A Father's Love (orig. published June 8 2006)

Yep, I already posted today (are there blog rules against 2 posts in a day?).....I'll flout blog etiquette & post again anyway. Just read this letter from Jean's father, Thomas (Tom), written to her on January 30, 1937.....shortly after she goes home to recover there from the back surgery. It charmed me so I had to share.

My Darling Girl-

Well I called Hess this eve and he said the pain in the back of your neck he thot was due more to lack of exercise of the muscles in your neck and shoulders and that the pain resulted from a sustained position and the muscles became strained and sore. He thinks a massage regularly for a while by some competent swedish "massager" or osteopath will get the muscles in your neck and shoulders active and then you will not have the trouble. I would suggest also that you sit down and write out all the facts, etc you can think of and then let Bob put it in letter form to Dr Binger and see what he says in reply. I notice you talk of discouragement over your condition. Well thats clearly out of line of good judgement at this time because you cant expect to feel 100 percent OK for a long time- much longer than 3 months after any operation like yours following too quite a few years of a generally bad condition. In other words you cant tear down for 4 or 5 years then go thru an operation like yours and clean up all aches and pains, get your full strength and good health back in an instant nor even months- so take those SILLY NOTIONS out of your little head and keep up your chin and gradually build up the health and strength thru nature and exercise.

I don't want to hear you refer to discouragement, that is not the thing- you can't win a fight by giving up and taking the count. Get your mind off of yourself . You remember a few years ago when I thot I was having everything in the world- and I didnt get right until I got my head right- did I. I think you are doing fine, just keep on walking and exercising. If you dont want to go to osteopath or someone start exercising your neck and shoulders for 5 min at a time 4 or 5 times a day.. Get all those muscles active and see if the results are not good. In the meantime keep that good old chin of yours UP. Lots of Love & Kisses, Yours......Dad ps Business has been GOOD.

"Ornery" (orig. published June 8, 2006)

"From April 16, 1937....Jean doing better now, well enough to fret over joining the Country Club in Burlington Iowa.

Hello Lambie-

Well I am glad the C Club fellows did not find out what a "terrible" couple you are and also find out about your "terrible" past. Now that you are both undiscovered I hope you will get real enjoyment out there at all times and too you can now get your NERVES settled again. "Fellow Members" I salute you. Poor little dear you have so many nerve racking troubles that DON'T exist, its funny how real troubles don't bother you. Anyhow the best peach in the orchard and the world- so there. Lots of Love & Kisses to my Fellow Members-Always Love- Ornery Dad"

Another One for Dad "Dad-isms"

This is out of order from my original Jean blogs back in 2006, but so apt for today I decided to add it. From June 27, 2006...

"Reading letters today (finally!). Its fascinating to think people once took all that time to write about things as mundane as what they ate for every meal of the day....and I mean EVERY piece! Details about hygiene, laundry, weather, what they are wearing. I suppose in our time we fire off an email now & then to close friends & family with these kinds of tedium....but the effort to WRITE it all down & take it to the post office! And Jean's parents write her nearly daily. Given the phone was still newer & expensive for long distance, I guess it makes sense, and they were indeed a close family. Its nice, really. Quaint even.
But Jean's Dad is the one who really spices up the letters! Either he adds a bit at the top or back, or writes his own short one separately.....some quotes...
"My Dear Babe....
Well, poured your Ma into a seat on the Challenger at 3:50 and started her for Lake Mich.
"Heard Roosevelt today, he's a nut"
Hello Kiddos, So busy this PM I forgot to get the Duchess until I was about 30 min late....
I think I find it refreshing how frank he is, how comfortable talking to his daughter....and how at ease he seems writing to her. Now, Mother, on the other hand.....writes as comfortably as a couple old gals at the bridge table! Happy to dish....and in an instance like this, her love for Jean is evident, even in a moment of cattiness.
"Well, I'd say that Virg. is dumb or jealous & Dorothy T also. She (Virg.) was afraid to ask you to her tea on your Wedding Anniv. or near it for fear someone would ask you what you got or were doing that day and it be so far ahead of her- and she couldn't stand it- too jealous. I'd see her in _____ before I'd ask her to my house until they do something for you & Bob."
Yikes! Someone slighted our dear Jean. Despite my not reading many things Jean HERSELF has written, I have definitely sensed a touch of insecurity in her......her anxiety over trying to please her Mother yet be a wife & adult where she & Bob are concerned during her surgery & recovery......many mentions in letters from both parents of her worries, other events she has hostessed in her home that were snubbed by "friends". I have yet to learn where her insecurity comes from.....though all it would take in the 30s would be a lack of children to feel "different". Funny, her Mother rarely speaks of other couple's children, and it appears as though her brother & his wife never had any, either.
They all seemed well off enough, so I can't imagine it was money that made her feel inferior to these other couples. I guess I can only hope to learn through future letters.....to what end, I can't say.....but I am curious. She dressed well, went to college, was in a sorority, married well.....didn't seem to want for much. Entertained often.....curious. It makes me sad for her....often I wish there would have been a way to have known her before she passed away, though I'd never had gotten access to this with her alive. Strange to "miss" someone you never knew.....a person who I am getting to know as a young girl that it would never have been POSSIBLE for me to know. While its fascinating, its almost always tinged with a little sadness.
Eventually I will figure out what the lesson is here. I'll be sure to share that.....! Ang "

