Faith’s Letters to Her Mother: Gift
GIFT
Audio
Dear Runaway Mother:
It never rains but it pours and it’s pissing down in buckets now. I had it in my mind to tie up the loose ends and bow out gracefully. But that’s just not who I am. This wild horse still has a little kick left in it and it’s going to fight down to the bitter end.
They think they’ve got my back against the wall. What they don’t know is that’s when I’m at my best. I hate walking away from everything I’ve worked so hard to build. But if I have to I prefer to go out with my own hand on the rudder sailing into the wind and kicking a little butt along the way.
Runaway mother, do you think that’s what dad would tell me to do if his mind hadn’t lost its rudder? He recognized early on that I was rebel and he encouraged it. You’re a firecracker, Faith. Don’t ever take the easy road. It won’t make you happy. You’re like your mother that way. You’re both meant to take the road less traveled.
I’d forgotten that – the way he compared me to you. I got spitting mad whenever he did. I didn’t want to be anything like you because that would make it harder to resent you. But what if we are cut from the same cloth? Maybe that puts a new spin on why you left.
Dad never condemned you for leaving. It broke his heart but he never once uttered a negative thing about you. The few times I did he came down hard on me. I’ve never looked at it this way before but maybe – could it be – that it was tragic rather than cruel? I know now that love doesn’t always flourish where it’s planted.
Runaway mother, is that what happened with you and dad? You fell passionately in love against the odds. But when you tried to make a go of it you realized you couldn’t bend yourself into that shape. It makes sense. For the first time all the pieces fit together. You had no choice. You had to leave.
How awful it must have been for you. Knowing it was better to break his heart once cleanly than to break it a little bit every day. Is it possible you stayed just long enough… to give him me? You didn’t abandon me. It was the last thing you could do for him.
I was a gift.