Taking a few moments from my busy day – after having noticed the date – to mention that my mother, Margaret Ruth Linger Slifer, was born on this day ninety-nine years ago.
Last night before bed, I opened my mother’s red diary to browse through her notations from April 1946 and then her large-hand-written notations in the same journal in January of 1967. I was three years old then, and apparently, she was quite upset around that time (reflective) about events involving her family that had happened twenty-one years before.
In recent times, in conjunction with my own lifestory tellings here which inherently involve my mother’s lifestory, and in trying to process a number of things about the Linger family and that heritage to me and to my sons, I am in the middle of an exploratory sleuthing of sorts. Everyone loves a good mystery.
As I read through my mother’s notations (and I’ve read them before from time to time since I came into ownership of this and other diaries she kept, when she passed in 2001) I’m feeling some strange connection to her. Some sense of – while not excusing her behavior or un-acknowledging her particular condition(s) – empathizing with a young, 22-year-old woman who was highly intelligent and potentially creative, very musical, and had her own dreams and ambitions for her life.
When anyone tries to interpret notations or references someone made in some context many years prior, it can seem almost un-decipherable to many readers. However, if there is any person who ever knew my mother and would be capable of possibly putting some things together and making sense of her comments, it would be me.
For the better or worse, I keenly observed my mother from an early age and was “in her head” as they say…I had to be, I suppose, in order to make sense of a number of things that not only made little to no sense but to cope with her and the overall situation.
For whatever reason, in January of 1967 my mother was pretty upset and referenced a couple of phone calls to two family members at that time. Clearly, in her view (whether right or wrong, true or false or somewhere in between) her family (three siblings and her father, to be specific) had treated her in a way that she felt destroyed her life from that point on. With this in mind (how she viewed this event/incident) it might explain a number of her subsequent beliefs and behaviors about herself, others and much more.
Who knows for sure. I certainly at this point have much reason to believe that there is a lot of validity and merit in her notations – if one can bypass her obvious expressions of deep upset and somewhat odd ways of it coming out.
Part of me wonders at the overall sequence of my relationship with her even years past her death that has led me to be reading through her diary before bed last night. The photo of her at the desk was tucked in the diary. I don’t know if she tucked it there or somehow I put it there years back for some reason.
As I studied the photo last night I looked at my mother’s young hands. Young, capable, skilled…apparently with some nail polish. She is sharply dressed and seated in an office. I don’t know what year this was taken.
I do have her medical records from the old Weston Hospital – from the event in April 1946 – which is now known as the Trans-Alleghany Lunatic Asylum.
I continue to have ideas of questions/information to research and sent another email this morning.
I know the treatments used on her there and must wonder how my mother’s life would have unfolded had this whole “family meddling” in her affairs (as she named it) not happened.
What would have been the outcome on any emotional struggles she had from growing up in the Linger family, or from growing up poor in that area, or as by-product of being highly intelligent and creative?
Would she have married my father? Would I have been born? Would she have married him and I have been born sooner?
Obviously, these are absolutely impossible questions no one can ever answer. My mother’s birth this day ninety-nine years ago has its absolute genesis in the mind and heart of our Creator. As does my own existence, that of my sons and that of any other biological generations.
Happy Birthday, Mom. I’ll keep digging for you. I’m curious, too. You deserved better than this, I am sure.
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
