There is a lot to discover as we browse through the type of items people typically save from childhood homes when parents must leave, and eventually pass.
Among the items I have in various boxes and browse at times is a type-written book of poems that I never gave proper attention to previously. This past summer I scanned each one and more closely observed that my mother had typed this booklet up. And, she had contributed a poem to what appears to be her junior high school English Class.
The classmates appear to have been assigned to write a poem about another classmate, therefore, another poem is included that was written about my mother. These glimpses into my mother’s young life help lay new groundwork for me to explore and understand what may have happened to her–especially from the time after her mother died when she was seventeen on into her pursuit of a college education that seems to have been wrongfully shutdown by other siblings.
I also wonder if my mother may have had the task of typing duplicate copies for other students. That would have been an amazing feat, and I noticed the border she created using % signs. To honor this version of my young mother I never knew–nor could know, perhaps, due to what happened to her in April 1946–I would like to play with the border in Photoshop and incorporated it into some of my work.
I think that if my mother could know of this, in the great beyond, she would feel loved, proud and newly understood. I am still wanting to confirm details that may be documented somehow that she won second (maybe first) place in a typing contest at the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in New York City.
The high school does not have any information on that class trip that was taken during that time, so I will have to dig other places, as time permits.
Thank You For Reading
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