Letters from my Mom

Recently I went through the letters that my mom wrote to me while I was away at school. My mom and I were very close, even though I have to admit that I sometimes treated her horribly during my teenage years. But you couldn't tell from those letters. She wrote about the good times she remembered before I left for school and how much she missed me. I could almost hear her voice while going through these letters.

There are many more letters that I received from my mom over the years, but these ones touched me in a very special way. In simple words she mentioned what we had done together, our little quirky gestures and sayings that only both of us understood and were like a secret bond between us. I had almost forgotten some of these and it was heartwarming to be reminded of them again.

My mom passed away three years ago. There aren't many letters left from the last 15 years of her life because we had talked more on the phone. After my daughter was born I had no time for writing letters, and I also tried for Kaefer to see her grandparents as often as possible. That became very difficult when we moved to the States and always involved long, exhausting flights with ridiculously long waits in airports.

I feel so blessed to have these letters that were written as a loving mom to her youngest daughter. Eventually they will be passed along to Kaefer when she will be grown up and can understand the treasure of these written words. Handwritten letters to and from loved ones are so powerful and even more treasured in our computerized age.

I copied three of the letters and created a little collage with a photo of my mom that was taken in the sixties. I haven't worked much on canvas, so this was still pretty new to me. How much did I love to play around with gel medium, crumple up paper and mess around with distress ink (one of my favorite "toys"). The copied letters fit exactly into the glass tubes that I sealed with dried poppy seed heads sprayed with glimmer mist. My mom loved the fields in Germany that were colorfully spotted with thousands of red poppies.

The collage will get a special spot in my work room where it will always remind me of the power of my mother's love.


April 2011: I'm linking this to this week's Inpiration Avenue challenge, "Mother".


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