Today is the one-year anniversary of Gone to the Beach. In blog form, that is. My first brief post was put up a year ago today: a year I've filled with almost one hundred posts, who knew I had so much to say!
I owe it all to my mother...I began writing my blog mostly to fill the void left in my heart when my mother passed away in January '09.
She and I had a long and cherished history of correspondence. We first started writing letters to each other when I went away to college, more years ago than I care to contemplate.
And no form of communication, not even a phone call--or visit! lol---meant as much as finding one of her letters in my mail box.
We wrote at least once a week---often 10 to 12 pages, and woe betide me if I missed a week. Had to write...No Matter What. And she faithfully wrote back, no matter what. It meant that much to us both.
We wrote about where we went, what we saw, bought or did. What we wore, what we ate, what we cooked. What kind of car to get, where to find white jeans or black cashmere sweaters. Our letters never spoke of emotions, no angst, no happiness, no introspection. No politics, no religion. Maybe the weather, if it was unusually dire: a hurricane, say. Or a blizzard. Not too much about other people, no gossip, maybe just brief news: your uncle retired sort of thing.
And always about books and authors, always a page or more on What We Read. She'd have been heartbroken when Robert Parker died this spring, along with Spenser and Hawk and Jesse and Sunny Randall. [his famous charcaters, we felt like they were friends....].
My mother liked to enclose clippings from her glossy magazines; I begged for the Cape Cod animal and nature columns instead. She sometimes sent photos; I often made little sketches, easier to draw an idea than describe it.
Not only did we hand-write this huge body of letters, in recent years we began to write in a shared diary called a
Circle Journal. I am so happy I have these tiny books, a dozen or more. The letters are too unwieldy, too heartbreaking for me to read. But the journals, I can treasure....
As for my blog, she never saw it. And she would not have understood the concept of writing into ether, hoping to find a kindred spirit. But, even though we never discussed religion or afterlife or whatevers, I sometimes hope she---her spirit?---is
somewhere.... Reading this blog.
Maybe she is:
Anonymous?
love
lizzy
gone to the beach....
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