time to visit some vintage shops for us. Things are a little unwieldy here. My mom is insisting I “see” this therapist at school; although, I don’t have to actually see him. I just have to write back and forth to him. But I know what he wants. He wants what I’ve tied up and left neatly in the back of my brain. This e-mail is not for you to psychoanalyze me. Ms. Harrison, my parents, and Marv are doing that. I just want you to tell me if you have anything in the back of your brain that you’ve tied neatly in a bow and would like to leave there. Just tell me you have something like that.
P.S. Remember, anything you find for me clothing-wise needs to fit my enormous size 12 body.
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 1/15
E-Mail #2 from Aunt Joyce. She hides something in her mind, too.
Danielle,
I will share something with you, and then after you are done reading it, I will ask that you delete it, so it can go back to living “tied neatly in a bow,” as you describe it, in the back of my mind. I’m not sure how your parents will feel about me sharing this information with you, but I want you to have it, and I want you to understand it.
Seventeen years ago, the year your parents adopted you, I had an abortion. Now, have whatever reaction you choose to that. You won’t be thinking anything I haven’t already thought about my choice or myself. It’s not something you let go.
Your mother was very angry with me—she knew pain—because she had been trying for so long to get pregnant with you, and when it happened for me under very complicated circumstances, she couldn’t understand why and how I could end this life. I also believe she was very upset that life could work this way. And I understand her perspective. She wanted a child so badly. I didn’t. What sick forces were at work here, she must have thought.
During an especially virulent fight that I had with your mom, she begged me to have the baby so she could adopt it. It seemed like such a simple solution to her and something that, in her mind, the universe had worked out. But, Danielle, very little in life ever works so simply. I had gotten pregnant from a man whom I deeply loved but who was married. (Again, have whatever reaction you choose to that. Ditto, the above sentiments. You won’t be thinking anything I haven’t already vetted in therapy.) I was twenty-four years old, and child that I was, I loved this man the way I knew how to at the time. Danielle, you will love people in your life and the circumstances of that love will not fit into a neatly designed framework. You may not like it, but you will take it, or, at least, I hope you will. For all the pain, regret, and shame, I cannot change one moment of the affair or the decision I ultimately made.
It took years for your mom to forgive me. When you were gifted to them, I watched every minute of your coming-of-age thinking I could have had a son or daughter walking right alongside you. What might this child have offered you? But, had I had this child and allowed your parents to adopt him/her, then you wouldn’t be with us at all. That is not an option any of us can accept. And so, it is you, your existence, your presence in my life that has helped to heal this situation for me. You mean so much to me, and now you know even more why. You are the child we are meant to have. Yours is the life that is meant to be here.
I hope this story is not more than you were bargaining for.
Your Forever Aunt Joyce
P.S. I have clothes for you, but in a size 8; you are a size 8, girl.
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 1/16
E-Mail #3 to Forever Aunt Joyce
Forever Aunt Joyce,
I am just so über-sad that you ever had to be so distraught. I can’t imagine what all that was like, so I wouldn’t even start to judge you. Boy, you really have had problems.
After I read your e-mail, I held the snow globe you bought for me in Paris that time we went together, the one with the street scene by the Moulin Rouge. I shut my eyes, shook it, and held it close to