The Wormlips Scrapbook

Do you ever look at this blog, Lulu? If so, please give a peep via the blog’s peep mechanism.

I’m writing to show you this picture I took for you a few minutes ago in our backyard.

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Okay, this is really weird.

As soon as I left for college back in nineteen-aught-seventy-two, my mother started sending clippings: first, newspaper articles about acquaintances’ weddings. Then the jobs, honors and children of these same people. Now, of course, the deaths have started rolling in, mostly of adults important to me when I was young, but also of my peers. Woven through these threads have been the odds and ends: a feature from Antiques Digest about a 1700s green-glass bottle like the one my great-grandparents had; a real estate ad about the sale of the house I grew up in; a blurb from the Wilmington police blotter about that kid I used to hang out with, Carmine, who just got thrown in jail for murder. Often Mom scrawls little notes in the margin: “Didn’t you used to know him?”

Then came the articles about the advantages of tattoo-removal.

While I’ve always appreciated her making the effort to send me this stuff, I’ve never understood why she does it. Every single time I get one of these, my brain goes through the same sequence: “What’s this? Doesn’t look like a bill. Oh, it’s a letter from Mom! Yay! I love getting real letters … [rip] … Oh, man. Another stupid clipping.”

So what do I do within 12 hours of coming home to a Lulu-less house for the first time? I cut out two articles from the university’s monthly and send them to Lulu at her new dorm room. One’s about an entomologist who helped with a murder case by identifying the native region of bugs splatted on a car’s fender, to determine where the driver had been. And I didn’t even bother to jot anything into the margin. All I did was take a Barbie-Pink highlighter to call out the parts I most wanted Lulu to read.

On another note: when I threw back the covers last night to crawl into bed, I found a card from Lulu, accompanied by two dark chocolate candies. As I inhaled the latter I read the former. I was deeply moved, and appreciative beyond all reason.

Shortly after I read the card, I fell asleep while holding my tall glass of grape juice and fizzy water. I woke up an hour later with an upside-down glass in my hand and several ounces of grape juice and fizzy water on my chest.

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Shirley asked me to write a note to Christopher. I did, and slid it into the sock that I gave Shirley. She put them atop his diminutive white casket at the funeral.

Dear Christopher,

I tried to make you a pair of socks but they came out funky. Here’s one of them. I threw out the other.

You wouldn’t believe how sad I am not to have met you. Like everyone else, I had plans for you. For one thing, I was going to teach you stuff your parents wouldn’t approve of. Like behind Scott’s back I would have showed you an Irish dance step or two. And when Shirley wasn’t looking, I’d introduce you to hippie girls in Berkeley.

I’m heartbroken most of all for your parents. Their little Christopher Henry (that’s you) will always be with them in spirit and memory. By the way, do you know much about your parents? They’re just the best people. They’re both smart, funny, generous to a fault, and the most loyal friends a person could have. Shirley is prettier than Scott, but Scott is better at riding dirt bikes.

Well, I’d better stop yammering. Mostly I wanted to tell you that you are in the hearts of more people than you can imagine. We’ll never forget you.

I’ll do my best to be a good friend to your parents and to help them out when I can. Meanwhile, if you happen to see Dad or Grannie, would you please send them my love?

Yours forever,
Auntie Ginna

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