This morning I wanted to be brave, because my mother had been taking a memoir class at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, and she'd been working hard to complete her recollections, focusing on the theme of strong women in our family. I found out from someone in her class who came to make a condolence call that the deadline is April 18th, and so I'm going to try to finish the job for her. Her work was all laid out on the dining room table in her apartment, and we'd put it in an archive box.
I hadn't had the courage to start reading, but I knew I had to do it today.
And at the end of chapter two, I read this:
"Life is a patchwork quilt. Each piece of experience, whatever size or shape, is part of our whole being. Our friends and family, our children, and their children, our forbearers and those to come in the future, all enlarge the quilt. We are covered in their love. And our love covers them.
I learned from a woman who was a prisoner in Romania in solitary for several years. She said that experiences couldn't be taken away from her, as material things can. Throughout her incarceration and torture, she made her thoughts turn to experiences: trips she would retake in her mind, planning how she would decorate her new home if she got out. Give yourself and your family every experience, don't wish you had done something and put it off."
My mother was an amazing, strong woman. I miss her so much.
PS: I taught my youngest nephew "Carpe Diem" on Sunday. I told him it was the way smart people say "YOLO." Then I introduced him to my friend Irene, who grew up in Germany and is a Latin scholar, to make sure he said it correctly. So now he knows how to say it in both English and German learned Latin. CARPE DIEM, my friends. And sew your love into the patchwork quilt of humanity.
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