A Little Different Perspective...

You know, as I was sorting through my parents things, (the detritus of their lives that they have entrusted to me to have and to hold, forever, if needed), I started to wonder:  Do I really know who these people are?  I mean, we know our parents as, well, our parents - but did we, do we, really care who they are as people?  They are just Mom and Dad.  They really weren't "people".  Were they?  We were so worried about our lives as kids and how to get what we wanted by going around them or to staying out of the way or out of sight. Playing with our friends, what was going on in school, etc.  Doing what kids do.   We went to church, went on vacations, did chores and whatever, together.  I know I tried to stay out of my Dad's line of sight just in case he didn't like what he saw or had another "job" for me.  Kid stuff, you know? We have or had such a narrow view of who these people were or are in our lives.

It's kind of sad, because these are the two most important people in the world to us and yet, we really don't know them at all.  Nor did we take the time to find out, even as adults.  Maybe it's because as we try to develop our own lives and are busy with kids of our own, or college or relationships, or whatever, we don't realize that our parents had a life before us and also after us.  Or, maybe, it isn't possible for us to know them.  Generation too wide? Hmmm.  So who are/were they?

I had the unique opportunity, as I mentioned, to go through some of their things. They didn't do it when they moved, it just got brought to my house to deal with when Mom moved to a long term care facility because of her PSP, and Dad couldn't deal with it either, so guess who gets to go through it all and decide what needs to be done with it?  Me.  As I mentioned in another post, I am an only child, and so there is no one else.  So, I got to go through pictures of the past to letters they wrote to each other while Dad was in Korea.  Letters from their parents, siblings and friends. It was their form of email.  It seemed so much more important to get a letter in the mail from friends or relatives that it does getting an email, now.  I guess it meant more to take pen to paper and sit down and take the time to write what's been happening or thank you cards or invitations, or whatever, with our own hands.

Mom told me to burn it all.  I really wasn't so sure about that.  I did find a couple of letters, I told her, that were a little on the juicy side that she wrote to Dad.  Apparently, Dad had kept it and she in turn kept it in her desk for all these years after he returned.  She laughed at the memory and said what was juicy then, is nothing now.  I thought about that and she's right.  We don't have that mystery between each other as lovers or partners as they did. Everything is so "now".  There is no waiting, really.  If there is, we can't seem to handle it well.

She wrote to him about me when I was little, and how I was doing, and that Jim says "Hi!" and that she saw "so and so" somewhere.  Then she closed it by saying she missed him and wanted to be in his arms again.  You know the usual lover/spouse stuff.  It's all so universal.  I feel somewhat like a voyeur looking through stuff like that!  I think I might run all those letters through my Neat Scanner just to keep those that seems to mark a place in time that was important or just interesting.  I'm sure I will find many a thing that I didn't know and will wonder about.  At least my Mom is still here and I can ask her.  How fun is that?