Lambie (aka Jean), and a Happy Birthday to Dad

Originally published on MySpace on June 1, 2006.

"I do intend to share some of the more fashion-related snippets from letters with you all, as this whole things IS clothing related. But in reading these letters, I am gaining such a sense of who Jean's FAMILY was.......what family meant to them......I can't help but be moved by that , and in some ways that is becoming more compelling to me than the wardrobe!

I've mentioned that there are few letters in my possession from before 1935....I've got the wedding invitation, a few letters & postcards, but the bulk of it begins in '35. It appears her father worked in the coal industry....as a salesman or something similar. They were in Iowa, but he was transferred to Kentucky for most of 1935, to help a fledgeling or struggling office. He & Jeans mother (who's name I do not know yet, but her father was Thomas) rented an apartment there temporarily. Her mother didn't like it.....remarks often about how dirty it was, that everything was black all the time.....windows, rugs, linens. She made some friends through church, they ate often at a place called the Blue Boar & at Bishops, went for rides, the Derby, played golf. By early 1936, Thomas had struck up a deal to open his own coal yard & get back to Iowa, a business he called Thos. Boone Fuels. I imagine that took some doing at the tail end of the depression!

Their letters are not unlike our emails to good friends and family today.....quick synopsis of a day or two's events, some gossip, some remarks about current fashions she had read of or seen while shopping....opinions on movies, operas & who they had listened to on the radio. She & her mother wrote each other at least a few times a week, and her father had a minor obsession going with tracking how quickly a letter sent "special" would arrive in Burlington Iowa from Loiusville Kentucky.........where it went through, what time it would arrive.

I will be creating a post or several at some point to show all the newspaper clippings her mother sent her....mostly fashion ads & articles, some politcal satire, some entertainment reviews. Some letters remark on fashions, colors, "new" things she had seen (shiny patent collars & matching shoes!!! I'd love to come across some of those...). But today as I read one set of letters (many envelopes contained a long letter from mom, and a brief one from her father), I was taken by the terms of endearment used. Simple, likely taken for granted at the time.....perhaps not, though it seems human nature to do so.....but now a wonderful glimpse into the love this family shared.

In a shorter than usual letter from her mother....she talks about her father's car breaking down on the way home, an ache in her lower back, mending a satin slip, "raiding the ice box to make dinner" which seems to be code for eating what's left in it before a grocery run, missing a ball game due to rain. At the end she signs it simply (but a different way than the other 50 or so letters I've read)......"Worlds of Love, Mother".

Her father's letter of the same date, September 11 1936, is much more to the point, a half page if that. He starts it simply.....

"Dear Lambie", then goes on to say

"Just got your letter 9 pm, rained in office this evening like the devil- going to recover that roof with paper and tar as quick as the sun comes out. Sold 17 tons today cash about $80. So dam tired- going right home to bed. Ma & Mrs R are out in the car. She will write you Sunday no doubt. Glad you are feeling good and hope Bob is too. Got to do something about your Ma's back- she can't get off her fanny ........Lots of Love & K's, Yours & Yours.....Dad"

