Carol Shields, Pulitzer Prize winning author, shared her memories of her mother's Christmas correspondence.
"My mother's Christmas cards made me see her differently. Her life was wider, more vivid, more thrilling than it appeared. Furthermore ~ and this seemed close to impossible to believe ~ she had had a real life before she met my father, before her children were born. Before me. ..
"The most eagerly awaited card, really a mimeographed letter, came from a man called Alvah Swain. My mother had met Alvah Swain ~ a journalist, a politician, a friend of Will Rogers ~ on a train trip she took when she was 20, and it flattered her to think that such an important person remembered the brief connection and honoured it each Christmas season with a detailed account of his busy year. She opened his letters breathlessly and read them aloud to the family, always, of course, setting Mr. Swain into historical context."
Source: "It's in the Cards," Carol Shields (1935 - 2003), Canadian Living, December 1998
"My mother's Christmas cards made me see her differently. Her life was wider, more vivid, more thrilling than it appeared. Furthermore ~ and this seemed close to impossible to believe ~ she had had a real life before she met my father, before her children were born. Before me. ..
"The most eagerly awaited card, really a mimeographed letter, came from a man called Alvah Swain. My mother had met Alvah Swain ~ a journalist, a politician, a friend of Will Rogers ~ on a train trip she took when she was 20, and it flattered her to think that such an important person remembered the brief connection and honoured it each Christmas season with a detailed account of his busy year. She opened his letters breathlessly and read them aloud to the family, always, of course, setting Mr. Swain into historical context."
Source: "It's in the Cards," Carol Shields (1935 - 2003), Canadian Living, December 1998
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