Inside one of the 104 boxes of stuff from my mother’s house I found her Daily Reminder book, 1963.
It has a red cover, now tattered around the edges, and pages full of her lovely, ladylike script. Along with mailing addresses for her parents and for the music director at the church there are notations for radio contacts in New York, San Francisco and Miami. My mother was the public relations director for the Maid of Cotton tour, which means nothing now but was apparently a fancy post back in 1963.
Thursday, January 31, 1963: London, Ontario
A rushed day, this way. L. has scheduled shows for afternoon and evening, so no plans for entertainment. We were delighted to be able to eat in the Shamrock Room where the Crew Cuts were the featured attraction.
In 2005 my mother, who had been sick for some time, died suddenly. My children were barely toddlers, and we were midway through renovating a 100 year old house. The hospice nurse said my mother was the strong willed sort and that she would probably have a months-long decline. My mother was the strong willed sort. When she was ready to die, she died, three days after the hospice nurse said it would likely be months.
So there we were, small children, unfinished house, mother’s house to pack. My sister, who lived out of town, and I divvied up the things we knew we wanted – dishes, artwork, furniture. After Margaret returned home and while I tended children, my husband and our dear friend Louie spent six straight nights packing what was left of Betty’s stuff – clothes, knick-knacks, and thousands of books – into liquor store boxes for transport. They tried to be orderly, but they were packing a stranger’s belongings. The best they could be was gentle.
Thursday, February 7, 1963: Miami
First rtw show – and a good one. Jordan Marsh is a lovely store of little shops such as Bendel has.
“Take all of that stuff directly to the Goodwill; do not let it into your house,” a friend cautioned, strongly; but I was too overwhelmed to do it. Bernard wouldn’t have let me anyway. Weeks before she died my mother whispered to him, “Don’t let Jennifer just throw all this stuff away; I have some books that are very valuable, even if she doesn’t want them.”
He and I both knew she was being truthful, though we had no idea what to look for. So he boxed up everything, carefully, and I stored it, carefully, in a room we didn’t plan to use.
Memoranda: Locations for MOC Pix: ‘5th Ave.’ open bus at Six Flags over Texas park outside Dallas
I have been married to almost every sort of daily planner from my first, a Filofax, to my current, from Levenger, with many years of Franklin Covey in between. I began keeping a planner when I left my job teaching art to start a career in marketing and public relations. Before the Filofax there were art journals, six of them, each half-filled with doodles and watercolor sketches and cutouts from various contact sheets.
My daily planners are part calendar and mostly note catchers. I write lists. I jot down ideas. I chronicle meetings. I rewrite lists.
In my 2007 daily reminder book I wrote a plan for dealing with the boxes in the sunroom. I would unpack a box a week month. During a weekend. But it didn’t happen, not one box.
I transferred that to-do item to 2008’s calendar, but 2008 went quickly awry, as did 2009. No list in a planner could have tamed either of those years.
Expenses: Coffee in room for all: 1.25; Cabs R.C.: 4.00; S. haircut and manicure: 5.75
I decided last December that 2014 would be the year. I didn’t write it down; I just got started.
On Boxing Day I unpacked the first six of Betty’s boxes. On New Year’s Day I tackled 10 before I had to hit Pause. I found my Nancy Drew books and a tattered paperback copy of The End of the Affair, one of my favorite books, and a signed first edition of Uhuru, one of my mother’s favorites.
Then I found my mother’s secret life, the Betty who existed before Betty my mother emerged. This Betty dined at Maxim’s and shopped couture. She got cross with her co-worker and then made up because they were dear friends. She remembered birthdays. She watched sunsets. She had not a single thought of one day being my mother, of driving carpool and writing grocery lists and scheduling dentist appointments. 1963 was hers.
In all the boxes of books, Daily Reminder 1963 was the only date book I found, the only year she salvaged. One tattered red book.
I imagine my children, years from now (many, I hope), sifting through history and stumbling on my past. Which book will I keep so they will see the time when the days minded me, long before their mother was tasked with minding the day?
