Wait, what?? Wedding?

Simply.
Must.
Write.

Timing is laughable, I have SO much to do tonight, and I HAVE to get this out.

I dove back in yesterday, reading the rest of 1948 through 1949.
I was so excited: 1950 is next, the year my parents meet and marry!
How exciting to be there when it started!
Only I wasn't.

Before we begin, regarding the end of the relationship with Rod:
Quite its own tale, to be told at another time.
Forgive me for telling this tale out of order...

I eagerly pulled the letters out of the 1950 packet.
Damn! They start in September! They've already met!
She took a summer job in the office where Dad worked.

I knew my parents married three months after they met. 

He said 'I'm headed west, ya coming or staying?' and she went.

What I wanted to read was that he'd swept her off her feet, and they were madly in love.

I knew she'd married in a navy wool suit, so much more practical than a wedding gown. She loved it, said it was really pretty. (Mom is a total clothes horse, more about that later too.) I wanted to read how she picked it out, feeling smart and stylish 
for her new life. 

My parents married November 18, 1950.
There are four letters beforehand: Sept. 26th, Oct 4th, 18th, and 24th.
She's dating Dad -- and four other guys.
Hayrides, movies, parties. Dances, concerts, football games.
Sometimes two dates on the same day.
Musing over the lot of them, their attributes, and what her marriage courses taught her about choosing a good mate. What she likes and dislikes.

By now it's very clear that Mom went to college for her Mrs. degree, but watching her muse so openly leaves me shocked. 

Yet she'd said she felt hemmed in, pressured, and wanted to bust loose and do what she wanted to do. I don't know why she felt pressured to marry at 21; although ah, her mom married at 20. There's just so much she doesn't say. In an earlier letter she described herself as never letting her emotions out, never letting anyone see them. The older I get, the more I see how true that was. I ache for her here.

Pulling each letter from its envelope, 'is this the one where she jumps up and down for joy?'
No.

Pulling the Oct. 24th letter out, the last one,
the one written 25 days before she married my dad,
she had no idea.

She did not yet know her wedding day was less than a month away.

She knew he'd bought rings, and she didn't want him to, she was still actively going out with Al, Jim, Jack and George. Wore her sharp new navy suit on a date with Al to a class buffet supper. She's fascinated by dad though, clearly. Thinks about him more than she'd like, lingering on her mind.

And my dad had game!
He drove a convertible and took her flying in a plane.
She was concerned that he hadn't gone to college, and that he didn't like to party much.
She loved that he was so nice, and so very sweet to her.
And she loved his family, they were so nice to her too.

Completely warms my heart to hear this young woman I've been listening to meet my grandma and grandpa. The connection made, felt... like home.

But the reality is that Mom married Dad much more impulsively than I knew. His west coast job offer suddenly created the opening, but I thought they were already serious, not just casually dating. She was ready to marry, and he was the fellow in front of her 

who asked. 

They married in the family church in Belding. Her first few letters from the cross-country drive honeymoon "I'm awfully happy! I love him more and more every day!" They would stay together 44 years until her passing in 1994.

HS Graduation ~ Freshman Year College

I've done as much organizing and labeling as I can - time to dive in.

Her tale starts in 1947 with graduation from high school. Found programs for the three-day event: Baccalaureate (prayer), Class Night (speeches), and Commencement (diploma). Reading down the roster, ah there she is: Mom was Valedictorian. Wouldn't it be fun to know what her speech was! [10 seconds later] Ha ha! Her handwritten speech.

Class motto from Shakespeare: "Climbing Steep Hills Requires Slow Pace at First." Isn't that a perfect message for this journey?? Her speech shows that she expected life to be arduous, with many dues needing to be paid in order to reach reward. That hard effort was required. How different would her life have been if she understood the law of attraction at that young age? 

The font on her name card is crazy cool: 
In the pre-computer age, somehow I'm really
surprised to see such an imaginative font, and
wish it was still around.

