Letter from mom (first published 2/1/21)

 Dear Gary: This is your mom here. Oy Vay, stop that ridiculous story about the stuttering and that it started with you talking to me on the phone. That never happened. I remember that picture and it was posed by a picture studio when we bought a package from them after I was home from the sanitarium. They allowed you to come to visit me at the sanitarium one time before I was released. As I recall, you did not stammer more or less that day. By then,I was already aware that you talked very fast and very loud. There was nothing different or unusual about that day. I was just so very happy to see you that it really did not make a difference. Perhaps someone asked you to quiet down. You were bouncing off the walls as I recall. You stuttered long before I went off to the City of Hope. You started stammering when you were two years old and first starting talking, always a mile a minute. Boy, could you talk. That stammering never slowed you down. I did not even think of it as stuttering until you were older. In my view, your stuttering intensified in later Junior High School and into high school. Before then I would just say you were more just a motor mouth. A teacher noted your stuttering and sent you to a speech class but I do not think that was until maybe 6th grade or even junior high school. Before then, I did not see it as ever holding you back. And it was the speech therapist that first diagnosed it to me as stuttering. Perhaps your dad and I should have done more work with it early but to be honest, it was never an issue with either of us. You seemed like a normal kid with lots of friends. I think as you got older it did become more of an issue for your dad mainly because of the way you handled yourself on the telephone. Dad was in real estate and expected you to more professionally answer the phone than “ya” which was your usual way of answering the phone. I never realized you answered that way out of fear. But other than your lack of professionalism on the phone I really do not really recall any issues. I just wished you would have talked to me more about it at the time instead of holding it inside. I never thought as much about it as you think about it yourself. Love mom

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