2 Women's Letters

Recently I had the opportunity to read letters my mother wrote to a cousin from 1980-1982. This time period is right when she married my father, pre-pregnancy with my brother, and then a few months post-partum. Usually, as we become adult children, we wonder who our parents were as people before they were responsible for small humans. In some ways it was hard for me to picture the 2 of them as she described their daily lives and in other ways her depression and disordered eating is evident.

I enjoyed reading the life she described, I never knew she used to have a fear of cats (we always had a few the entire time I was growing up) or that the 2 of them used to take great joy in going to the public library together. All her letters are filled with discussions of what she had cooked most recently-that core piece of her lasted through her life even as other parts of her burned away. Apparently, my parents used to laugh a lot together-I can't even picture it. The child of me wishes to have seen the alternate universe version, where I got to experience that. I do think they loved each other in the beginning.

Something she shared that really struck me in the differences of perspectives, in 1980 she wrote that she couldn't believe that she was 22. It felt to her like just yesterday she was a kid and her father was blowing up a ton of balloons in preparation for her birthday celebration, that somehow childhood had ended. As her child, it hurt that I would not grow up not being able to fathom no longer experiencing the joys of kid-dom. I spent much of my time from 7th grade up waiting for my time to come when I would be an adult and have the freedom to cultivate my own space. She also never referred to where she and my father were living as home. Where their parents were was home. Time was described by how recently they had gone home or how soon they would be going back home. It makes me wonder if Ti was always home, what did the space she was building with my father feel to her?

Last winter I was doing a free write exercise from Rupi Kaur's book; Healing Through Words. During it, I penned a letter to my mother as though she was pregnant with me when I wrote it to her. It seems fitting to me to have the differing truths from her letters and my own paired together. Ultimately, isn't that the parent child relationship-two existences mashed together and we make as best sense of it as we can?

Dear Mommy,

Right now I am growing inside you. You are trying to eat right and make a good home for me. I go with you everywhere and I see what a comfort that is to you, because I think-you are actually very lonely. Please know that I am kind and sweet, I need a tenderness that you and daddy have not found. I will be born under a full moon-knowing I am meant to do something in this life and that is going to scare you. I see you keeping your dreams and your life small because of fear. A time may come when you think love is trying to scare me into safety. But, Mother what will bring me safety is being taught to use my voice. That talking back is a good thing and could one day help me advocate for myself because I won't be so afraid of other peoples' power.

I wish you could fly. Fly out of this life you don't want and live the dreams you don't dare to dream. Because I am kind and tender-the whole time we walk the earth together, I will spend it trying to save you. To love and believe in you more than you can. Then when I can't do it any longer, I will break the pattern of women in our family. All of them built their life around kids and a man. Too many of them unhappy and unfulfilled. Who each of them could have been is society were different? I will spend our time together with a broken heart, wishing you would grab this life with both hands. But, from these fracture lines I will be strong enough to make the life others don't think possible.

Right now though, as I float around in this warm home, our love is not yet damaged. The love that flows between us is just for you and me. Others can't see it or feel it. These 9 months are unfettered love. The world has not yet crashed

in on us. Maybe as you lay your hand on your belly where I am growing-you won't say mean things to yourself because I am in here. I love you mommy. One day our love will return to this pure kind of love when I still walk this earth and it is you in the ether sending me love. I love you Mommy.

Mommy, in the late 70's at a Halloween party-dressed as a scarecrow I think??!!

Me, practically an exact replica of her face; shared DNA but different roads traveled. When I miss her, I know I can see her in my own reflection.