![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/gift_gab-history1.jpg\" "\\"gift_gab-history1\\"")
<\/p>\nI was going through old photos and came across this little tidbit I hadn’t seen before that my mother wrote for a newspaper\u00a0when she was 13 years old.<\/p>\n
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By the time she was 14,\u00a0the largest Utah\u00a0newspaper (some 50 miles away\u00a0from her home) had hired her as a regular\u00a0columnist.<\/p>\n
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This photo of her holding Aaron\u00a0(a neighbor boy?) was probably taken around that time.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/gift_gab-history2.jpg\" "\\"gift_gab-history2\\"")
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As a young woman she loved to fish, write,\u00a0read, and hang out with her younger sister.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/gift_gab-history3.jpg\" "\\"gift_gab-history3\\"")
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Love this photo of my parents on their honeymoon.<\/p>\n
But what’s that\u00a0in her hair? Another big catch?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/gift_gab-history4.jpg\" "\\"gift_gab-history4\\"")
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Several years ago, while my mother was still alive, I wrote an essay that brings back lots of memories for me.<\/p>\n
Longhand<\/strong><\/p>\n With the help of my brother, my 83-year-old mother sent forth into the world her first Hi MaryJane,<\/em><\/p>\n I am staying down at Scott and Sue\u2019s for Easter. It\u2019s a treat whenever I am with my family. They are a love and delight for me as I continue to face a whole life without my wonderful husband, Allen. I think I am nearing a change in my attitude and beginning to enjoy time spent with my family and my special friend, Fern.\u00a0 Easter was a fun day\u00a0 …<\/em><\/p>\n When I sort through my mail and find a longhand letter from my mother, I know exactly her routine \u2014 tea, stationery, envelopes, stamps and pen; and always her search for a sunlit place to sit, usually our kitchen table. I can picture the tilt of her head and the quiet \u2014 just the sound of her pen scratching the paper and her teacup finding its saucer.<\/p>\n My mother was a newspaper columnist when she was 14 years old \u2014 meaning her longhand took a long time. Long before computers, even before fountain pens, her columns were delivered 50 miles, once per week, via Model T to a Salt Lake City newspaper. She wrote how-to stuff: how to be patient with a younger sibling, how to read and enjoy Shakespeare and Dickens at an early age, how to value your cousins. She did book reviews and researched things like why burning wood crackles. She gave gift suggestions and ideas for girls\u2019 clubs.<\/p>\n When I left home, my pace was faster. Sure, I wrote her a few letters, but usually I called. If I did write, my style was a fast print, nothing longhand. Even my signature was a blocky print version, nothing fine and pleasing to the eye, fluid and graceful like hers. I didn\u2019t have time for curves, a sunlit place. Tea.<\/p>\n All that changed one day. I was standing at a cash register in a grocery store, about to write a check, when I had the urge to slow … way … down.<\/p>\n I was on day two. The day before, I\u2019d lost my house in a fire. A fire burns fast. And the chaos it creates in your head is physically everywhere \u2014 blackened mattresses in the snow, water-logged books needing immediate care, the contents of file drawers spread out in frozen puddles, a computer and copy machine in last summer\u2019s flower bed \u2014 all of it carried out, in a hurry, by firefighters and neighbors.<\/p>\n While everyone stood with their grocery carts in line behind me, I turned 8 years old again, my hand trying to remember what I\u2019d practiced in grade school \u2014 calligraphy, the alphabet on dotted lines with rounded, connected letters. Whole, complete, connected words. Control and calm. Longhand.<\/p>\n I\u2019m over my fire now. I can\u2019t even remember the year it happened, maybe 1996. For several weeks after, I had a new full-time time job \u2014 managing the chaos and filing an insurance claim. I had to remember what was missing, in detail, methodically going from room to room. Insurance companies recommend producing a videotape of all your belongings. I had to pull mine from memory. I had to do this …\u00a0and I had to do that. My to-do list was unmanageable. Meanwhile, funny little things started happening. I\u2019d be driving somewhere and I\u2019d forget where I was going. (Moscow is a small town.) I lost my checkbook. My wallet. I lost my car keys. But the day I couldn\u2019t remember my name when asked, I knew I was in trouble.<\/p>\n I headed back to the motel room where we were staying (paid for by my insurance company) and I wrote, longhand, anything \u2014 a letter to my mother, to-do lists, my insurance claim, an inventory of everything in every room that was gone, every article of clothing. I wrote slowly. I wrote with a pencil and erased what wasn\u2019t perfect. I went shopping for the perfect pencil. I practiced my capital W over and over again until I got it right and the B in my last name. B\u2019s are tricky for me, so are small r\u2019s.<\/p>\n Someday, I\u2019ll master real calligraphy with different pens and inks, maybe even a feather that I dip, point and guide. To this day, longhand saves me, slows me down, puts me together, all connected again.<\/p>\n .\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was going through old photos and came across this little tidbit I hadn’t seen before that my mother wrote for a newspaper\u00a0when she was 13 years old. By the time she was 14,\u00a0the largest Utah\u00a0newspaper (some 50 miles away\u00a0from … Continue reading
\ne-mail, headed my way.<\/p>\n