2 Hamilton Terrace
London SE 28 8JF
United Kingdom
September 17, 2018
Dear Fiona,
It’s a few days since our disastrous phone call. I’ve been reflecting on the things you said and replaying our harsh words. I was rather immobilized at the time, and I am certain I said things I didn’t mean. Perhaps I ought to call you, but I am better with the pen and the paper (even though, as you now know, I won’t be able to write much longer with the oncoming blindness), and today my vision is a bit less murky. It is difficult to know where to begin, although I do know what needs to be said.
You said I am critical of the way you live your life, and that you (and Walt, the children) are trying to do it the opposite of the way I did it. This was very painful to hear. When you brought up that I disapprove of your career path, I was so surprised. Even though I had presumed you would go into medicine, as you had talked about for years leading up to the conclusion of your undergraduate studies, and it took me some time to adjust to your pivot toward architecture, I am unashamedly proud of the career you have built. More painful, when I raised the subject of your miscarriages, and finding out about it from Aunt Rosalie, you said that you hadn’t told me about it because you don’t how to confide in me, that I am very distant. My response to you was that you have never seemed to need me, and you said that I taught you not to need me. Well, perhaps you can imagine how it would feel to hear these things from Frannie one day. Terrible.
My instinct is to fight, and initially I found myself rather compiling a case, disputing your accusations, thinking of all the proof I have that you’re wrong. And yet I waited. I continued to sit withit. Surprising even myself, I’ve let the tide go out with my self-defense, but I do want to tell you a story about me.
When I was a child your grandparents sat me down to explain that I was adopted. I was in first grade. Your Pop had come home from work and we sat down in the formal living room, which was unusual, and they explained it to me, and then they took me for an ice cream sundae in lieu of supper to smooth it all over. I was troubled by it. Of course I was, but I was something of a weird bird as a child (serious, grave, without friends, often ignored by other children) and tended toward fixating on things. I became fixated on this. It has always been my nature to see things in black and white, as you well know. I like rules. I relish living in a world that runs on laws and systems that are quite clear and declared. I think being adopted made me feel, as a child, that I did not fit inside the system. I didn’t tell a soul.
My parents, knowing how it plagued me, a few years later gave me a letter that my birth mother had written before handing me over and I became obsessed with this piece of paper in a light pink envelope. I kept it in a small wooden box under my bed. For months I read it every night before sleep. I studied her script. I tried to read between the lines, between the letters, to see if I could find something maybe I’d missed. It was agonizing. I wanted my birth mother desperately, though I kept it to myself. Her name was Louisa, which I have only come to know through the Kindred membership your brother gave me for Christmas all those years back. I am enclosing the letter. Please keep it.
I began writing letters because my birth mother (as a child I thought of her as my ‘real’ mother) had, apparently, written letters. I clung to this and did actually find, through correspondence, inexplicable relief. I could write to anyone. I could take the time to think through what I wanted to say, practice, rewrite, and get it exactly how I wanted it. It was so much easier for me to write than it was to have a conversation, even. I was insecure,painfully so. I felt so strange. On the phone the other night you mentioned this, that you wondered if maybe I could only have meaningful relationships through letters, and I have been thinking about that. When I was young, by writing letters I found a framework that made living easier, and that has never changed. However, I do wonder if by conducting the most intimate relationships of my life in correspondence, I have kept, since I was a child, a distance between myself and others. I think it’s true the letters have insulated me, have been a force field, just as practicing law insulated me from dealing with humanity directly, and I wouldn’t change any of it, but I find myself, at this old age, wanting closeness. I wantcloseness. Something I have not had other than when I met Dad.
Meeting your dear dad was the great surprise of my life because I’d never imagined I would have THAT. I thought I would need someone to find me bearable, but he thought I was wonderful! And I thought him even better. He never made me feel strange. He gave me a family—I’d outwitted the fate I’d assumed for myself. He taught me how to open myself to others. I had never done that. It was healing for me. He thought I was wonderful, and I’ll always love him for that.
When you were born I was terrified. With the two boys I felt I was in a position I could manage—they seemed like foreign objects—but then you came out, a girl. I was afraid to have a girl because what if I couldn’t understand you? I’d never found a way to fit into the world, not really, and what if I didn’t know how to be a mother to you? I was afraid, and that’s the whole thing. I was afraid all the time of losing something or ruining something, and then I did.
