Postcards from Abroad

French Inland Waterways

I never realised how much the postcards I sent Mum (every week while we were in France ) meant to her. After the funeral I found piles of postcards and hand-made cards I'd made for her birthdays, Christmas and Easter, in a box of photos. There was also a map of the French Inland Waterways on which she'd plotted our progress each year.

I went through those photos this week and recalled the events that I'd recounted on each one. The most touching was a card in which I reflect that the hardships we'd been suffering aboard were nothing compared to the events of the day on which it had been written - 11/11/2001.

Some of the other postcards made reference to holidays Mum had planned or just taken. They reminded me that, contrary to my memory of her final decade, she'd been active and had many happy years after Dad died, spending time with her two sisters. Memory is, indeed, selective. I've started a scrapbook in which I am writing my memories as reported in those postcards from abroad.