Letters for Sally

Chapter 7

Chapter 7
Sally packed her bags and then entered her mother's room.  She decided to look through her things.  She had not touched anything yet and she found the strength to look at her mother's stuff.  She found just a touch of joy when she could in some small way connect with her mother.  She looked at each dress and ran her long fingers down the width of each garment.  She loved the feel of her mother's silk dresses and cotton night gowns.  She decided to take several of the night gowns for herself.  She felt close to her mother when she wore them.  She hugged her mom's winter jacket that still had the smell of her mother's sweet perfume.  She decided she would take that as well.  She figured she would need an extra coat in Montana's cold winter months.  Sally went over to her mother's dresser and took her mother's perfume.  She had the idea that she could keep spraying her coat to keep the smell of her on it.  She looked at her mother's shoes and smiled as she thought about her mother insisting that she walked everywhere instead of having a driver take her places.  Her mother liked to exercise and be productive at the same time, she knew she got her practical and logical side from her mother.  She wished she could have met her father as an older kid and remember him differently.  She knew what her mother told her about him.  She knew she had his blond hair and blue eyes but she had her mother's face, body style and personality.  Sally looked to her mother's old chest at the foot of her bed and decided she would look through that and see what was inside. She never intruded on her mother's things or looked in the chest before.  She had a slight hesitation to look now but her logic reminded her that her mother wouldn't be upset, she was gone.  Sally, took a deep breath and walked toward the chest.  She ran her long fingers across the top to feel the old leather.  She touched each lock on the front of the chest and popped the locks open.  The switch sound startled her for a moment and she felt herself feeling like she was intruding into her mother's personal things again.  She reminded herself once again that her mother was gone and technically this now all belonged to her.  The thought ran through her mind that it was funny how she felt as if her mother could walk through the door anytime and look at her with disappointment on her face.  She knew her mom was dead, she saw her in the casket and had to identify her in the hospital room.  She knew what she saw but sometimes it felt like her mind would play tricks on her and she would feel like her mom was just out of town for business and would be back soon.  Sally looked down at the open locks and then slowly picked the chest door open.  It smelled of cedar wood and her mother's sweet perfume.  It was full of notebooks and pictures she had never seen before.  A wedding dress, an old quilted blanket, a pair of white high heels, a box with jewelry and what looked like it was a man and woman's wedding ring set.  She pulled each item out and touched it, smelled it and held it in her arms.  This box contained a part of her mother she never knew of and it was a sweet moment.  It was comforting and exciting for Sally to be able to learn something new about her mom.  She started to look through the notebooks one by one.  They were all in her mother's hand writing, diary and journal notes with dates.  She counted the dates on several and found these were years of journals and notes of her mother's life!  Some of these were from when she was a teenager.  She set them aside and kept thumbing through each one skim reading the pages and then putting the books in order by dates.  She came to one notebook that had a title on the front cover, 'The story of us'.  She looked inside the first page and started to read.

'I saw him again today and I knew I was in love.  Who admits they are in love at only 21 years old!  But here I am so much in love with a boy I have now met four times.  There is something about his blond haired and deep blue eyed boy.  His eyes are like swimming pools or maybe like the ocean on the sunniest of days.  I felt like I got lost in those eyes on day one.  His body was so hot!  His arms were solid and his back was muscular and toned.  Yeah, I do not think in all my 21 years I have ever been this attracted and falling so fast for someone like I am this guy.  He smiles and I melt!  What is wrong with me!  I believe I am losing my mind but I am not so sure I care.'

She smiled and looked up from this notebook, maybe the most treasured thing she had ever held in her arms.  This was the story of her mother and her father falling in love.  She put it down to her side and started to read other parts of the other notebooks.  She sat for hours reading about her mother's adolescent years and found herself chuckling from time to time realizing just how much she was like her mother.  She felt a deep connection to her momma in a fun new way and found joy in reading these books left behind.  She had no idea they existed and why would she.  All she knew was that she was glad they existed and that she found them. 

Sally started to put all the other items back in the chest when an envelope fell out of a fold in the wedding dress. She opened the envelope up and looked inside.  It was a big enough envelope for a full size paper and it was packed full of what seemed to be letters.  All hand written and she knew that writing too.  It was the writing of her father.  She recognized the hand writing from the letters he had written her.  She took them out and started skim reading them as well.  After a few she realized they were love letters to her mother from her father.  He wrote to her almost daily according to the dates on the tops of the letters.  She knew she needed to read these also.  She put them back into the envelope and placed them beside the other books she planned to take on her trip to the Ranch.

She packed all the notebooks and letters into her bag with her laptop.  She knew that she would be reading these daily for a while.  Apparently her father wasn't the only writer in the family.  She knew that while she was on the Ranch she would be taking time to read these memories her mother had left behind along with the love letters she had found written by her father.  Her heart felt full when she thought about the stories of her mom's teen years she had read and she loved the idea of her being so much like her.  She knew the notebooks and letters wouldn't bring them back from death but she felt connected to them again when she read them.  She read a few pages several times.  It wasn't like reading a normal book.  It was so much more special and exciting.  She found after she would read for a while her mind would wonder and just think about them and replay what she had read back in her mind.  She found herself just hugging the notebooks or letter tight and smiling to herself.  It was like this little world that only she knew about where her and her parents were together again.