DEAR MOM & DAD,

(This is an actual letter I wrote to my parents in 1973.)

"Gayle, Leetha and myself are going to Virginia Beach for a few days - should be home Thursday. Will call collect tomorrow sometime. I know this is out of the blue sky - but, I need a semi-vacation after working so long.

Please take $20 our of my savings and put it in my checking account so I don't run the risk of over drawing.

Everything is fine. Arrangements have been made - no guys going!!!

Will call tomorrow.

Mary

We're staying at a beach house with a friend of Leetha's, named Ann, and her family."

First of all, I had flunked out of school and was working as a Ward Clerk at the University Hospital in OB/GYN. I made minimum wage. I had been there since January. This letter (note more than likely left on the kitchen table) was August.

Yes, I definitely needed a vacation.

Secondly, I was lying about Ann and the beach house!!! I wonder why I felt the need to add that embellishment.

Added to the debacle, Gayle did not tell her parents nor get permission. We just split. Leetha was always a free spirit....

As I remember, it was a disastrous trip. Not much fun. Lot of driving. Layla playing on the radio.

I was a rotten kid. I had flunked out of school. Basically stolen one of the families vehicles and snuck off to Virginia days before I was to return to college for another try.

I look back and wonder how my parents kept from killing me or worse, tossing me out on my righteous butt.

Maybe they saw something in me that I was hiding under a bushel at the time. They believed in me. I guess that they were convinced that if I carried their blood in my veins, someday (if I survived), I would turn out okay.

Happy Mothers Day to my tremendous Mom. A lesser woman would have tossed me out and written me off. Instead she cursed me with the most potent and powerful of ancient hexes....

"I HOPE SOME DAY YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER JUST LIKE YOU!!!!"

And I did.