What moved me was how real it was, not stilted or forced. Genuine. I imagine a family of 4 who had spent years all together, now scattered across the midwest, found great joy & comfort in these frequent letters.....looking forward to them, sending gifts to each other when they could, planning visits. In a time when a phone call was an extravagance....these papers were the way they kept their family TOGETHER. What purpose it really serves for me to have them now isn't quite clear to me, but I am very glad I do.......Ang"

That happens to be the exact place I'm at in re-publishing these older Jean themed blogs from 2006, and a poignant one at that to be reminded today of the love between a father and daughter...as today is my Dad's birthday, the 2nd one without him here to tease about getting old, drink a beer with, laugh and complain about life with. I wanted to blog more in depth about this this morning but couldn't bring myself to do it. Its interesting that this entry from 3 years ago would be the one to speak, in a way, for me and Dad today.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Miss you.

~Ang

One Year.

Dad died as I sat helplessly by his side one year ago today. The sun was setting and my Mom had left to take my sister home, we'd been there all day with him as the hospice workers administered morphine to help ease the pain and get him some much needed rest. They had just come in to freshen up the bedding and adjust things and he was asleep....I dimmed the lights and sat there with him, just us, in the gathering darkness.

I told him I loved him, told him it was ok to go....to let go and be free from the pain. And then he left.

I never knew what it was like to be with someone you love when their soul leaves the body. I had never known the pain I felt in that moment. The desperation, the emptiness, the anger, the fear....wishing I could take back telling him to go, wishing I could beg him to stay. But knowing that that would be selfish, and the pain was so tremendous that his release was a blessing. My head knew that but my heart was shattering into a million pieces and the little girl in me was screaming for her Dad not to go, bewildered by the loss and overwhelmed by the grief.

The grown up me had to handle arrangements, utterly clueless as to how to go about such a thing in such shock (thank you, Mom, for the strength you gave me during that time...I know you loved him too, despite how things ended up between you). And the grown up me has had to work through a lot of the grown up stuff that goes with the loss of a parent. Probably a blessing in and of itself for the distraction it provides.

But the little girl me watched the sun set tonight and remembers. Remembers everything, brutal and cruel and terrifying, everything about what cancer did to her Dad....how cancer stole her Dad long before he should have left this earth. Watching the sun set. Crying. Remembering. Alone.

And then as dusk swelled above the sliver of light left from the sun of today, one single bright star appeared.

Thanks, Dad. I love you too.

~Ang

Wow.

Some nights Dad would accidentally leave the radio on a channel he'd listened to a game on......he was never a fan of "new" country but somehow we listened to our share of it while we sat in his kitchen, smoking cigarettes, drinking a few Bud Lights and talking about life. He would make comments about the music but neither one of us would get up to change it....no idea why.

I ran across this song on a blog this morning, an odd series of clicks led me to it but I have no doubt somehow its Dad reaching out to me and reminding me that I am indeed ready to do this on my own. I've been struggling with his birthday being this week and with facing my little girl's preschool graduation tonight and her starting kindergarten next week, not feeling ready to acknowledge that SHE is ready to do things on her own.

Now I know we both can handle it. Thanks, Dad.

Wind blowing on my face
Sidewalk flying beneath my bike
A five year olds first taste
Of what freedom's really like
He was running right beside me
His hand holding on the seat
I took a deep breath and hollered
As I headed for the street

"You can let go now daddy
You can let go
Oh I think I'm ready to do this on my own
It's still a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be okay now daddy
You can let go"

I was standing at the altar
Between the two loves of my life
To one I've been a daughter
To one I soon would be a wife
When the preacher asked
"Who gives this woman?"
Daddy's eyes filled up with tears
He kept holding tightly to my arm
'Til I whispered in his ear:

"You can let go now daddy
You can let go
Oh I think I'm ready to do this on my own
It's still feels a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be okay now daddy
You can let go"

It was killing me
To see the strongest man I ever knew
Wasting away to nothing in that hospital room
"You know he's only hanging on for you"
That's what the night nurse said
My voice and heart were breaking
As I crawled up in his bed and said:

You can let go now daddy
You can let go
Your little girl is ready to do this on my own
Its gonna be a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be okay now daddy
You can let go
You can let go

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I wish I had something super cool to say.....but I can't think of anything. I miss you. Happy Birthday, I hope you're up there knocking back a few cold ones with your buddies after a day of driving that Willys of your dreams.

I love you, and miss you every day.

~Ang

Dad.

i'll miss you.....love you forever. thank you for being my dad.

~ang