Dear Mom,
Wow. I have been in California for 10 years and a few months now and finally, I have all the information I needed to know that you were completely correct from the beginning.
You once told me to “wait and see” or that it was “only a matter of time” before I knew how very right you were and how easily fooled I was.
Don’t get me wrong; we had our problems, but my selfish attempt to “fix” them by virtue of leaving and putting myself into the care of my father and stepmother could have used more thought.
It didn’t help matters, of course, that you frequently took out your frustrations on me. But compared to the massive piles of damage done elsewhere, I can hardly still blame you for that.
You have my friend Michelle to thank, if you wish to thank anybody, for hearing from me again and this attempt to re-establish a communication between the two of us. Michelle is a girl that I knew barely if at all in high school (I went to Whittier High School and graduated “in the top 1/3rd **laughs** of my class” in 1993). Michelle and I would trade insults in high school. As I remember, she was “trashy” and pregnant when I knew her. Maybe the “trashy” is because she was pregnant, but it was years ago and I don’t remember enough to explore it. But several months ago, my friend Robbie and I were sitting at a bus stop waiting for the bus that would take us to Los Cerritos Center (the Cerritos Mall) when a red SUV got our attention and inside was Michelle who said that I “inspired” her to reach whatever heights she’d reached by my taunting (actually this part of the story doesn’t make sense to me either – I would have doubted my ability to inspire anyone, but I’ve since been told that it has happened more than this once – my cousin Angie today told me about the same thing)… Anyway she was on her way to someone to have her computer fixed (ps: I fix computers, it is how I pay for whatever I have to pay for) and, as I said, I was waiting for a bus, so we exchanged numbers (no, I gave her mine… she didn’t give me hers until later)… Anyway the next time I heard from Michelle she had computer problems and I came over to offer my assistance. She bought me lunch at a fast food place and everything was peachy.
But the next time I heard from Michelle who was sharing an apartment with her sister, was another time when she had computer problems and I was brought over to see if I could help (which I could, of course). The biggest difference was this: Michelle and her sister both had their sons with them visiting that day. Also Michelle’s brother was hanging out there – he seems to be interested in making a web page website whatever. Anyway as I watched Michelle and her sister interact with these two boys (Michelle’s son is by far the better of the two, her nephew is a little brat)… as I watched these two single moms interact with their kids I had an emotional breakdown. Too many things reminded me of my own childhood and too many things showed me that through it all you did nothing but care for us the best you could. This I got while I watched them care for their boys the best they could. And I tried to talk to Michelle’s sister about it, but the fact that I was near tears and her own blasé attitude toward me kept that conversation at bay. Michelle was gone getting something or something at that time – oh yeah, she was having her nails done.
I have meant to have a “serious” conversation with Michelle, but it seems that she and I don’t have the kind of relationship people need in order to actually talk. Our relationship seems centered around her computer having small problems and my somewhat cruel sense of humor.
So you see, I’ve been spending a good deal of time, of late, mulling over exactly what kind of asshole I’ve been and coming to no conclusion, I decided to attempt to find you and try to put right what has for so long been wrong.
To that end, I should start by apologizing. I’m sorry for all the pain and grief I’ve caused you over the last dozen or so years and I hope that you can and will forgive me so we may work together to be something like the mother and son, that we are.
My selfishness has had more casualties than our relationship, though. It seems to have indirectly cost me severely with respect to my relationship with the beloved Misty. I have become terribly estranged from my brothers. And I can feel that all this and the guilt together keep me from being a whole person.
For at least the past 6 years, if I thought there was a problem with something concerning my behavior or personality, I’d work to fix it. (Note: “if I thought there was a problem” – some ‘problems’ I ignore because I find them normal)… This letter may signal the beginning-of-the-end of the last of those problems.
I was hoping that I’d find you more easily than I did (if, in fact, I have found you). I was hoping that I’d call or email Frank and he’d give me your address and/or telephone number. Two years ago, on Mother’s day (no less!) he called me. I told him to call you, because it was Mother’s Day!! Since then I’d heard from him again (he offered me a job, of all things) and once more after that, but then I have not heard from him nor do I know where to find him. His email address (the one he gave me) doesn’t work – anything I email to it is returned.
I hope very much to find my older brother and try, also, to patch up whatever between us as well.
Many nights (following my encounter with Michelle’s kid and nephew) I have re-thought many events and, near or past the point of tears, condemned myself for those actions which I clearly took out of abject selfishness.
If I needed punishment, you can trust me when I tell you that my actions have come home to roast on many an occasion and aside from my wondering what the hell Twilight Zoneepisode I was in, I probably wondered what I’d done that was so bad that I deserved the treatment. I’m still not sure I can answer that adequately either. Perhaps I did not deserve what happened to me, but you, too, didn’t deserve the way I treated you and so any pain I receive from this is clearly my own making.
I’ll close this first letter with a touch of irony. I’ve many times said and thought terrible things about the way my father treats/treated his mother, my “Grama.” One of those was that he disappeared (that is, didn’t have any communication with her) for like 11 years. When meanwhile I was doing the exact same thing. What kind of asshole have I been? What kind of ungrateful jerk do you have the misfortune of having for a son?
Lovingly,
Your son,
(imagine my signature here)
Robert Wesley Edwards