She jumped into college with both feet. I once asked her what her major was, and she said "boys." Pretty much. She was engaged within a couple months, despite dating two men, Rod and Jim. She didn't know how to turn down dates. Describes Jim, whom she'd known from HS, as irritating her much of the time, being too serious. "If I don't stop going out with him so much, I won't even like him at all." "I don't want to go out, but what can I do?" Months later, she finally broke up with him, breaking his heart. She had already returned Rod's ring, though they continued to date. "Rod and I are getting along much better than when we were engaged. It's important to get to know each other first before falling in love." Rod was 27 she was 18. Her dad was 16 years older than her mom, who married at the tender age of 20.

They went to J-Hops, "it costs $5 but Tommy Dorsey is playing." 

Took a music class, loved it. "I have a funny teacher, I mean queer by that." Loved the teacher, loved the Bach and Debussy, though eventually failed the class, not studying enough to pass the challenging tests. 

Her low grades shock me. She was one of the smartest women I've ever known, able to keep up with my brilliant dad. Yet she had pretty much a C average, with some Bs, and a D or two. Her letters are peppered with, "I really should study, but there's a concert we're going to..." In one letter, she shared her midterm grades, all Cs. "Sorry, but I'm satisfied, don't know about you. You probably won't be, but you don't need to start bawling me out, [uncle] Daryl did it for you. You and I both know I could make Bs, but I'm just not interested in marks." Years later, when she went to college to earn her Psych Tech degree, she labored over every missed point if she didn't earn 100% on her tests. She was a straight-A student then. This makes me realize how very proud she must have been with my academic prowess. 

Women were so slim back then, and Mom had had bouts of pudginess in childhood, setting the tone for lifelong body image issues. She laments that her waist grew an inch, "I measure 39-25-39 now and my tummy sticks out. I'm positively beginning to look matronly." No words.

Her self-worth had been damaged in the awful relationship with her emotionally abusive father. Puzzled by the attention of so many college boys, "what's the matter with me? I'm not special, you know that. I'm not half as cute as a lot of girls, and don't have as good a figure either. The kids say I'm a lot of fun here at the dorm but heaven knows theres are millions of girls that are a lot of fun. Why is it that everyone I go out with like me so much, and I never like them quite as much in return?" 

Mom was gorgeous, smart, kind, with a stunning hourglass figure, and she didn't know it. Makes me wonder how much I've carried on that same refrain through life? 

[[college pic here later]]

Grandpa Had Schizophrenia

I've always known that Mom hated her dad; he'd been so mean to her. Clarice, mom's younger sister, had been more docile, but Mom stood up to him, toe-to-toe, and they had an openly hostile relationship. (Laying a template for Mom's relationship with Dad, no doubt.) And I've known that in his later years Grandpa lived at the VA hospital due to schizophrenia. Mom didn't attend his funeral.

I met him twice: at a visit to the hospital when I was 13, with Mom, Grandma, Clarice, and my cousin. We went out to lunch, and it all seemed fine, though I remember Mom and Grandma were tense, hoping he'd behave. Met him again at 20, again visiting the hospital with Grandma and Clarice.

Mom talked very little about him. The only story I'd heard while growing up was that he was paranoid and disinhibited, would say wildly inappropriate things to women, of a sexually accusing and vulgar nature. The example she gave was that Grandma went to a movie theater, and Grandpa spent days afterward accusing her of having sex with all the men in the theater. Wouldn't drop it, would bring it up again and again. 

So it's just beginning to seep in how hard my grandma's marriage must have been. He was significantly older than she -- she was 22 and he was 36 when they married in 1925. Dapper dresser, good looking, it's easy to see how he swept her off her feet. They look happy in their wedding photos. 

Letters:
1960 - from the state hospital: "...you know as well as any of us that Clarence will say and write things which are not exactly truthful. It is true that we occasionally allow a wife to take a patient out ... we do not believe your husband is able under any circumstances to leave the hospital at the present time and make a go of it, but would be causing trouble and would be back in a very short time." The letter refers to a post he'd sent her without permission, "we trust that you will not feel badly over Clarence's demands that he be taken home." At the time this letter was written, Grandma was 57 (wow, my age now!), Mom was 30, and I would be born 4 months later. 

