This is such a great story, and anyone who knew and loved my mother-in-law will definitely agree.
My mother-in-law sadly passed away this spring. A little background first. Dorothy Gasser was a saint. She was the kind of person that never complained, was kind, giving, loving and raised a family of eight wonderful good-hearted children mostly on her own.
In the years I knew her and grew into the family I watched dozens and dozens of people that came into her life and home that she "tolerated" even though I knew they had to be exasperating. People who bummed money off of her, people who would hang out for her company and take from her precious time, people who'd stop over at dinner time and yes, people who actually sent over empty plates and asked them to be filled for Easter dinner. She always obliged.
It blew my mind because I could never understand how she could be so welcoming and kind to them. I wanted to shoo them all away! I could tell they sucked a lot of her energy and these people never had a clue at how much they'd worn out their welcome. Mom would take people in like she took in cats... never turning them away.
So... again, I was always totally baffled that she would never speak up for herself and just scream ENOUGH! She was just not that kind of person. She would never ever complain... or... would she? Tonight I stumbled upon something that made me laugh and cry... it was an awesome discovery. And it makes me wonder if she didn't have her own little way of venting about some of these people.
The other day I asked my brother-in-law Dan if I could have Mom's recipe box, if no one else had asked for it. I brought home that old beat up, worn box, jam-packed with recipes she'd saved over the years, some were handwritten, some torn from old magazines (I found one with a sweepstakes entry on the back that expired April 17th, 1954) and others where she'd written in her familiar handwriting her recipe annotations, like, "Real Good" so she'd know to use that one again. It just brought back warm memories.
When Walt saw that battered box he said it made him remember his mom sitting on the floor in the kitchen, going through the pantry cupboard, recipe box at hand looking for what to make for dinner.
I started going through them and I discovered this neatly folded newspaper clipping from Ann Lander's column. I laughed when I read it out loud to Walt. Walt instantly recognized the antagonist in the letter as their next door neighbor Alice who he said "figured the Gasser kids would love to eat her burnt cookies."
Reading this letter made me smile. It made me wonder... could Mom have actually written this letter? Is that why she saved it? Could this have been the simple way she handled her frustration... a little vent to Ann Landers? Even if she hadn't penned this wonderful letter, I love that she thought enough to clip it out and tuck it away in her little treasure box of recipes and well, fond memories.
This just made my day, made me smile and made me really, really miss Mom.