When Gilbert died you were only four. His death—toppled me. Icouldn’thad worked to do everything correctly, follow the rules, wedge myself into the world, but it wasn’t enough. Fiona, do you know what it feels like when your worst fear, your veryworst fear, comes to pass? When the imagined terror comes true? I hope you never do. I couldn’t make any sense of it. The life I had built was not strong enough; the laws of nature were too unwieldy for me to surmount.It was theI could not bear it, and that steeling, locking the agony in, and pushing you away because what if I lost you, too? What if I lost Bruce? I pulled back from you. If I didn’t feel as much to begin with, then it wouldn’t come as hard when, not if, but WHEN my fears came to pass again. I suppose I’ve never recovered. I do not know how to recover.
Fiona, I am putting words to something I have not put words to ever in my life. The being adopted, Gilbert’s dying, the end of my marriage, I always felt—all wrong. Like I was a fraud, acting, pretending I was a daughter, a wife, a mother. I wanted to be those things, and I suppose I was, but I rather never believed it, and then so many things went wrong. Your brother’s death shattered me and I’ve never been put back to right. It seems Dad was able to continue in love, where I was unable. Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like—What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside me. It’s gotten a bit softer over time, but it’s never gone. I walk around the house or dig in the garden or wander the grocery store or sit at my desk and there’s a screaming inside my head like an air horn that warns of war.
When I look back at my life as a mother I have a pervasive sense of failure, and yet look at you. Your life is full and good, and so is your brother’s. Fiona, I am sorry I’ve kept you at an arm’s length, teaching you not to need me. I am sorry I was bitter that you visited Rosalie and punished you for it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I am going blind. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.
I have been in touch lately with the child of a man Guy and I sentenced to prison years ago. It was an error of judgment wemade, and the outcome was devastating for this family. I’ve only found out recently that the man is dead. He’s been dead for decades. All of this has occupied my focus the past few months. You must think I am outside my mind. I am grieved, and exhausted. This letter has grown into a thick tangle of complicated thoughts, taken me hours of squinting, but I hope it makes some sense to you.
Took a break and walked outside, had a chat with the neighbor Mr. Lübeck. I’ll be needing to get back to Mr. Watts with my answer about marriage soon. I can’t put him off forever. You haven’t told me what you think. What do you think?
I love you,
Mom
Postscript: I have yet to tell your brother or your uncle Felix about the eye condition, but I’ll go ahead and do that. Please let me be the one to do that. I’ll make sure it’s soon.
Rosalie Van Antwerp
33 Orange Lane
Goshen, CT 06756
September 18, 2018
Dear Rosalie,
I am writing to put an end to the long silence. I’m calling this week my parade of apologies, so you can exhale and read on with smug confidence (not that you will; you’re not like me).
Before I get to that, though, I wanted to ask you—in a letter quite a while back you mentioned putting Lars in a home. Greenmont Village. Have you done so over the course of my distance? I am sick over the thought that you may have done during these many weeks we haven’t spoken. The conflict you feel, or felt, is awful awful. You said it feels like giving up, but it is not. You are not aspiring to a dream; you are trying to survive. You are trying to outwit the challenges that have tried their damnedest to topple you. I wanted to say that to you, first and foremost.
Things boiled over with Fiona, as they were always destined to, I see now, in hindsight. It’s true what they say about hindsight. We were talking on the phone, it was about a week ago now, and I had mentioned not seeing her in some time, and she positively exploded, went into a diatribe of her grievances against me like the projectile innards of a dirty bomb. I retaliated with the intel I’ve harbored of her visit to you, and that backfired because she said she already knew I knew. It was terrible, but in my head, as she unleashed, was the letter you sent last summer and for the first time since reading it I felt not hurt by you, but loved. Under direct fire from Fiona, I sat in the kitchen and wished beyond comprehension that you were sitting there across from me, hearing the conversation, urging me forward. Oh, I said some terrible things right back, in the heat of that moment, but after the phone call I went into hibernation for a few days to have a long sit andthink. I reread your letter and this whole thing slowly turned over, like a fat whale on a beach, FLOP, and then I had clarity. I wrote to Fiona. Obviously it was a letter to apologize, but I also flayed myself open like a caught fish. I mailed the letter yesterday, and now I’m fretting.
All right, now here it is, Rosalie, I might as well get on with it, the reason I’m writing today. I AM SORRY. I was angry with you unjustly. Please forgive me. I lost months—not months, a year or more! God save me—of confiding in you because of my blindness, and I wasn’t present for you in a difficult time, and everything you said to me regarding Fiona was a blunt kindness, but I let my stubbornness override my allegiance to you. I can’t take it back, but I want to say that I see my error—I am seeing so clearly! Isn’t it ironic?—and I am so very, very sorry, Rosalie. Please take me back. Please write to me and tell me everything. How you are, and Paul, and Lars. You are an unassailable and miraculous creature, Rosalie. I hope you’ll take me back. I can’t do it without you.
