Yesterday's Mail

I received an envelope in the mail yesterday from my mother. I am accustomed to sending mail to my mother as she requests that I print out recipes from the foodtv website several times a week. I don't usually get mail from her unless it's a birthday or xmas card. It was a small envelope and seemed to have a small piece of paper in it. I slowly opened the envelope not knowing what I would find inside.

The enveloped contained a photograph of a young woman leaning against a wall. Attached to the photo was a post-it note with the following message:

"Cyn, Do you know who this girl is? Doesn't she look familiar? I seem to remember this face and figure, back about 30 - 32 years ago. Love You, Mom"

I looked at the picture and agreed that there was something familiar about this woman. She looked like a younger me. I kept looking at her thinking that perhaps it was a picture of me when I was younger. But it wasn't. I knew it wasn't me.

I could find no other identifying info about the clipping so I called my mother and asked her why she had sent it to me. She told me that she had seen this woman's photo in the newspaper and then she met her in the local mall. She said the woman was named Lena. Apparently they had talked a while, my mother pumping her for historical info. What she found out was that the woman was born in the north, adopted, and raised in Virginia. She went to college in Virginia and was an abstract artist with an exhibit in the mall in Boca Raton. My mother kept mentioning how much this woman looked like me and that she thought the woman was in her early thirties.

Then my mother said, "she could be your daughter." I said nothing, waiting for her to continue. Then she said that if I had deprived her of a grandchild that she's not sure if she could ever forgive me. I was shocked. I asked her if she were asking if I had given birth to a child? She avoided the question and said that she had never thought that I was a mother. Not until she met this young woman. I told her that I would never have aborted, nor given up, a child. I told her that I never had a child and had never been pregnant. She sighed a great relief and said, "thank God."

This conversation has stayed with me since last night. Not so much that my mother would think that I would withhold information like that from her and everyone else in my family, but because, to her, there are long periods of my life when she didn't know where I was or what I was up to. There were years when I didn't see her, and she had no idea if I could have been pregnant and given the baby up. Periods of my life are part of her imagination, because she doesn't know. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a child and have years of their life unknown to me. I know there are families for whom that is par for the course, but not for my family. Not for my mother. And not for me.

In the past, my mother has asked about periods of my life, trying to prompt me to tell her what went on at certain times when we were not in touch. I've joked with her that she was too young to hear my war stories. She's never happy with that answer, but I can't imagine that I would ever tell her about those "missing" years. I never want her to have those images in her mind when she thinks of her eldest daughter. For now, she's content to know that I have not deprived her of a grandchild.