Did You Ever Have A Family

Lolly

Mom,

I’m writing to you from the edge of the world. It truly feels like we are in some place between earth and heaven here on the beach in Moclips. We checked in two nights ago after driving for four straight days from New York. Can you believe we got pulled over in New Jersey on Route 3? Right out of the gate, bam, a $125 speeding ticket. I’m sure the cop saw Will’s Washington State plates and said, Let’s get him. Anyway, we thought it was a bad omen for our trip, but instead it turned out that every moment after has been charmed, like we’ve had a lucky star guiding us the whole way. Even when we got lost in Pennsylvania it led us to stay in the most beautiful little town that’s almost exclusively Amish. They couldn’t have been nicer. We’d heard about a group of teenagers who flipped their car — Amish kids getting drunk and living it up in their purgatory year between high school and marriage. The whole town seemed to be shaped around those dead kids. Like if you looked closely you could see each one in the places where they once were. It’s strange to say but I feel like I know them, a little. There was so much talk of them. That town was so sad but it was also beautiful to see a community need each other so much. And their faith. I have never believed in God though I can see how believing in one would help in the aftermath of the kind of tragedy they’d been through.

You can’t imagine how many stars fill the sky here. They are brighter than the moon. Or the sound of the wind and the crashing waves. Like freight trains outside the window. It’s not frightening, because for some reason this simple room at the edge of the world feels like the safest place I’ve ever been.

I know I’m rambling, Mom, but I’m in a mood, as Dad would say. Crossing this country, ending up here where Will grew up — I now understand why it was so important to him to show me — and the crazy wind has me thinking. It’s funny to think that the wind has a shape but it does. It becomes visible every once in a while — in rain being driven to the ground in sheets, or in the snow on the fields behind our house. I remember looking out the window of my room in the winter, watching the wind blow on the surface of the white fields, lifting and whipping the snow into spirals, and in a flash you could see this force that was always there come to life and reveal itself. I think it is this way with children and parents. They are always there and then suddenly through some shock or disappointment or great gesture or absence the child sees this person who was there all the while — invisible to them beyond their function to provide. This is how it’s been for me, with you. I only really saw you once you left Daddy, and I didn’t like what I saw. I couldn’t understand why you would leave him after all those years together. How you could choose your career over both of us. I still don’t understand if I’m really being honest. But it’s only lately that I can see that what I can and can’t see doesn’t matter. I don’t have the right to say who you are with or not and it is not my right to know. With Luke in your life now, you have really snapped into view as a woman, like me, with the full menu of wants and desires as the rest of us. I’m not saying this has been much fun or not embarrassing; I’m ashamed to say it’s both. But it has shaken things up. I’m sorry I refused to meet him in New York. I didn’t want him to overshadow Will. And if I’m honest about it, I think I was worried how I would react and I didn’t want Will to see me out of control.

Speaking of control, I guess Dad has come into view more, too. I’ve known for a long time about his desperate womanizing. It’s always made me sad, but it’s something I never held him accountable for. I blamed it on you, as I have many things. It never occurred to me until recently that maybe his childish way with women preceded your leaving and that it most likely had a lot to do with it. I can’t believe this never really occurred to me before. I also can’t claim to have come to some of these ideas on my own. Early on with Will he told me that it would be a good idea to question everything I thought I knew about Dad, you, your marriage, my childhood, myself even. Actually, he suggested that whenever I was resistant to a differing opinion about anything, I should try this out. Here I think he was talking about politics, him being much more sympathetic to our president than I am. Still, it’s been difficult to pull back the curtain on old stories and old opinions. I’ve been doing it for a while now and it’s humbling to see things more as they were and less as I have felt them to be over the years. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been punishing you for a long time for not making the choices I wanted you to make, and as Will snores next to me now and before the sun comes up in a few hours I just want you to know that I see things a little more clearly now and I hope you can forgive me for being unable to sooner. I still get furious when I think of how you left and the way you made all these decisions without including me. You just announced the new order of things as if none of it had anything to do with me. Can you possibly imagine how that felt at fourteen? Or how lonely it was after you left? Did you even think about me when you made all these decisions? Did you ever think how much I would miss you?

Here I go. It takes so little to go back to all that. But I suppose that’s why I’m writing to you now. To be completely honest, it’s something Will suggested I do. To write to you without worrying about you reading the words. To just say what I feel without risking being held to any of it. He told me to do this months ago but every time I tried I couldn’t. But tonight feels different. Something about this place. And Will. I want with you what he has with his parents. It’s so uncomplicated with him! He just loves them and it’s so easy and affectionate between them. I want that but I don’t know how to get it. It’s like if I just let you off the hook for everything, I’ve betrayed myself. Or the self I was. And that’s when I get stuck. But as Will and I move ahead together, I’m feeling like it’s getting easier to let go of some of the stuff I’ve been hanging on to.

What I want to say is that I don’t want to go back to or stay stuck in the way things have been between us. Everything seems so delicate and brief and I don’t want us to be so apart anymore. I don’t know how to say any of this to you, which is why I am writing it down. I hope I give you this someday.

Love,

Lolly