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Sep. 12th, 2003 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleidoplexThis was originally written in response to coyotewatches' post, but then I realized that it was it's own entity and needed to be here.
My mother wrote a bunch of letters to me, that she gave to me on my eighteenth birthday.
The first was written in the first year of her marriage to my father, a year or so before I was conceived. The second was when I was in-utero. The third was a month after my birth and the fourth was about a year later. The final one was written on my eighteenth birthday as a retrospective.
I've had them for a dozen years, yet I hardly ever read them. I really only run into them when I'm packing to move, but even then I'm loath to take them out and read them.
It's hard to say why. Bryan is right. There is no word to describe the feeling of reading through those letters. Of looking into a past and having it emphasize the gulf between itself and the present.
My mother was so young. So in love with my father. So idealistic. So sure about what was right, and what the world was like, and where her life was going. And although I see many resemblances between my mother and myself, in this girl who wrote to me I see myself looking back.
And it scares me a little.
It scares me because I know what happened to her after she stopped writing.
I just don't know why.
Now, my mother today is an awesome human being, and I'm pretty sure that if you asked her she'd say that she's had some rough times and made some bad choices, but that she is happy with the course of her life and where she is and who she is, and that she wouldn't change it.
But that doesn't help me.
When I read those letters, I realize how young I am. I think about how much in love I am with David. About how I'm so idealistic, and so sure what's right, etc., etc.
And it's really hard not to fear it all collapsing someday like a house of cards. I start wondering about why my parents' love failed. Here are two people who I love and respect more than anything, and yet I've always questioned why they got married if they didn't love each other in the kind of way that David and I love -- the kind of love that makes you want to build the courses of your lives together. To build a life. A community. Then I read my mother's letters and I get the feeling that maybe they did, or thought they did (which is really the same thing). That they weren't mistaken in their love, or wrong to get married.
And I start to wonder what went wrong. And I start to worry.
As time goes by, I worry less and less. I'm getting a little older and a little wiser, and my life is starting to take it's own amorphous shape. I don't resemble that girl (either the younger her or the younger me) quite so much anymore. I think maybe I conceive of love and marriage differently than either of them did, and that because of this I'm not going to go through all the pain and disappointment that my mom did.
She was very wise, even if she didn't really realize exactly how. I'm going to be doing the same thing that she did if I ever have a kid, so that they get a chance to see me and know me as someone other than their mother.
Such legacies are a rare, if painful, gift.
My mother wrote a bunch of letters to me, that she gave to me on my eighteenth birthday.
The first was written in the first year of her marriage to my father, a year or so before I was conceived. The second was when I was in-utero. The third was a month after my birth and the fourth was about a year later. The final one was written on my eighteenth birthday as a retrospective.
I've had them for a dozen years, yet I hardly ever read them. I really only run into them when I'm packing to move, but even then I'm loath to take them out and read them.
It's hard to say why. Bryan is right. There is no word to describe the feeling of reading through those letters. Of looking into a past and having it emphasize the gulf between itself and the present.
My mother was so young. So in love with my father. So idealistic. So sure about what was right, and what the world was like, and where her life was going. And although I see many resemblances between my mother and myself, in this girl who wrote to me I see myself looking back.
And it scares me a little.
It scares me because I know what happened to her after she stopped writing.
I just don't know why.
Now, my mother today is an awesome human being, and I'm pretty sure that if you asked her she'd say that she's had some rough times and made some bad choices, but that she is happy with the course of her life and where she is and who she is, and that she wouldn't change it.
But that doesn't help me.
When I read those letters, I realize how young I am. I think about how much in love I am with David. About how I'm so idealistic, and so sure what's right, etc., etc.
And it's really hard not to fear it all collapsing someday like a house of cards. I start wondering about why my parents' love failed. Here are two people who I love and respect more than anything, and yet I've always questioned why they got married if they didn't love each other in the kind of way that David and I love -- the kind of love that makes you want to build the courses of your lives together. To build a life. A community. Then I read my mother's letters and I get the feeling that maybe they did, or thought they did (which is really the same thing). That they weren't mistaken in their love, or wrong to get married.
And I start to wonder what went wrong. And I start to worry.
As time goes by, I worry less and less. I'm getting a little older and a little wiser, and my life is starting to take it's own amorphous shape. I don't resemble that girl (either the younger her or the younger me) quite so much anymore. I think maybe I conceive of love and marriage differently than either of them did, and that because of this I'm not going to go through all the pain and disappointment that my mom did.
She was very wise, even if she didn't really realize exactly how. I'm going to be doing the same thing that she did if I ever have a kid, so that they get a chance to see me and know me as someone other than their mother.
Such legacies are a rare, if painful, gift.
