Tessa asked me to share one of our family's Mother's Day traditions with you. My mother used to talk a lot about the old days when she was a girl. She grew up in the deep South where it was the custom when someone died for everyone to gather on the porch of the house to drink lemonade, eat cookies and tell stories about the person who died. They'd talk about who that person was. Where they came from. Where they'd been. How much they meant to everyone else. How they'd touched the lives of the people who knew them. Mother used to say it was like a bunch of detectives prowling the scene of a murder, trying to unravel a mystery. What did that dead person think? How did they feel? What had they learned? What did they stand for?

My mother hates mysteries. She won't watch them or read them. She also hates the idea of other people putting words into her mouth. The thought of her kids learning the secrets of her soul from an obituary column sent chills up her spine. She wanted the chance to put voice to those words. So every year around Mother's Day, it became her custom to write each of us kids a letter. Not very long. One page. Handwritten, always. She wrote about what it was like the day we were born. She told funny stories about her parents that I've shared with my kids. She wrote about how she felt on the night she watched me step out on my first date. (Answer -- terrified!) She wrote about her dreams for me on my wedding day.

Mother wasn't a great writer. I won't see a letter this year or any other because she's grown too old. Her hands aren't steady enough. What she produced over all those years is certainly never going to win a Pulitzer Prize. But still, I read them over now and again. Some of them have gotten pretty wrinkled. The time I wrecked her volkswagon, crashing into a dump truck. It's in a letter. The day four girls showed up to the Christmas Ball with the same dress I had on. I remember screaming at her for having no fashion sense. Why couldn't she let me buy my first choice? It was much too expensive, but Mother never wrote about that. Her words painted me into a Christmas Angel, beautiful. Radiant. It never occurred to me, until I had my own kids, that Mother did without so I could have nice things.

Are there complaints in Mother's letters? No. What is missing is almost as precious to me as what's been written. My memory easily fills in the mistakes I made. But the feeling of pride she felt for her children sings out clearly from those pages. And every letter was signed, "love --m."

Mother can enjoy the sunset years, certain that none of her kids will ever stand over her dead body wondering who she was and how she felt. It's all waiting there, in my writing desk. Years of work. Lessons learned, recipes, jokes, tragedy, comedy, folded away with the insurance papers. Someday Mother will be gone. But she's spent years building a bridge of words to cross that final silence.

I write my own letters now, every Mother's Day for my kids. I have a son and three daughters. I don't write them by hand, like mother did. But an hour at the computer, alone, gives me time to say things I usually don't have time to say. Like, good job. I'm proud of you. Thanks for being someone I can brag about. And count on.

I don't fool myself into thinking my kids will drop everything to read these little gems. Usually I get a big hug from the girls, and Michael, my son, grunts. They glance over what I wrote, say, "Thanks, Mom!" and then charge out the door to the next great event of the day. I find my letters later when I'm putting away laundry, tucked in a sock drawer for closer inspection. For later.

It may take years. But someday I know, they'll sit on the edge of the bed and sit the way I sit now, reading every word. Treasuring the sound of my voice the way I treasure my mother's voice in those thin black lines.

You know, I guess I'm more like my own mother than I care to think. I know that nobody will put words in my mouth. My kids will know how I feel about them when I'm dead and done. I hope yours will too.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers of the world.

Alia Franklin