Knowing my mother as a teenager

I always thought of my mother as old. I know all kids think their parents are ancient, but my mother was 41 when I was born, and this was before it was trendy to have a child in one's forties. 

As a small child, I'd practically die of embarrassment and humiliation when I was out in public with my parents (my dad was 44 when I was born) and a stranger would ask them if I was their grandchild. 

When I was 15, Mum was 56, and boy, that was old. I could barely stand to be seen in public with her. But then I suddenly became 30, which meant my mother was 71. Whoa! VERY old. The day I woke up to find myself 60, my mother was 101. It was official now: she was really, really old. My mother died just short of her 102nd birthday.

Since I never knew my mother as a young person, you can imagine how excited I was to get to know her when she was 14. Fourteen, you say? You knew your mother when she was 14??

 No, I didn't know her then, but I got to know her, just a little, then.

A few years ago, while visiting my mother, she mentioned that she'd received from her brother Harry in New Brunswick a letter she had written to her pen pal, Muriel, in 1917. Muriel, who had lived in New Brunswick also when she was a child, had found this letter in her hope chest just recently, found Harry's name in the phone book for my mother's home town, and returned the letter to him. He sent it on to my mother in Maine.

So that's how my mother happened to receive a letter she'd written over 80 years ago as a young girl on a remote farm in New Brunswick.

I was so intrigued with the letter, and so happy to get a glimpse of my mother at age 14, that I asked her if I could have it. Mum readily agreed.

In her letter Mum refers to the Spanish influenza, World War I, the difficulty of finding teachers for their one-room school, her enjoyment of reading, and her project of saving soap wrappers in order to earn a book. 

I find her letter poignant. She sounds so innocent as a 14-year-old, especially when compared with 14-year-olds of today. She sounds lonely, too, but perhaps she wasn't. She occasionally told me stories of her childhood, and while she lived far from town, she had several siblings as well as friends from the settlement near her family's farm.

Anyway, this is a letter I treasure, with its 2¢ postage stamp and my mother's lovely hand writing. It's a glimpse of my mother long before I knew her, and it's a young girl I like a lot.