petticoatpies

She spelled my mother’s name Karin, though it is and has always been Karen with an ‘e.’ I assumed all old people wrote illegibly and got away with spelling people’s names wrong. They had lived a long time. They’d earned the right to spell however they liked, and never had to study words like ‘February’ for spelling tests, yet you still had to write them thank-you notes for every little thing they sent you. I imagined that, once you reached 65 or so, you could just write Feb. or Febuary and no one would dare mention it. You aged out of spelling, grammar, and editing.