I'm Sorry, Too.

My mom sent me a letter today - among other things. A whole package, really.

It was all unexpected. The package that she sent - but the even more so - the words she sent it with, all caught me off guard.

She wrote me things that I had thought to myself in the deepest corners of my mind and heart many times, but was so sure that this woman - this stranger in my home - never could quite get.

My family, without my brother..

In reading her letter, a sadness washed over me, that came with the realization that she understood in her own strange way. That she had been fighting to make the words work and come out, and I had never seen that.

A sadness at the opportunities never acknowlegded.

A sadness that we left each other without even knowing who the other was.

And I'm sitting here now, enjoying the hell out of the dried mangoes she sent along, and wondering if we could have been close. If it was ever in our cards to be friends, and somehow we both passed it by..

Her letter to me: more than anything, was an apology letter.  Admitting that she didn't know always, the best way to raise me. That as she watched me grow she wished she had gone about the whole parenthood thing differently. She told me of her regrets.

It was healing for me to read her words.

I love my mom, I always have. Our home was not a bad place. Not even a little. It was a peaceful place. No, we did not have struggles that you could look at, hear or touch -- just a disconnect. It was not a place where we could share our joys and sorrows openly. I didn't try to keep secrets from her, but many times it seemed like she just didn't want to know. She never expressed an interest in really knowing my life - always skirting over the big stuff.

I am not like my mother, in more ways than I can count. But today I found out that we do have similarities. More than I could have guessed. That heals me.

S.