Dear Pearl,
Happy New Year! We received the red book of your Xmas stories yesterday. First, just wait until your daughter is a writer and “tells all”! I just wasn’t ready yesterday, but today, I’m ready! I don’t know about guns hanging on the bedpost, but you are surely not the first woman in this family to go to bed with a gamblin’ man.
A little motherly advice: Just whoever is in that bed with you, don’t catch anything from them and if you do, see the doctor pronto!
Second, how come the thing you like best about Xmas is lying under the tree looking up through the lights and all? Have you ever heard me say that about myself? Presents, dinners, family gatherings really meant very little to me at Xmas as far back as I can remember. I always like best lying under the tree, looking up. When I was little, no one minded, but as I grew up, I stayed up late so I could indulge alone, usually with Christmas carols on the radio. I guess that’s why I love Xmas carols now. They bring back the “under the tree” feeling. I never heard anybody say that but you and me.
Christmas has otherwise meant very little to me. I never understand loads of presents. They always seem to miss the point. And the only really happy sort of Xmas I remember with you all was when we played games all the time and listened to that Miriam Makeba record. Otherwise, Xmas was nice because I didn’t have to work; a nice low-key holiday like we had when I was small. There was never excitement at our house, just the usual feeling of peaceful security. Now about marijuana. What does it do for you? Escape? Like wine? Stronger? I guess Kris and Jim smoke it too because when they heard I was sick, they sent me some joints. I still have them in a little vial in case I need them.
Back to the little red Xmas book. I feel like I understand exactly what you mean about still loving someone who is bad to you. Did you all think I knew that when you were teenagers in 1967? Boy, did I! And since then, too, but if the love lasts in spite of it, you don’t get quite so “hungry” or quite so “cold.” But you can’t make love do anything. Lost or not lost. So when you are without it, you’ll enjoy all the other parts of yourself and sort of wait. At least I think that’s what I did. Did you know that I left your father in 1954 and didn’t remarry until 1960? A long, but not unfruitful five years and I wouldn’t change them for anything because I learned to depend on myself in a way I couldn’t have imagined because I thought I was already independent. I was incredibly green about people and life.
Two more short things in closing:
1. The main objection I have to artificial trees: no smell.
2. Did you ever read a life of Dylan Thomas? I don’t think he ever had a Xmas like the one he describes in A Child’s Christmas in Wales after his childhood ended. You know he finally drank himself to death and not even at home, but going from bar to bar, in Wales, or New York City, or wherever he was, but that poem was an unforgettable Christmas for him and he really wrote it!
I hope your trip to Indiana was good in every way, and your New Year, too, and last of all, I don’t know how to say how much it means to me to have the little red book of stories dedicated to me! For me? Wow! Thank you . . .
Love,
Ma