Holiday Musings

This morning I wrote a letter to one of my mother's life-long friends in California, who doesn't know that Mom died this year.
As I wrote the letter, I realized again what kinds of legacies my mother left us. This is the legacy of friendships.
In 1945, Mom graduated from a small college for Methodist deaconesses in Kansas City, MO. Her friendships from those four years in KC lasted her lifetime.
I was named for her favorite teacher, Elizabeth Cooling. At Thanksgiving, I got to visit with the school librarian, Frances Bray. Her good friend Barbara Steele taught education at a college in South Dakota and was an inspiration for Mom's own teaching, as was Aunt Elizabeth.
Following graduation, Mom and several of her friends started a Round Robin that usually took a year to make the rounds, but getting and sending those Round Robin letters were highlights for Mom, especially in Masontown and New Florence. I have found a few of the letters Mom contributed to the RR, and they add pieces to my own story as Mom recounted the events of our lives.