The words “fan email” were printed in my mother’s careful hand on top of a shoe box that I found while I was cleaning my office closet for the remediation team after Eaton fires.
Many years ago, I wrote a column for The Pasadena Star News entitled “On single parents”.
My mother was very excited by this chronicle because I wrote each word on the portable typewriter she gave me for my 16th birthday. It was his positive proof that fueling my passion for writing was the right decision.
She visited me from Virginie when the columns previewed and were very proud to cut them every week and organize them in files. The Star News sent me a letter on the chronicle and mom and I liked to read them together. I did not know she had kept them in shoe boxes until I find this one.
In fact, I was not sure that they existed even after all these years.
By reading them, I discovered that my mother had created her own method of syndication for my column. Congratulations, notes from all over the country came from aunts, uncles, cousins and his friends, some of whom I had never met. I applaud my mother, who had very traditional standards, for having made her own advertisement for me at a time when a divorced girl with a child was perhaps not something to boast.
What a gift to find this “mail of the fans” now on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the editorial staff of this column. Mom had no qualms in my chronicle of senior moments. Although not everyone is single, not everyone will age. She was again with her advertising. Ask everyone who lived in his retirement home.
I no longer write my column on what I considered myself as mom’s type of writing, but Maggie sits next to my desktop computer and inspires me every week.
She also speaks to me: “What do you mean that you cannot decide what to write?” What would your mother say? All you need is a tap or two of my fingers on the tense keys of Maggie and I am back on the right track.
I could not ask for 16 years softer than the latter interacted with my readers every week. If you have something you want to tell me, I’m starting a new shoe box.
E-mail patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com
California Daily Newspapers
