters, survivors of my mother's weekly correspondence, seemed to be pushing their way out of the box to find me. I forgot whatever I'd been looking for and hauled the box into my office and for the next few days, I read them all.

I picked up each letter with the same combination of eagerness and trepidation I used to feel mid-week when her letters usually arrived.

"Our conversation was most unsatisfactory - to be blamed in all fairness on both of us. I for my part am sorry I always flunk pretty badly when I attempt to contain myself and unfortunately I've been containing my opinions on this for a very long time."

They weren't always written on a Monday. They weren't always written before dawn. She used whatever paper she had and whatever time she had between jobs, errands, doctor visits, or when she woke in the middle of the night with someone on her mind.

"I've been awake since 3 a.m. Thinking of you."

They weren't always fun to read. The letters I found spanned a chunk of late seventies, early eighties when I moved with a man ten years older to the suburbs without getting married and without a job. I went into debt. My son was hospitalized after COBRA ran out. My relationship with my partner slid into a swamp I couldn't seem to get out off with my self-esteem intact. She called often. We visited when we could. But her letters never stopped coming. Holding one -- even the lectures -- was like feeling her hand in mine. She couldn't pull me out but the letters told me she would be there, cheering me on when I finally emerged on my own.

"Don't beat yourself up. Whatever you do, we love you."

Each letter was at least one, but often a combination of the following: hello, weather report, family news, a verbal finger-prod between the shoulder blades, a long-distance hug, wistful wonderings, a mirror, warning, atta-girl, "to-do" list, food for thought, how-to make everything from chicken l'orange for eight to how to manage money. There were lots of letters about money, how I handled it; how I didn't.

"Thought I'd try to give you a rough outline of how to make a budget."

Some were scary. I’m thinking now of one preceded by a long-distance call she made to “warn” me about: four pages from a yellow legal pad filled on both sides with hard facts and even harder choices that I would have to make.

These recipes rescued me when I first confronted making dinner for adults

And there were plenty in which she wrote about her own fears, her own anxiety about the future, her own struggles to grow.

"Thanks for listening to me. I'm really in a mess. Trying to control what I probably should do with what I want to do. I know that it will work out."

As I sift through the letters, though, the content of the letters is eclipsed by the fact of them. They are tangible evidence of who I was, who she was, and how we worked our way through the holding on and letting go between a mother whose nest was beginning to empty and a daughter whose start-up nest was a hot mess.

"You have to get a grip on yourself. You will NOT be alone for the rest of your life no matter what. The hardest thing is when you're really are trying and you really feel that you are contributing and then you get so lonely and are shot down. I'm speaking from the heart. It just doesn't have to be. You get ahold of yourself and stay hold no matter what and don't let your stubborn determination get the best of you. Have a good week, Love, Mom.

In them was the determination to forge new relationships not just with me but with each of her offspring and other loved ones, to help us nurture connections with each other. They were her way of reconciling her determination to make us all independent with her desire that we all stay connected. They show that when she had a few minutes to herself, she thought of me, my siblings, all her loved ones, and got out her paper and pen. She started out more than one with "Just wanted you to have some mail." We all knew that some got longer letters some weeks than others; some weeks were tougher than others. Sometimes, a letter was meant to be shared as was the case with this one to me and my son sometime in 1981:

"Hi, I love you and I hope your respective lives are moving onward and upward. Happily, Hastily, Mom/Gramma"

Over the years, the letters helped to weave the fabric connecting all who received them. We can lob a standard quote, "Have the courage of your own convictions" to a stepbrother or sister and they can laugh and toss back, "And poco a poco" or "Don't lose perspective."

We chuckle, but we hear her. Even now, we hear her.

A Mother's Day collage of Monday Letters

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Book Report - not the one I’m reading, the one I’m writing

The other day, I asked a writing friend how her book was coming along. I hate it when people ask the same of me but there I was, at her independent bookstore, acting like one of those clueless but well-meaning folks who inadvertently turn what every joy or despair I’m feeling at the moment into an awkward discussion. (I’m sorry, Marianne!)

So, as a way to make up for it in some way, I will turn the question on myself. As many of you know, I have been working for several years on my second novel — long enough to cringe when asked about my progress but not long enough to say that it is finished.

This week, though, I turned a corner. I finished the latest draft which is not the “shitty first draft” but better, more complete one. I arrived at the last page on Wednesday and felt a smile spread across my face. There are revisions to make, lots of them. The path forward, though, is so much clearer. I know what needs to be done and how to do it.

When I look back over the newsletters I’ve written since launching Spark, I can see how the novel has continued to progress despite crises in confidence, the loss of a key set of notes, deaths or illness of people I love, the state of the world, the distractions I embrace but also struggle to balance (dogs, people, books, this newsletter) — in other words, life. This week, while I waited for important medical news from three loved ones, I finished my last chapter. More accurately, I finished the twenty pages leading up to the last line which has been crystal clear for me since the beginning. Bonus: all three of my loved ones got the all-clear from their doctors.

There are lessons or observations in all this somewhere and I’m sure I’ll get around to articulating them. Right now, though, I am smiling. On Monday, I will be writing. I still don’t know what the future holds for this book, or me, but at least for today, I am optimistic.

Literacy Update: censorship in U.S. military academy libraries weakens future leaders

This is the latest in a regular series of updates for how we as a community can support literacy and education when they are under attack. This one comes from EveryLibrary which describes itself as “the first and only national organization dedicated to building voter support for libraries.” You can learn more about them and how they support grassroots groups seeking to protect their libraries in schools and community here. Scroll down on the page to see a range of actions you can take from your home to support this effort.

Situation: the country’s military academies have been ordered to remove nearly 400 books including by Maya Angelou, Ibram X. Kendi, and authors documenting the Holocaust and American lynching. The Coast Guard Academy has been told to remove all books referring to climate change.

Implication: the censoring of books at publicly funded institutions that train our military leaders who, as students, are considered members of the military and must take orders. At the same time, they are deprived of a range of books that could help them prepare more fully for leadership by exposing them to knowledge and ideas that will be critical in forming judgments.

What we can do: sign this petition. Then, contact your elected representatives who nominate students from their constituencies to attend these academies so they understand what is at stake and use their legislative power to restore the library and eliminate censorship in schools funded by our taxes.

Are their literacy programs in your community that need support? Please let us know in the comments or by replying to this email. I will make sure they appear in future newsletters.

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Ciao for now!

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…sunrise in the East

A dawn walk along the rocks (Rae Francoeur, Rockport, MA)

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”:

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

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