I didn't crumple it up and throw it away. I folded it and put it back into the envelope, and then I put the envelope in my dresser drawer and I didn't look at it again for some time. And then one day I went out to the dock and stood where Mommy had told me my grandmother had stood staring out at the sea at night, looking for the light of the boat that was to bring my grandfather back to her. I stood there with the wind snapping around me. and I watched the breakers and saw the clouds rushing across the blue sky, and I thought Mommy was right.
Forgiveness.
That's where it begins.
And I went upstairs and wrote a letter. Dear Hannah,
When I read how you and your boyfriend. Heyden, had run away together. I couldn't help but think haw I felt the day Harley and I left home. He was searching for the father he had never known. and I loved him so much I wanted to be with him during his most troubled and frightening time. Our story is in the book The Enid of the .Rainbow.
So many of us leave home to find home, only to discover that what we left behind was what we wanted and needed. I fully understood why you felt lost and alone back home, and of course, your baby brother's death w
as a major traumatic event for you.
My mother. Rain, had a very hard early life. She was brought up in an area in Washington. D.C., where just going to school every day was a dangerous mission. There were gangs and a great deal of violence. She didn't know until she was in her senior year of high school that the family she was living with was not her real family. Can you imagine the emotional crisis she endured when she learned this and then. when she was returned to her real family?
Her mother didn't want her returned to her. Rain was born as a result of her mother's affair at college with an African-American man who later became a college professor in England. How my mother met him is told in Lightning, Strikes, As it turned out. because she did reconnect. I have had a wonderful relationship with my grandfather, but that didn't come so easy. Nothing did, just like nothing came easy for you.
After my mother had a tragic accident and was paralyzed and in a wheelchair, she fell in love with my father, who was her therapist. and as a result. I was born. This is all told in Eye Of The Storm. I can't say anyone had more loving parents than I did. Hannah. but living on our property was my mother's stepbrother and his wife and his stepson. Harley. We grew up together. but Harley was always in trouble and resented his stepfather, who was very strict and who he believed never loved him or wanted him.
I suppose we were always in lave. but we were brought up so close. it was like falling in love with a relative. Everyone just assumed I would go my way and Harley would go his, but in time we supported each other emotionally, and when his appall-unit; to confront his real father arose, I couldn't let him go alone. The result, as you will see when you read my story. The End of the Rainbow, was quite unexpected and almost tragic for both Harley and me. In the end it was his stepfather who became his hero as well as mine.
Both you and I have family histories that have impacted so dramatically on our personalities and our ambitions. In one of Shakespeare's plays. I think it might be Julius Caesar, he wrote that "the eve sees not itself. but by reflection." I believe he meant we can never really see ourselves until we see ourselves as others might see us, until we step out of ourselves and look at ourselves more objectively and clearly. One way to do that is to go back to understand our roots.
Both you and I are products of the struggles and tribulations our mothers and fathers endured. Hannah. We judge our parents too harshly without knowing all the facts sometimes. No one can truly appreciate what you went through unless he or she reads your mother Willow's story and I think that would be very true for me as well, Read Rain, Lightning Strikes. and Eye of The Storm before you read my story-- just as I have read Willow and Wicked Forest before reading Twisted Roots-- and you will fully appreciate why I turned out the way I did. This will give you insights into your awn development as well, I'm sure.
The reason for that lies in the secrets our parents have kept hidden from us to protect us. It was nice to live in a world of innocence, oblivious to all the twists and turns and dark places in our histories, but when we grew old enough to understand, we were permitted to look into these dark places, and like you. I made discoveries and had realizations that were nearly too overwhelming to accept. We should be grateful, I suppose, that our parents tried so hard to protect us from all that, but there comes a time when you have to learn how to live with it and how to protect yourself. Whether we liked it or not. Hannah, we had to grow up fast or else be destroyed by forces from within our own worlds.
The natural worlds we lived in had a great impact on who we were as well. Hannah. You were brought up in the glamorous and glitzy opulence of Palm Beach. I lived on a beautiful estate in Virginia. There is a lake on our property and it has had a great influence on me. When you are out in Nature, you feel things people in big cities, surrounded by cement, don't feel. I'm sure you who have lived on the ocean can appreciate what I'm saying as well. My mother liked to think of our estate as part of the family. I understand why.
I hope someday you and I will meet and we can talk about our lives freely. Let's exchange our stories first and get to know each other through the words, the pictures, the images and revelations in them. Let's think of books as letters of introduction, the way people in days long ago used to present themselves to strangers. Let the stories be our references so that when we do meet, we meet like two old friends who have finally been brought back together after a long time and across vast distances.
Perhaps then we can smile and truly understand the meaning of such words as family and friendship and love.
And perhaps then we can give to our children the gifts that were given to us. Open the cover of the book. Hannah.
Unwrap the packages.
Behold what lies within both our hearts, and like me, become proud of who you are,
Looking for you.
Summer