Got a call today from Cora Price Funk - she'd gotten a book at BATS that had an inscription to me in it and she was SURE that I hadn't meant to part with the book.
The book was Drawn From Memory, by Ernest Shepherd, an illustrated memoir of his Victorian childhood. Cora was sure that I'd never intentionally let such a treasure out of my possession.
Actually, she was wrong. I did let it go, let it go quite deliberately. She thought some child had crossed out the inscription - To Elsa, from Mim Christmas 1976. No, I'd done that, just before I packed it up many years ago to pay forward to someone who wouldn't feel daggers in the hear looking at it.
I'd packed it up in the midst of heartbreak. Once Mom was reunited with her O Best Beloved, Mim felt free to let me know - in writing, no less! - that she a) didn't like me and b) never did.
The book rubbed salt in the resulting wounds because it seemed to epitomized all the grand times that we did have together, all the special times & memories which meant so much to me & I now believe meant a lot to her, too. At the time, all I knew was that she forgot everything I did for he, large & small, was horrified that I'd claim to have ever been there for her. At the time, all I felt from her was alienation & the deep horror that that was all she seemed to feel from me.. That charming book brought it all home like it was a sledge hammer.
So, I'd crossed out the inscription & bid it goodbye.
And there it was, wonder of wonders, this afternoon, reentering my life, returning at a time where I've come to peace with what is & embracing a deep appreciation of all that I experienced as "was." An unbidden blessing, indeed.
That was my first unbidden blessing of the day. The second arrived as I was putting up cards on the living room walls.
It was during our joint art show this past summer that I learned how super duper blue tape is for securing safely to the wall AND removes simply & completely. The light dawned to display ALL of the Christmas cards we've kept over the years, including ones from both our Moms, from my sibs & from dearly loved or long departed friends. Works like a charm!
Opened one with two kitties on the front, gazing into a fire. Assumed it would be from John, to me. It wasn't. It was to the two of us, from Chessie, Gryf, Rennie & Max. It included a deliciously whimsical & touching tribute from the "three kitties." Special special special. And purchased, composed & written by Peter. Yes, "Mim & me & the whole f----- world are sick of your control!!!" Peter.
The deliciously whimsical Peter is, I believe, the true PRL. The abrasive man who looks down his nose at me, is intensely unhappy to be near me, is the sham Peter, what he somehow thinks he's supposed to be - and isn't. The crazed lunatic who got up pre-dawn during snowstorms to shovel off our driveway & paths & steps before we got up. The fellow who'd stop by after work to sit on the living room couch, checking out the paper as he sat with the adoring cats. That man is the real deal. How those cats enjoyed him, and how they missed him. How we all missed him.
Peter at his best was the best sort of brother any girl could want. At his worst... You don't want to know.
A book & a card. A sense of joy & even home coming just looking at them. Will I ever have any sort of actual relationship with my sibs? My guess is "not" - but then, it turns out (to my shock but not surprise) that we apparently never did.
Or at least they didn't with me. I sure did with them, and that is really all that matters.
A book, a card, a sense of joy & peace & home coming. More unbidden blessings!
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