1966 - from the state hospital - the VA has a bed for him, and they want to transfer him. He moved to the VA hospital in May of 1966.

1969 - from the VA hospital - "in your letter [to his doctor] you expressed your desire to have the hospital continue to give your husband custodial care. During our phone conversation of 12/20/68 we discussed the possibility of having Clarence come home for at least brief trial visits. Since our discussion, the Medical Staff has met and decided that Clarence will be placed in a nursing home on this station." I think that was the last time they raised the question of ever discharging him to her care. 

Grandma wrote a huge volume of letters to Mom in 1974, and again in 1980. I'm curious to find what those are about. And when did he first have to go live at the hospital? Mom's letters begin in 1948, when she went to college. Maybe there's more information there? Oh! Plus I have many of Grandma's letters to Clarence, apparently he kept his letters too.

The only other things I know about Grandpa: 
- He was born on Leap Day, so at 84, he'd only had 21 official birthdays.
- He was born on Guernsey, a British island off the coast of France.
- His father was born in India, my great-great grandfather part of opening trade between England and India.
- Either he or his father changed his last name to Smith for awhile, then back. No idea why.

I remember being relieved when I safely got through my 20s without symptoms of schizophrenia.

Open the Box: A First Look

Oh open the damn box.
Just look at it. See what's there.

Heart pounding.
Whoosh.
Momentarily felt faint.

Immediately flooded with gratitude for my grandmother's organizational prowess -- Mom's letters are neatly bundled by year.

Just looking at the thickness of the envelopes says so much about each year.
Below, bottom row: Mom's last two years of college, marriage, first two children.
Middle of middle row: pregnant with me, my birth and first year.
Top rows: I start school, we move to Hacienda Heights, then a big gap til 1975.

That's where mom's letters stop.
With her youngest (me) in high school, she went back to school and earned her Psychiatric Tech degree.

So the span of her letters, the tale I'm going to read, is her journey becoming a wife and mother.
(Either that, or there's 8 kilos of smack on my floor.)

These are Grandma's letters. The envelopes turned vertical at the bottom are between her and her husband, after he was permanently committed to the VA psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia.

The red stack is a bunch of Christmas cards my parents received. That'll be fun to see; after Mom died I took over the list for Dad, so these will all be familiar names.

The large envelope holds copies of family Civil War letters.

There's also a fair bit of memorabilia: tatted lace made by great-grandmother Bennett, photographs, a children's book. Ha! Even a hotel stationery envelope with my grandparent's room service order from their honeymoon, "breakfast in bed no less!" she wrote on the outside.

Noticings

~ I'm less overwhelmed. Stacks, structure, finite. I see what's here.
~ Fascinating seeing the intensity of her life just by how thick each year's envelopes are.
~ Mom wrote many many many more letters than I thought. There's a lot here from Grandma too, and maybe Mom didn't save them all, but the vast majority of what's here is Mom narrating her life.
~ This is going to take a lot longer than two months...

My parents' marriage was so strained.
Anger, tension, disappointment, resentment.
That's the biggest part of my trepidation of diving into these.
    ~~~Please, oh please let there be equal parts joy in here too.

The Beginning of the Journey

When Mom married and moved away, Grandma wrote her every week, year in, year out.
Mom saved all her letters.
Mom wrote back, year in, year out.
Grandma saved all her letters.

I have an entire 40 year conversation 
between my mother and her mother. 

I've been putting off reading them, fearful of how big a journey it might put me on, of what I might find. She and I were incredibly close, yet in the years since she left, I've come to realize how deeply private she was. Secrets, hidings. There's so much I don't know about her.

Grandma died in 1991, and Mom died just three years later. [Edit: Grandma died in 1989, five years before Mom.]

23 years ago today, in fact.
It's time to read the letters.