Small Wonder
Essays
Chapter One
Letter to My Mother
Imagine you putting on your glasses to read this letter. Oh, Lord, what now?
You tilt your head back and hold the page away from you, your left hand flat on your chest, protecting your heart.
"Dear Mom" at the top of a long, typed letter from me has so often meant trouble. Happy, uncomplicated things - these
I could always toss you easily over the phone: I love you, where in the world is my birth certificate, what's in your
zucchini casserole, happy birthday, this is our new phone number, we're having a baby in March, my plane comes in at
seven, see you then, I love you.
The hard things went into letters. I started sending them from college, the kind of self-absorbed epistles that usually
began as diary entries and should have stayed there. During those years I wore black boots from an army surplus store
and a five-dollar haircut from a barbershop and went to some trouble to fill you in on the great freedom women could
experience if only they would throw off the bondage of housewifely servitude. I made sideways remarks about how I
couldn't imagine being anybody's wife. In my heart I believed that these letters - in which I tried to tell you how
I' ... read full excerpt from: Small Wonder ebook
