Scoop

“She wrote on scraps of paper, and in the margins of books, and on the backs of photos, telling the stories of her life.”

My mother would have been 96 years old today. She was many things to many people and there are many stories to be told about her, but tonight I am remembering her for the work that was her own, work she was proud of, her work as a newspaper reporter. Her degree was in home economics, a hot topic in in the early 40's, and she was thrilled to cover news about all things related to the economics and management of the home, the family and communities. She was passionate about all of it, because she believed it was really, really important. 

After she married and began having and raising children, she gave up her work with the newspaper, returning as a features writer and editor some 25 years later. Eventually, she left her credentials behind, but through it all she was a writer, regardless of her professional status, though she never claimed the title. 

She wrote beautiful letters, and quips on the huge calendar used to track her large family, and notes to us about the vast array of things she was interested in, and book reviews and annotated recipes. She wrote on scraps of paper and in the margins of books, and on the backs of phots, telling the stories of her life.

She wrote, in fact, until she couldn't. Until she couldn’t remember how to spell, how to form letters, until she couldn’t hold a pencil, or know it’s relationship to paper. She was going to write a book. But, in the end, there was no time left for that, perhaps because she chose instead to simply live it all, all the stories that book would have contained, all the stories we remember with such fondness. 

Oh, and, to my Dad, she was always and forever: Scoop!