Mother’s Day and Memory – Finding the Write Words

Mother’s Day and Memory

We’ve written a lot about the importance of a things that are hand-written over the last year, from thank-you notes to autographs, music lyrics and love-letters. It may sound hack-y when I say that I truly believe a hand-written letter is one of the best gifts you can give someone, but in my case I have some evidence to back it up.

When you’re a little kid, you want to save every dime of your allowance to buy your parent the best birthday or holiday gift that you can muster. Invariably, however, your ambitions fall short of piggy-bank, and often there’s that feeling of guilt or disappointment that you could not find some physical object that adequately expresses how much you care for your mom or dad.

My mother came up with a novel solution to this problem. Every year since my sister and I have been old enough to write, my mom has asked for a hand-written letter from each of us as a Christmas present. It didn’t have to be long, and it didn’t have to be fancy – binder paper and pencil was just fine by her. All it had to do was talk about what the past year had meant to us, and express the love and affection that can often get lost during the every-day shuffle of busy schedules and complicated lives.

Those letters have gotten pretty creative over the years. They’ve included DVDs with slideshows of photos and music, been folded and coaxed into miniature scrapbooks, rolled into elaborately decorated scrolls, and (during one year where the majority of my income came from content farming) written in the style of a how-to article (“How to be the Most Amazing Mom, Ever.”)

Over the years we’ve grown up and gotten jobs, been able to afford nice gifts and fancy wrapping paper, but the gifts that mean the most to her year after year, the ones that we would never forget, are those letters that chronicle our relationships as mother, daughters and friends.

Shortly after Christmas this year, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. While aggressive, they caught it early, and thankfully she came through it with her health and good humor intact. However, it was a frightening, dark beginning to the year, and the first three months of 2012 were some of the hardest we’ve ever weathered as a family.

Given that the beginning of 2012 was such a dark smear of time, my family and I decided that April 1 was the true beginning of 2012, and that from that day forward we would celebrate a new and brighter year as a family.

With Mother’s Day approaching, I found myself thinking about the late-night chocolate cake and Phase Ten sessions, the hoots of laughter as we quote “The Birdcage” entirely from memory, the times when I’ve felt like my heart would burst with how much love I have for my family. And I found myself thinking of the letters my mom has saved over the years, from childish scribbling to elegant adult script, and how much they’ve meant to her.

So for Mother’s Day, I have a couple of small gifts set aside – things that she’s said she’d like over the year when she didn’t think anyone was listening – but it’s a new year. And a new year means a new letter, and a new way of saying how much she means to me. She’s probably reading this right now – she’s a proud mom, and it’s what she does – but it doesn’t matter that the surprise might be spoiled.

You can’t save a webpage. You can’t touch a pixel. But a letter you can hold onto, through the dark days and through the good. It’s a memory made physical, a touchstone for the times when you need a reminder of faith, hope, laughter and love.

Feel free to borrow this family tradition and write a letter to your own mother this year. After jewelry has lost its shine and appliances wear out, it’s your words – and your love – that remains.