A Woman of Independent Means (45 page)

This is the most difficult letter I have ever attempted to write for it has to span the greatest distance—that ever-widening gulf that separates a mother from her married daughter. When you decided to make your home in the same city with me, I never dreamed I would one day feel further from you than I did when you were living abroad with only an ocean between us. But here we are almost within shouting distance and I am not even sure I can reach you by letter.

I had a lovely time at your luncheon today—despite having to ask to be included on the guest list. Until you are my age I fear you will not be able to understand what it means to be treated like a contemporary by members of the next generation. I have such fun with your friends I forget I am not as young as they are—until I am once again alone with you. Why do you insist on relegating me to the company of people my own age? I shared my friends with you when you were a child and delighted in seeing them treat you as an equal. Why are you so disinclined to return the favor now?

In the world of the arts people of all ages attend the same parties. Old playwrights advise young actors, promising artists question acknowledged geniuses, would-be poets fawn over literary lions. The only criterion for admission is talent.

How dare polite society segregate people on the basis of age? This injustice makes me angrier than discrimination on the basis of race or sex. The company of the young (or the younger) is our only defense against that cruel oppressor—age. How painful to see my own daughter aiding and abetting the enemy by denying me access to the next generation.

Has the fact that we are mother and daughter kept us from also being friends? Just because my company was imposed on you by birth should not prevent you from enjoying it as though you had chosen it deliberately. I must confess that I feel like a lively, witty conversationalist around everyone but you. However, in your presence I feel I am continually auditioning for the pleasure of your company, and I find myself apologizing for boring you with answers to questions you never asked.

I know children are supposed to be beyond the reach of their parents' rod once they are grown, but I cannot stand by silently while a child of mine deliberately inflicts hurt on someone who did nothing to deserve it—even when that someone happens to be me. When I am with you, I am too afraid of losing the small part of you I still possess to express to your face the disappointment I feel on being excluded so callously from so much of your life. Even this tirade began as a thank-you note for reluctantly permitting me to intrude into your life one more time. But my pen will not continue the charade we act out in person, and I realize now I have risked your contempt by accepting so gratefully the few half-hearted invitations I have forced you to extend. It is an illusion to pretend I am part of your life just because we occasionally occupy the same room. You have my word I have indulged in it for the last time. Be assured that I will not inflict my unwanted presence on you again.

I wish I had the courage to say all this aloud, but only in a letter do I dare express my feelings openly. At least when I am writing, I can pretend you are listening. When I am with you, I know better.

I love you desperately,
Mother

July 10, 1943
3 A.M.
Dallas

Totsie Fineman
10011 N. Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla, California

 

Dearest Totsie,

How dare you move to California when I need to talk to you so desperately tonight! Yesterday I wrote a letter to my daughter that may have lost me her love forever, and I have forsworn the written word—as soon as I post this mea culpa to you.

Until now the act of letter-writing has kept me sane and calm, allowing civilized expression of all the emotions that trouble my sleep. However, today, for the first time in my life, the written word has betrayed me.

I have never before lost my temper on paper and said things I would give my life to take back. I even went to the post office this morning and pleaded with them to return the letter before it was delivered, but neither rain nor sleet nor a mother's tears can stop the U.S. mail from reaching its appointed destination.

My only hope was to station myself on the receiving end and intercept the letter as it was delivered. But I was too late. Eleanor was holding the open envelope when I arrived. She stared at me without a word, then abruptly left the room. I followed her up the stairs, begging her to surrender the letter. But she informed me coldly that under law a letter once mailed becomes the property of the recipient, and she entered her bedroom with the incriminating evidence, closing the door behind her.

I know you moved to California to be near your son, but please do not make the mistake I did of expecting physical proximity to result in intimacy of mind and spirit. I have yet to experience from my family the welcome you receive each time you arrive for a visit. How I wish that once in my life my children would greet me as eagerly as if I had traveled a great distance to be with them. I must face the fact that I have stayed too close to them for too long, but where am I to go? If only this wretched war would end and allow me to escape outside my own life! When my son was drafted and taken from me, I turned all my devotion on the only child who remained within my reach, and I fear that when peace is declared for my son, I will still be at war with my daughter.

