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Progress, of a sort...
Sep. 6th, 2009 08:10 pmI made some good progress today in the "get rid of junk" department, but then got involved in going through a box of my late mother's papers, and most of them were worth the attention.
To be sure, she kept in touch with her parents (much more often than I did with her), even if it was to merely scribble a "Got here okay" message in a letter or on a penny postcard from wherever it was she had arrived. I am trying to figure out just what, exactly, she did that took her on so many trips, as there are not many clues in what she wrote to my grandparents.
One such communication was a letter sent from the Providence Biltmore, in Providence, Rhode Island. The letter is dated "Thursday, November 12" above the salutation, and the envelope does not appear to have been saved. A little detective work suggests the letter was written in 1936 or perhaps 1942 (I favor the earlier date).
One thing I did discover was that my mother dabbled with translation from time to time. A letter she wrote to her parents about five months before I was born noted that she had finished an 18-page French-to-English translation for my dad, the newspaperman, though no details were provided. I suppose that will remain a family mystery.
Another mystery is why my paternal grandmother wrote a postcard to my mother asking how she and I and my father are doing about five years after my parents divorced. I refuse to believe she didn't know about the divorce (after all, the card was addressed to my mom). Could it be my dad was even worse about staying in touch with his mom than I was with mine? There's no way to tell, really.
Coming back into the present, there's a part of me that wants to spend the day outside tomorrow as the rain has been coming down pretty steadily on a daily basis for the past few days and all the moisture may have set off a mushroom eruption. On the other hand, all this digging into the past has left my office strewn with little piles of old paper, and besides, we've got to get this place cleaned up pronto and get stuff packed for an upcoming trip down to Houston.
I guess I'll wait and see how I feel tomorrow.
Cheers...
To be sure, she kept in touch with her parents (much more often than I did with her), even if it was to merely scribble a "Got here okay" message in a letter or on a penny postcard from wherever it was she had arrived. I am trying to figure out just what, exactly, she did that took her on so many trips, as there are not many clues in what she wrote to my grandparents.
One such communication was a letter sent from the Providence Biltmore, in Providence, Rhode Island. The letter is dated "Thursday, November 12" above the salutation, and the envelope does not appear to have been saved. A little detective work suggests the letter was written in 1936 or perhaps 1942 (I favor the earlier date).
One thing I did discover was that my mother dabbled with translation from time to time. A letter she wrote to her parents about five months before I was born noted that she had finished an 18-page French-to-English translation for my dad, the newspaperman, though no details were provided. I suppose that will remain a family mystery.
Another mystery is why my paternal grandmother wrote a postcard to my mother asking how she and I and my father are doing about five years after my parents divorced. I refuse to believe she didn't know about the divorce (after all, the card was addressed to my mom). Could it be my dad was even worse about staying in touch with his mom than I was with mine? There's no way to tell, really.
Coming back into the present, there's a part of me that wants to spend the day outside tomorrow as the rain has been coming down pretty steadily on a daily basis for the past few days and all the moisture may have set off a mushroom eruption. On the other hand, all this digging into the past has left my office strewn with little piles of old paper, and besides, we've got to get this place cleaned up pronto and get stuff packed for an upcoming trip down to Houston.
I guess I'll wait and see how I feel tomorrow.
Cheers...
