I sit in front of the computer head in hands, heart laying waste at the process that began less than a week ago. On a whim I wrote to a literary agent, “Wouldn’t it be something if mother, a small voice from the past, a farm woman sitting at her kitchen table pouring out her heart on paper in thankfulness and gratitude for the children she adopted could in the 2000’s—a decade she never saw—donate a house to a non-profit cancer organization, and thus promote the cure and healing of the very disease that killed her?”
During the years of 1957 to 1967 my mother wrote letters to Grandma Holt of the Holt Adoption Agency.
The Agency kept the letters until Mom’s death in 1968 and then sent them to my step-father. Guess they were tucked away for years, for I didn’t know of them until recently when my sister drove for four hours to deliver them to me.”
The agent forwarded them to a publisher who wants to see them immediately. They do not deal with incomplete manuscripts, they said. I didn’t tell them it was not complete. Normally such communication takes forever. It was a whim, the letters weren’t typed into a coherant group. Many were not dated, some were hand written, some typed. I am trying to decipher them, writing commentary, and processing my life.
I wrote that note in desperation, the house in Oregon hadn’t sold. I thought of the cancer survivor who wants it donated to her Foundation. I wrote the letter. My thoughts about it have evolved from helping cancer warriors, to orphans, to the one thing that would mean to most to me, and probably to my mother. It is one thing that desperately needs healed. What a legacy that would be. I asked my daughter as we drove from Kailua-Kona to our side of the island. “If sexual abuse could be eradicated, wouldn’t that be the legacy I would want most?”
“The book could do it,” she said.
Could it? How much do I tell? Mom’s letters paint an idealic family. Mom moved heaven and earth to have the babies she so desperately wanted and loved. She wrote long and lovingly about them. She trusted the “Lord” all along and felt “Him” guiding the process. Her dream fell into place and then she died. When she was diagnosed with cancer she asked me, “If this was to happen, why did God give me all these children?" I don’t know. She launched them. Perhaps her mission on earth was over. But then the next happened. I saw how sweet children could be damaged by the one man they all adored and called Daddy. Sexual advances by such a trusted person causes young girls to question everything about themselves.
“Tell of it,” said my daughter.
How much to tell? Wouldn’t keeping it a secret be the same thing that has allowed this cancer (the abuse) to proliferate?
How do we end it? How do we reach girls and say “Tell somebody. Don’t be ashamed. Get help.” How many adults knew this was happening and turned away pretending they didn’t see?
Within the week of working on the letters, we rented the house in Oregon. And in speaking about it to DD I wonder if this expose’ was the reason it had not sold. I had to get desperate. I had to write the letter. We listed the house on Craig’s list and we had so many people wanting to lease it that I had to make a tough decision as to which one to choose. We have leased the house.
Guess the house was giving its gift too.
