greetings from soledad
"Did your father send you a birthday card?"
I can hear her now although I haven't heard it in years. My mother would ask me this every summer since the summer after he went away.
At first I was delighted that he hadn't forgotten and then I was ambivilent and around thirteen or fourteen I can recall thinking, "Yeah, so, why?"
I am sure now, that it was all my father could do to get that card made and sent so that it was delivered to me on time. It was always very ornate and colorful. Maybe he paid someone to draw those very elaborate pictures of balloons and clowns and whatever other things appeared there in any given year. But eventually nothing in me cared. I would leave it unopened for days and she would ask me if I was going to read it. If this went on too long her tone would change and she would admonish me to read it. I would. I would think it was silly, too bright and busy and nothing a teenage girl wants from her father, no matter where he is. I did not write him back to thank him.
Then one year I didn't get a card. There are no words beyond this.
I can hear her now although I haven't heard it in years. My mother would ask me this every summer since the summer after he went away.
At first I was delighted that he hadn't forgotten and then I was ambivilent and around thirteen or fourteen I can recall thinking, "Yeah, so, why?"
I am sure now, that it was all my father could do to get that card made and sent so that it was delivered to me on time. It was always very ornate and colorful. Maybe he paid someone to draw those very elaborate pictures of balloons and clowns and whatever other things appeared there in any given year. But eventually nothing in me cared. I would leave it unopened for days and she would ask me if I was going to read it. If this went on too long her tone would change and she would admonish me to read it. I would. I would think it was silly, too bright and busy and nothing a teenage girl wants from her father, no matter where he is. I did not write him back to thank him.
Then one year I didn't get a card. There are no words beyond this.
posted by A Girl Again at 12:38 PM
9 Comments:
haha he doesn't love you anymore (or he died).
He did not die, thank god. But his heart was probably broken from so much loss.
I think it is sad that this the thing you would find to say to another human being in pain. Whatever your ache is, I hope it heals.
that's why god created our ability to NIGnore!
but in regards to your post, being on the other side, the "lover" side of it, i know just how much work goes into those silly little gifts. i get them & i treasure them, but you're right. i wonder will they mean anything to my son? how will he feel getting a handmade card and not a bike from his daddy? i pray we never have to deal w/ these issues, but with over 2 million people in prisons, for many these feelings are so real.
you are a brave soul. a brave woman. you will be ok & you will be better for this experience.
Those cards mean so much when you understand how much love and care go into either making them or how much bargaining and haggling goes into having them made. I am more like your mother my love is incarcerated and I live for those silly little cards, that mean the world.
As for the first comment. That's why they are anonymous they can be cruel and chicken at the same time. I agree with the prisoner's wife just ignore stupid people. May the Great Spirit protect you, your mother and her love.
ravenslove,
thank you for your kind words. when I see my father, I mean to tell him how very much i appreciate everything he did on my behalf. now that i am a parent, i can see things more clearly.
and, during none of this time were my parents married. my mother was remarried to my stepfater but she always acknowledged the importance of my daddy and insisted that i love and respect him despite their relationship or his circumstances. i am ever greatful to her for this.
It's the peace that is found in the little things that bring joy.
Keep looking up!
i have a line in one of my poems, hard love..
When love could
Snatch you up out of your sleep
Slap you up into a cold sweat
And leave you panting and alone
With visions of the pure loveliness
Filled with the terror and sweetness of jail cells
that is about those envelopes made with such loving care, filled with terror!
It's so amazing because as a child no one was there to tell me this; to tell me it was every demonstration of love he had access to. No one I knew understood. People who saw it thought it was "weird" or "funny". I would hide them. Although I truly did cherish them. I have them all today.
It's funny, I wrote something to send you for something else last night. Something about how much the little things mean, even when we don't know it. It's hard, on both sides of the wall. Don't beat yourself up for not staying the little girl he left behind, for wanting to know and be known. Just take today.
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