Salute

"I'm desperate and lonely." That's how I ended a lot of my letters to my mother when I was 13 and in boarding school for a couple of months. (Mother was in the U.S. taking care of something and my father was traveling a lot at the time.)

I sat and read through so many letters that I wrote to her, both at the age of 13, and when I was in college here, in the U.S., and my parents lived in Singapore.

It's like reading someone else's stories. I have such a dim, sometimes zero memory of the events I wrote about. The person writing those letters is far-afield from the person I am today. Some letters make me cry, and some make me laugh!

At ripe old age of 18, I'm writing to my mother that I ache to have a baby. (?!) I'm talking about how hard it is to be a half-child, half-adult, and how I have so many ideas and plans for the future, but feel so confused.

I, as a 50 year old, am astonished at my raw and innocent honesty with my parents. I think about that young girl - lonely in America, so homesick. So much fear and and yet so much hope.

I wish I could go back in time, and change the course that my life took. I really do.

I'm so grateful my mother kept all those letters. It's difficult to explain the myriad of feelings about them. I have a chance to get to know who I was then. I like who I was.

From a letter I wrote to my parents in 1978 -

I'm listening to a Dylan song now which I really like. The lyrics remind me of you, Mother.

'She's got everything she needs, she's an artist. She don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black.
You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees.'

You've got everything you need, Mother - you're an artist.

Just in case you're interested, another line of it goes,

'Bow down to her on Sundays.
Salute her when her birthday comes.'

Mother's birthday is tomorrow. She would have been 80.

I miss her terribly. I'm feeling desperate and lonely for her.

I'm saluting you, Mother.