Why My Mom is Awesome
My mom writes me letters. Yes, in this age of cell phones and emails, she still sits down and jots a note, usually from work at the hospital, and usually on whatever notepad she happens to have handy. I’ve gotten lots of psych drug stationary over the years, and the most recent letter says “Beijing 2008 USA” on the top. Sure, she’ll occasionally send me an email or call me, but with surprising regularity, I get these wonderful little letters.
(A brief aside: the most frequent message that I get from my mom on my voicemail goes like this, verbatim: “I don’t want to leave a message. I want to talk to the real guy.” *Click* Sometimes it’s in a laughing voice, other times it’s left out of frustration that we haven’t talked in several weeks, but more often than not, that’s what she leaves.)
So, about every other week, sometimes once a month, I get a little letter from my mom, and it always contains a few key elements, usually in this order:
- Housework updates (what she’s fixing, having fixed, mowed, building, tearing down, contemplating, etc)
- Current work schedule
- Weather (this one has also frequently comes first)
- it ALWAYS ends with the reason she has to go to town next so that she can mail the letter. Always. (current example: “Going to town to get paint brushes, so will mail this off.”)
The best part about these letters is the way that my mom phrases some things, many that are afterthoughts written in the margins right before she closes the envelope and drops it in the mailbox. This one in the most recent letter made me laugh pretty hard:
Glad you didn’t fall through the ground from the e.quake or get hit with a brick
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Two notables: 1) her abbreviations are always cute; here, it’s an “e.quake,” formerly, emails have historically been “ems;” 2) a brick? That’s funny. Of all things, hit with a brick? Not dead, not a broken femur, not wandering zombie-like in the apocalyptic wasteland of post e.quake SoCal? Nope. Hit with a brick. Word.
So, thanks, mom, for always brightening my day with your notes. And that’s only one reason why my mom is awesome.