Old Notes

While looking for things in my mother's bedroom (and I don't know how long we'll call it that, but I would bet 'for a good long time'), we found an autograph book that she'd had in high school, seventy years ago. It was an amazing document for us to read -- a tangible piece of her history that, up to now, I think I might have seen once before, when I was a kid, and my mother was decades from being a senior citizen.

I learned from it that corny humor is forever, because some of the comments in it were used when I went through high school. I learned that many people noted that they wanted to keep in touch, or not be forgotten -- and how many, I wondered, are even still alive? And if they are, remember my mother? Only, it turns out, they might not remember her as I do -- while most have her name, or her obvious nickname, as the salutation, two or three are addressed to 'Mac' -- which is the beginning of her maiden name. People knew my mother as Mac? Looking at her list of favorites -- favorite author, book, sport, teacher, subject -- I recognized only one. Who are these people, these things, I wondered.

And then, in the middle, in not-too-careful script, I came across this --

Ha Ha Ha Ha
It Makes Me Laugh
To Sign My Own
Autograph

My mother wrote that? My mother was a giggling teenage girl? My mother???

Makes me wish I'd known her better.