Letters Home

My heart leapt at what I read!  I stumbled onto a Facebook communication to one of my nieces from a name from the past! I didn't know she had been in contact with this cousin, daughter of my Uncle Robert, my mother's brother! The cousin was writing that she had found a letter from Mama, and wondered if my niece wanted it!

All the older generation of my mother's family, including Mama, have passed on, and I was never really in touch with their children.  But here was someone whose maiden name was the same last name as my mother! How I had wondered about this part of our family, always living distantly, their families growing up as ours were, not knowing each other.

I wasted no time in finding my cousin's Facebook page, and I messaged her that I would like a copy of the letter.  She replied immediately that she would send one, saying it was a long letter telling about my mother's childhood! How precious! A glimpse into the past!  She was also searching for pictures to include!

I can't wait to get the packet from her!  I have a large collection of Mama's letters that she wrote to me over the years when we lived in Mississippi, but this sounds like a much older letter, maybe from the days of my childhood? Mama was a good letter writer, and of course when I was little, there was no such thing as the instant communication we have today.

I remember a saved letter I saw once (never mailed, I think) when I was a little girl that she had written to her family in Texas. Her beautiful script covered several pages, tattered, even then. I can still see what she wrote: "Cooking supper, cornbread, buttermilk and poke sallit, what I like!" I can imagine Mama sitting down, wiping her brow with her apron, and finding a stubby pencil to dash off a letter home while she waited for the cornbread to bake in the oven of her wood stove, maybe being interrupted to remove the stove lid and add wood to cook the greens.  (I once asked her how she knew when the oven was hot enough, and she said, "By putting my hand in the oven!")

God sent us a letter, too. It's called the Bible.  It is full of letters from faithful men who were under divine inspiration to send the precious messages to us and all posterity. In it, we can find out about a place we have never seen, but one we will go to someday, if we obey the instruction letter and know and serve God.

There we will meet all the loved ones awaiting us there, some we have never met, but somehow we will know them.  I know my mother is there, the dear saint of God, who yearned for nothing more than to meet her family in heaven.  I plan to be there!