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This post was written for the WordPress Weekly Writing Challenge: Object. To learn more about blogging with WordPress, visit wordpress.com.
Jenny's Lark 
26 responses to “Minding the day.”
What a lovely find, you now is the bloggers daughter, I love to read information like this, I used to collect letter some 150 years old and what sound mundane is fascinating to me and others that love social history. What does it say for 11 April 1963……..If it says baby boy born today…..your my long lost sister 🙂
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Good to hear from you, Pete, and thanks for the kind note. No word of a boy in the red book, but there is this: “Fight with M. over shoes fitting or not. Why can’t I make friends with her? My Irish gets up much too easily.”
One day I’m coming over to find her kin.
Cheers to you, friend.
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I have just re-read my post and my English is not great lol. I had a collecton of letters written between to lovers started in 1908 and the last letter dated 1918, they were between a gentleman who travelled and the woman Jane, who was a trainee teacher and then a teacher in Edinburgh. The letters were just chatting like we would in an email.
I picked up my grandchildren from Edinburgh station on Saturday and it reminded me of a passage from Jane as she travelled from Edinburgh down south after New Year in 1914 and she writes ‘My train has been cancelled and the crowds are gathering for the Kings train arriving’ I could just imagine as I stood at the station Jane standing huffing.
Another of the letters send from the gentleman dated 1914 and it said ‘ I sit here in the Paris sunshine sipping my coffee, who would think that a war is raging just 70 miles away’
These voices from the past makes the hairs stand up on my neck, here is the sad part, I no longer have the letters I loaned the to the history department at the local High school and they have lost them, they think they were thrown out. I was and still am gutted.
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What a loss! And a great story. Would make a good story line for a novel.
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I wanted the letters back to do just that, I visited the address in Edinburgh and the house is still standing and I wrote to the address on one of the letters to the teacher training college not knowing what I would get back and to my surprise I got a reply and the college is now a Christian Centre that trains ministers.
I was going to write a movie script now I had more time but those letters has gone. One of them was written in pencil and it said
‘Sorry that I am writing in pencil but I am sick and in bed and did not wish to risk spilling the ink on the bed covers’
Then in the same letter she invited her Gentleman to her bedroom if he was visiting over the next few days as she wasn’t expect to rise before that, the brazen hussy lol.
You just couldn’t imagine that and it would make a great romcom. 🙂
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What an incredible find. Something to truly cherish
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No kidding! And a complete surprise, which was extra fun.
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Beautifully done.
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Thanks!
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A great story that is filled with many memories. I recently rediscover my grandmother’s graduation diploma from grammer school in 1917 in our basement. In talking with my mom last weekend about it, I learned my grandmother never went to high school but was very proud of her grammer school diploma. I’m glad I saved it all thisr yeats ago and plan on displaying somewhere in my old house (BTW…us old house care takers never finish all the projects).
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This is lovely, Jennifer. What was once mundane – an expense report, location for a photo shoot – suddenly becomes a portrait of your mother’s life. Beautiful. Though I’m kind of scared for what my kids will one day find in my old journals.
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Thanks, Andrea. It was a fun writing challenge! I wonder, too, what our kids will do with our online detritus. Oh the things I once posted….Cheers.
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Lovely. I hope you have the book displayed somewhere special to you.
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Thanks! Yes, somewhere special and well out of the dogs’ reach!
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You write so wonderfully of your mother. I remember that I found your blog through the piece on Freshly Pressed. What a tribute. (As for calendars, journals and the like … I can hardly read my own old ones. Who was that stranger? And can only imagine what someone might make of them long hence!)
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Thanks, Michelle. Cheers to having found each another (and many great others) through Freshly Pressed, to the strangers in our journals, and most of all to the people we are now.
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[…] move all the boxes and then six hours to get through the very first box I opened, the one that held my mother’s 1963 date book and all of the letters between my father and her during Mama’s stint as PR manager for the […]
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