You’re in for a treat. I decided to have a guest blogger today: my Mother.

Old advice for this daughter is still good. Mom got it right.

Cleaning my office, I found the below letter stuffed in a file. It was written my freshman year of college, 1977. Mom’s advice was timely then and is timely now. Today’s high school and college kids are bombarded with partying in movies and TV. Let this motherly advice be a nice reminder for your kids to stick to their values.

Advice for daughters—we should listen to the wise women who raise us. I can only share this because dear Mom departed this world eleven years ago. She would be mortified that I’m publishing one of her letters. What she doesn’t know, right?

My mother had a wicked bad sense of humor … this letter has a tiny glimpse of that. During my college days she:

sent me an entire letter written on toilet paper,
made me my own special “Pet Rock,”
cut a quarter in half [the joke is long forgotten, but it made sense at the time],
and once sent me a note:

♪

That was it—just a note.

Enjoy the Break From Me…

Dear RM,

Well, I got your letter yesterday. Wish I were a wise and wonderful mother who could take all your problems away. But I’m not and I don’t really know what to say. I never did worry about you running to parties, getting smashed and sleeping around. You were not raised that way.

As for G [a boy I dated], if you only miss him cause there is no one else around, then he is not for you. I think you put too much in the whole boy situation. Let it ride by, go out on a date when someone asks, but don’t do it just to be popular. You’re still young and whether you believe it or not someday you will find the guy who shares the same ideas and feelings you do. [She had no idea it would take me until I was 49!]

I did spend three years around college boys and girls. 90% of the boys only want one thing from the girls. Then just to brag. I always did tell you girls that’s not necessary to get or keep a guy. The guys around there [college] just aren’t grown up yet. They really don’t know what they want. I think I would throw myself into schoolwork and girlfriends and say the heck with it.

The world simply is not the way you want and that’s a fact of life. When you get through school and out working, you’ll probably meet your guy. Probably an ex-con. Ha!

That’s all I can say. Except don’t want everything at once, some things have to wait.

I hope this helps. I don’t like you being down.

Well, I must go and get some work done. Take care and write.

Love,

Mom & Dad

PS. I remembered before I sealed the letter. Go buy yourself something. Sorry it’s not more.

Advice for Daughters–From the Mothers Who Love US

Of course, being a teenager in the late 1970s, almost 200 miles from home, I got up to all sorts of trouble at college. I dated and had some nice beaus and some not so nice beaus (you know who you are). But when I look back on college now—ah, the beauty of hindsight!—I know some part of me took Mom’s words to heart. I loved my girlfriends and have luckily reconnected with a couple of my favorite roommates (the saving grace that is the FaceBook quagmire). The group of guy friends who acted like my big brothers are also cyberly in my life again and I’m thankful for that. They looked out for me as needed and I hope I gave some treasure back to them. They also spent a lot of time laughing at and with me—those memories are great.

My mom led a sheltered life. She married Dad at 17, she worked here and there, but was primarily a housewife and mother. She was quite introverted and yet had that outrageous sense of humor. More than anyone I know, Mom taught me the duality of people. We are many things and so much more than what you glimpse on the surface.

**

Read: Grief of my mom