Second Thoughts

So I had this big surprise for my Mom for her birthday. In order to understand the scope of it, let me give you some background information. When my Mom went to marry my father and live in Cote D’Ivoire, she packed her clothes, and she back two or three trunks. In those trunks she packed away family photos, heirlooms, clippings, home movies, diplomas, and general items that one has that reminds them of their life. Things you would want to pass onto your children, and save for posterity. So she goes over to Cote D’Ivoire and after getting settled she lets my soon to be father know that she needs to go pick up her trunks. From my understanding she asks several times before he finally tells her flat out no, that he’s not going to get them or taking her to go get them regardless that she has the money to get them out of storage. Why, because she’s starting a new life with him anyway, what does she want with those old things. So all of things she packed are gone, destroyed, sold, or just thrown away.

Can you imagine everything you ever saved, photos that you had growing, momentos that your mother, who is now deceased, everything from your past pretty much gone. Yea my father is real bastard but that’s not the focus of this posting. So when I have been working on is trying to do a this is your life retrospective. Focusing on the life from my Mom’s high school to 1981, before she met my father, right now I’m making impressive headway. I have found a copy of her 1966 high school year book the year before she graduated. I have copies of all four years of her college yearbook, and the school even helped me get newspaper clippings from her college years that mentioned her. I also have copy of the article that discusses her college chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s 50 year celebration, and get this, even has a photo of my mom and her line sisters the day after they crossed, and yes they do look tired. I even found a 1979 letter to the editor that my Mom wrote that was published in the New York Times. Right now I’m working with Columbia where she got her Master’s in Social Work, and NYU where she got her MBA, and was named woman of the year. Unfortunately with large schools look that, the alumni office are only but so helpful. I called up Columbia’s records office, and they told me in order to get any information I had to get a power of attorney’s letter. But I called up her school’s alumni affairs office and they helped. I have to follow up with the same with NYUs’ Stern as well.

Besides the school portion I am trying to get a hold of the Harlem Interfaith Council I know she worked there, but for how long I am not too sure. I cannot find a working number for them, I was hoping that they would have some photos, news clippings or a press release dating back from that era that may have my mom’s mentioned.

Now I am reconsidering the idea, why, because my mom is depressed and just overall sad about a lot of things. I’m thinking showing her photos, and memories of yesterday will only make her even more depressed. Maybe I should just get her some Carols Daughter and just keep it moving, I don’t know….