Happy Birthday Mom!

Today my Mother celebrates her 80^th birthday.  As is typical on most of her birthdays, she won’t be opening a card from me.  I usually send her a card; it’s just rarely on time.  It’s not that I don’t love her or wish for her to enjoy the day.    Rather, I can never seem to find that card with the perfect message to tell Mom exactly how I feel.  I have a hard time getting excited about cards that say “Many Happy Returns” or “Enjoy Your Special Day” or “Now That You’re 21 You Can Buy Me a Drink”.  The card I’m looking for would say “Happy Birthday Mom.  Thanks for all the letters you’ve written”.   

You see my Mother is a letter writer.  Some parents phone.  Others visit.  Some even Skype.  My mom writes…..very well.   Let me explain. 

When my oldest sister, Anne, went off to college almost 40 years ago, my Mother wrote to her every week.  Every week.  There were still four of us kids at home so she had plenty of subject material, but it had to be extremely challenging to find the time to write. 

The next year my next sister, Carol, started college.  So Mom got out the carbon paper to produce two issues of the weekly news.  Two years later Tom went to school and Mom had to learn to manage two sets of carbon paper.  When Dave and I were in college, she graduated to very thin onion skin paper and extra-strong carbons to be able to produce five legible copies in a single sitting.  It was a tribute to her typing skills that those letters contained so few mistakes – there’s no correction when you’re using carbons. 

All five kids home for Mom's birthday party this summer.  Anne, Carol, Dave, Tom, Mark.

Over the years as more kids left the house, the letters shifted from a recount of home events to a sort of posting of what each of us was doing.  It truly became a family newsletter.  As we graduated and moved to different areas of the country, Mom’s letters kept coming, keeping us connected with her and Dad and with each other.  There was no better way to get over a poor college exam grade or a bad day at work than to come home and find a hand-addressed letter in the mailbox.  Whatever was troubling my mind or was on my to-do list at the time got pushed back so that I could find a comfortable chair, relax and read the family news. 

Mom’s letters were not limited to immediate family.  She wrote regularly to Dad’s parents while they wintered in Florida.  She is known throughout the community for sending cards for birthdays, congratulations, sympathy, etc. – all with a personal note.  And as members of her country church moved to nursing homes, she started a weekly letter to provide church news and keep them connected to each other. 

Mom took full advantage of advances in technology.  When computers came out, she got on board.  What a relief it must have been to go from managing five sheets of paper and four carbons in a typewriter to simply selecting “5” for print quantity.  With the advent of the Internet and email, she stepped up again.  She only had to type in a distribution list, write her note and hit “send”.  And the timing for her learning email was perfect because her distribution list was growing to include grandchildren now at college. 

Mom with the "expanded distribution list", her seven grandchildren.

When I think about how much Mom has written over the years, it’s pretty impressive.  She’s been writing for at least 40 years, 35 letters per year (she did take some weeks off), 500 words per letter – that adds up to a writing career with over 700,000 words.  To put that in perspective the sum of her letters are over 25% longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  They are equivalent to the first five books in the Harry Potter series.  (Granted, our family’s life wasn’t quite as exciting as the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione.)   

So why does Mom write?  One reason is that she loves us.  Her letters always end with encouraging words and, although they were typewritten, each letter was signed with a hand-written “Love, Nancy”.  

She also writes because it’s hereditary -- her Mother did the same thing.  When Mom left the city and moved 300 miles away to the farm to marry Dad, it had to be a huge change.  Back then phoning was out of the question, so Grandma Voss wrote a weekly letter to keep in touch with her only daughter.  Grandma Voss was still writing those letters by the time I came along and I remember Mom’s joy when we brought one in from the mailbox. 

My Grandmother, June Voss. 

Finally, Mom writes is because she is talented and enjoys it.  Many people may not realize that she is a college-trained, professional writer.  She majored in Technical Journalism at Iowa State.  No, that doesn’t mean she wrote about engineers (now that would be exciting wouldn’t it?)  The “Technical” side of her journalism involved Home Economics and Food Science.  As an aside, while Mom wrote about the goings on in our home, one of her ISU classmates, Hugh Sidey, was writing about the people living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – he covered the White House for Time Magazine for almost 50 years.  

Early in her marriage, Mom put her college diploma to work.  She won a new clothes dryer with a 50-word poem about her then 1 year-old daughter, Anne.  She also had an article published in Farm Journal Magazine titled “When a Town Girl Marries a Farmer”.   But it didn’t take long for the time requirements of farming and raising a family put any chance of a public journalism career on hold.

But the loss for Farm Journal readers was certainly our gain.   Ask any of my siblings and I’m sure they will agree with me that Mom’s letters have meant a lot to each of us.    Unfortunately, we don’t seem to get around to telling her that often enough.  Although she was trained as a technical writer, her true skills lie in her personal touch.  And while being a farm wife was incredibly demanding, she always seemed to find time to spend an hour or so at the typewriter or computer in order to keep her family connected.    

So Mom, here’s your birthday card.  On time.  And it finally says what I've always wanted to say.  Thanks for all the letters!