Collaborating on birthday message with a dear old friend

I took Maggie the portable typewriter out of retirement tonight and placed her on the library table in front of the bookcase.

The typewriter, a gift from my mother on my 16th birthday, was going to help me create a gift for Mom on her 108th birthday on August 19. At least it would if any of the old typewriter ribbons still had any ink left. 

“Don’t fail me now,” I begged Maggie as I carefully rolled a sheet of paper in place and wondered if I remembered how to set margins. Of course, she came through for me. She wouldn’t let a little thing like age deter her. The black ink ribbon printed as a light gray, gradually growing lighter, which somehow seemed appropriate:

Dear Mom, 

Patty and Maggie here. We have created a lifetime of stories since you brought us together. Sometimes thoughts would get tangled in my head only to be sorted out on this keyboard. I liked having to work physically hard to push down the keys. It gave a clarity to my writing. So I have come back to it tonight to write your birthday story.

It was the year I failed geometry. When I came home from school and told you the news, your reaction did not mirror the sense of failure I was feeling.  

“When am I ever going to need geometry anyway?” I posed the question more to myself than to you. 

“Well, you just never know,” you said. “Which is why you will take it again and do better this time.”

And then, as though nothing tragic had happened, you suggested we go shopping for bedspreads for my twin beds, something I had been wanting for a long time. A few hours later we came home with the pink and white polka dot spreads with the bed skirts that made them look like sofas. And you made a matching skirt for the little dressing table you got from Green Stamps for me.

My girlfriends and I spent so many happy times in that attic room with the bedspreads you bought me the day I failed geometry.

Yes, I did retake it and got an A. But most importantly, when I look back on the day I dreaded telling you my bad news, it is filled with pink polka dots.  

Thanks, Mom, and happy birthday.

Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on X @patricabunin and at patriciabunin.com