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| Erva Parsell ... a study in old photos of loved ones from the past ... |
For some reason I put the picture on my desktop and have been looking at her ever since, stopping to think about her when my eye is going across the desktop, looking for something else.
That is what happens when my electronic desktop takes the form of some of my other desktops -- piled high with old files, projects to do in the future, Halloween .gifs, electronic files full of work.
I have written about Erva before, so I won't stop to do that again. But I have stopped at this picture many times, wondering what questions I would ask her about her life if I could interview her now.
I am going to link to another post. One where I try to talk about my mother, and Erva gets in the way, as she has been doing again when I see her face on my desktop.
Arta
Why was Aunt Erva getting in the way of you talking to your mother? I'd like to hear that story. I think I have a photo of Erva and your mom and children with their parents on my wall.
ReplyDeleteHere is the answer to your question. I tried once to write about my mother, but it turned into a story of other women coming to her house and quilting. There is lots in that story about the other women. Not much about my mother.
DeleteSo I tried again. The second time I went to write about my mother, I typed, but when I looked down at the paragraphs, the story was all about Erva. Well not all. Some was about how Erva made expensive fruit salads and my mom was afraid Erva was spending too much money on us. And the I was thinking about how hard my mother tried to explain Erva's failed marriages, but was unable to be clear about what had happened in them. My guess is that when I sit down to write about my mother I have some unanswered questions about her life and I try to work the answers out by talking about people who surrounded my mother. I will write down in my daytimer to take another try at getting to my observations about who my mother was ... without slipping into a discussion about her friends or in-laws. I guess that is a long answer to the question, by did Erva (and others) get in the way when I went to write about my mother.
Short answer is, I don't know why.
Erva was one of a kind. We were all always worried that she would climb into bed with us because she snuggled too much.
ReplyDeleteWould it be right to say that Erva was a night-cuddler. As children, others of us weren't. I didn't want to be cuddled and neither did you, that is for sure.
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