How can I make her forget—or at least forgive—all the harsh words I wrote in anger? Accusations hurled aloud are blurred by time and memory, but angry words on paper never lose their power to hurt. After tonight I will never dare put pen to paper again. A blank page to me is like a drink to an alcoholic. I do not know when to stop, and the next day I am overwhelmed with regret at all the things I said.

How I long to see you! Though we were born of different parents, we are connected at the heart like Siamese twins. My daughter may have turned her back on me, but you are the mainstay of my larger family. I will love you all my life.

Good night, sweet sister.

September 1, 1945
Dallas

Lt. Andrew Steed
Barracks C
Fort Sill
Lawton, Oklahoma

 

Dearest Andrew,

We are waiting anxiously to welcome you home. But once you have been properly welcomed, I plan to start traveling. In your absence I have faced the fact that my children no longer need or want my constant presence on the perimeter of their daily lives. So I plan to see as much of the world as I can in the years left to me. I am counting on at least another twenty on my feet and hopefully another decade after that in a reclining position to look back on my life and try to make some sense out of it.

How thankful I am that you will stay safely in Oklahoma until you are allowed to come home to Texas. I know you are frustrated not to have seen action on other fronts, but there are enough battles to be faced on the home front when you return.

I do not know whether her letters have prepared you or not, but the wife who awaits your homecoming is not the shy, submissive mate you left behind. I have had ample occasion to observe her during the course of our volunteer duty with the Red Cross, and I have been surprised and delighted with her growing independence.

She volunteered immediately for driving duty and has learned to handle huge trucks and buses with surprising ease for someone who appears so fragile. I would advise you to rethink the restrictions you applied so arbitrarily to her use of the car during the first years of your marriage—as well as any other nonreciprocal rules, spoken or unspoken, by which you attempted to govern her conduct—if you have any hope of celebrating a silver wedding anniversary.

I am very happy that you decided to move back to Dallas before entering the service. Though the reasons for your return were financially regrettable, I can assure you that you will profit from our proximity in the future.

I have just been by to see Eleanor and the new baby. They are doing fine and Walter does not seem the least bit disappointed to have a third daughter. I trust their family is complete now. Three children are enough for any couple, especially now with domestic help so difficult to arrange. I do not see how Eleanor survives with only a single servant, but she turns down all my offers of assistance, so I assume she has learned how to manage. In my day one would not dare ask the housekeeper to help with the children, but modern women, whether wives or servants, have to be prepared to do everything. I am not sure that can be called progress.

I am sorry Mother Steed did not live to see her fourth great-grandchild, but at least she derived much pleasure from the first three. Babies brought us together in the last years of her life just as they did in the early years of my marriage. We shared many happy visits at my house until a few months ago when she became too ill to travel.

I know you have been disappointed by the failure of your marriage to produce children, but there is nothing to keep you from adopting a child. Over the past few years I have made substantial contributions to a shelter for homeless children in Fort Worth, which would insure that your application received immediate attention should you decide to adopt. I trust you will give careful consideration to this alternative and not subject your marriage to the severe strains so often caused by the prolonged absence of children.

All my love,
Mother

July 21, 1947
Galveston, Texas

Dear Mavis,

Is there anything more exasperating than a rainy day at the seashore, especially when one has traveled a great distance to get there?

I finally persuaded my children that it was time for their children to see an ocean, and so a week ago Nell with her little boy and Eleanor with her three girls accompanied me on the overnight train to Galveston. None of the children had ever traveled by train or seen a Pullman compartment, and they were thrilled with the magic of a disappearing bed and washbasin. I wish our husbands could have made the train trip with us, but they are driving down later.

The weather was beautiful the day we arrived and we spent all afternoon on the beach. The children were fascinated by the never-ending movement of the ocean and crushed yesterday when we were confined to our rooms by heavy rain.

I volunteered to keep all four children while their mothers took refuge in a movie and decided to employ the time in an educational manner. I endeavored to explain the movement of the planets to them and climbed up on a chair so I could circle the ceiling lamp with an orange to illustrate the path of the earth around the sun. I became so enraptured with my own explanation, I forgot I was standing on a chair and suddenly stepped into space and fell to the floor.

I am afraid I did further injury to vertebrae already damaged by my leap to safety when our house caught fire so long ago. I have stayed in bed today while the rain continued and confined my instruction to French vocabulary, paying each child a penny for every word committed to memory.