A while back I scanned some of Bella’s awesome letters — tattle telling quandaries and Mom-and-Dad billet-douxs, mostly. In a scavenger hunt through Photobucket tonight, I rediscovered a few of those.
The urgent letter to the Principal of W.T. Hanes Elementary:
If I had to pick a favorite, the letter to Mrs. Blevins would probably be it. It’s got third-grade narcing, “panting,” and is signed with “love.” More importantly, this one demonstrates proper, early parenthetical usage, which makes this maternal word nerd’s heart swell times nine million. I remember scanning it, too, as I only had a few seconds to confiscate the note and replace it in order to avoid suspicion.
The Rick Perry Letter:
The Perry letter was read aloud in a faculty meeting. THEN it was read again at an ATPE function later in the week. I’m tellin’ ya, the teachers really dug this one. I’ll never forget when Bella emerged from her room with her pen and notebook paper, wanting to know what Rick Perry’s address was. He never wrote back, but The Bell wasn’t worried about it. She told me, “Mom, didn’t you see the fake email address I put down there at the bottom? I didn’t want to hear his song and dance, but I didn’t wanna be rude either.”
I was confused, “Wait, huh?”
“Mom, it was a decoder email address. He wasn’t going to tell me anything I haven’t already heard before. Politicians. You know what I mean.”
“I think you mean a ‘decoy’, Bella.”
“Yes, that.”
Great.
The Colorado Vacation Letter:
If I could spend just a few minutes with Bella again at any previous age, this would be the phase I’d revisit. She missed me “so much.” With an exclamation point, even. She wanted to know if Getoff’s baby was born yet, but, in typical Isobel fashion, didn’t want anyone to write back because she was belting out this letter on her way home in Nana’s rental car. The best part: a post script full of danger sure to freak out any mom included “…real prisoners and a dust devil and a cattle drive!”
The Birthday Card for Her Dad:
It wasn’t so much the birthday card as it was the backstory. Inside the envelope, she’d enclosed a dollar and forty-seven cents. It was all of her money at the time. She’d overheard us arguing about bills.
Sometimes people with newborns ask me what my favorite age has been of Bella’s. Truly, I have loved them all just as much as they’ve each been challenging in their own ways. When I see her these days trying so hard to be a teenager, but without the teen suffix just yet, I feel incredibly close to her even though she’s pushing me further and further away. Recently, I read a fantastic quote in Mary Pipher’s book about adolescent girls Bella’s age, Reviving Ophelia, in which a mother perfectly sums up every thought in my head at this point:
“I hurl you into the universe and pray.”
The clever, young girl who wrote these letters surely deserves an addendum to the above quote, though, and that makes me less nervous, if nothing else:
“I hurl you into the universe and pray — for others.“
I love, love, love this child forever.
Ann rules. Sarah drools.
Posted in Meet My Mother, political schmolitical with tags ann richards, dallas morning news, DMN, kristan austin, MSNBC Palin Book Signing Line Interview, New Left Media, palin commentary, palin editorial, sarah palin on November 30, 2009 by KristanI just received one of Mom’s special emails — the kind that generally features my address alongside something to the effect of “letterstotheeditor@dallas.news.com”. I live for these.
Mom yelled:
Oh, man. A can of worms was definitely open somewhere nearby. Apparently, a clever word nerd over at the Dallas Morning News figured out a way to rehash ye olde “Sarah-Palin-is-the-new-Ann-Richards” argument just in time for Madam Alaska’s north Texas book signing this Friday. Without even reading the editorial, my incisors were already beginning to feel a little longer. I raced over to read Wednesday’s article for what was sure to be some kind of mass, vampiric bloodletting in the comment section.
Ouch, and there it was — the writer’s offending element in all of its fire-starting glory:
On the offset readers might not be entirely privy, I’ll take this opportunity to throw a couple of Texan tenets out into vast yonder of the interwebz. First, Yee-haw 101: “Don’t mess with Texas.” Easy enough. Numero dos: “Don’t mess with [Ann Richards'] Texas [hair].” Got that? Okay, moving on then. Next, never compare the Lone Star Saint Richards to anyone –especially a woman Ann would have gladly clobbered in a four-second, backyard rasslin’ match. And, finally, if you’re gonna hyperlink former Governor Ann Richards’ name to something, make sure it isn’t to an image of Nancy Pelosi. Seriously.
To be fair, I don’t think the editorial writer was in Sarah’s corner, and there wasn’t a push to have readers purchase any lip-shticked, hockey mom BS. That was for sure. It’s just that Ann, in all of her glorious, immortal humanity, is down-right (and even dirty) Texas royalty. We get it: Sarah and Ann are both vag-positive, political rock stars. Going any further with that comparison would be like suggesting that porn and Rodin’s nude, bronze forms are in the same league.
Since I’ve brought up porn, though, I’d like to point out that the longer hopeful voters keep masturbating to Palin’s potential run for President, the longer they distract themselves from finding a real candidate. This book thing — the book that goes unnamed here because I don’t wanna sell it any more than I already have — is putting a huge face on D-U-M-B. The SNL team couldn’t write a script any better than Sarah’s fans, who recently showed up for a Columbus, OH, Borders book signing and agreed to be interviewed by the NLM:
*scratches head. I’m off Friday…anyone have a camera with a decent mic?
Florida, oh, Florida.
Stalking Sarah’s right-wing, autograph-fiending, captive audience isn’t just for amateurs, though. MSNBC also provided viewers with unedited, live interviews with Palin fans who were standing in line. It doesn’t get much better than when the reporter hands this ignorant nimrod her supper plate about two minutes into the Q&A:
That’s what happens when you rock a propaganda T and get called out on national television. I am praying hard Jay Leno does a Jay-Walking episode with these lines. How often does an opportunity like this present itself outside a Nascar parking lot? I’m all for everybody expressing individual political beliefs, but if there’s a guy holding a camera in your face and asking basic questions about what exactly it is you support about your candidate, you might wanna rethink your position if the best answer you’ve got is, “Ummm, I dunno,” or “She’s got real experience.”
[Pause for fantasy about what this would have all looked like if Ann Richards was still alive to interview these folks while they waited in line for Sarah Palin. Think: Kill Bill.]
Back to Mom, though. Maybe she should interview the weirdos in the Palin line this week. Mom could correct false analogy offenders with her movie theater laser of justice. After all, letters to the editor are akin to stamping your feet in front of the babysitter. I propose a camera, a mic, and a sick day from school, Ms. Phares. What would Ann Richards do?
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