August 4^th, 1974

Dearest Henry,

I saw the Big Dipper tonight … and how strange to once again see it right side up.  This got me thinking about incredibly far away I must have been, to see it on its back, and how the whole trip, even only two days later, seems like a dream.  

This journey has taught me two things about happiness – that it is not a given, and that it is not a constant.  You have to choose happiness, and even once you’ve chosen, work at it.  If you lead a life of incredible highs and soaring peaks, you have to face the lows and the valleys, and work your way back up to the top.  After all, you didn’t get there in the first place without a climb.  A holiday like the one we’ve been on has certainly been a high, the highest I’ve been, and I can’t naively accept such a fantastic reward without taking on the valley that is sure to follow.  Even so, it is hard, and I miss you more than you could ever know.

I’d be lying to myself, Henry, if I said that your presence wasn’t one of the reasons for Africa being such a happy place for me.  The other night is one I’ll carry in my heart forever, or at the very least, until I see you again.  I’m counting the minutes until December, and will be waiting for you with open arms when you get here.

Until then, I’ll be closing my eyes and imagining that call of the owl beyond my open window is the call of the nightjar, that the hum of traffic is the rumble of a distant leopard, and that the blankets tangled around my restless limbs are your arms around me.

All my love,

Caroline

Caroline

    December 21^st, 2007

I am suffocating.  

There is snow falling outside, yet I feel as though I am in the muggy midst of a Baltimore summer – the air around me is heavy and it feels as though I’m breathing in water.

The irony of that is not lost on me - it was 32 years ago today that I received the letter that would leave me standing on the edge of a bridge two years later – 30 years ago today – preparing to breathe in water.  Preparing to fill my lungs with liquid, as they’d been when I was a baby; preparing to drown in the peaceful circle of life that this decision would bring.

Perhaps it is the fact that tonight I will take out that letter as I do on this night every year that is stealing my breath.  But I know better.  After so long, after decades, the pain those words used to bring on has been reduced to a dull ache. 

No, I know the reason for the heaviness on my chest tonight has nothing to do with Africa, nothing to do with Henry.  

It has everything to do with the loveless marriage that has held me trapped for 29 years.

Numbers, my life has been reduced to numbers.  Numbers and years.  Thirty-two years ago, thirty years ago, twenty-nine years ago – all numbers that defined me and shaped my life into the mess that it is today.  

I check my watch.  Minutes.  Twenty minutes until I tell him it’s over.  Twenty-one minutes until my life as I’ve known it will be turned upside-down.

I have no choice.  No choice about the divorce,  or about the timing,  or about any of it.  Christmas is in four days, and I know I should wait until it has passed to drop this bomb on my family.  But because of the significance of today – significance none of them know about or would even understand – it has to be today.

Today.

Eighteen minutes.

Seventeen minutes.

I am suffocating

  Emma

January 9^th 2008

I hate my mother.

I hate every single thing about her. 

I hate the way she chews her food, the way she sings along to the radio in the car.  I hate the way she plays with her hair when she thinks no one is watching, the obsessive way she smoothes her ponytail.

I hate the way she tries to dictate what I wear to school, telling me that skirt is too short or that sweater is too low, making me change before we leave.

I hate the way she laughs too loud.

I hate the way she thinks I’m angry, because once she heard me yelling at Rick over the phone.

I hate that she doesn’t know that what I’m really angry about is her leaving Daddy.

I hate that this morning when I was snooping on her computer, I found emails between her and her best friend Donna, talking about her wanting to get a divorce, all the way from last summer.

I hate that she’s always telling me to “open up” to her, that I can tell her anything – yet she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what’s really going on.

I hate that I have to find out by eavesdropping.

I hate that Christmas was different this year – that every holiday, every birthday from now on will be different. 

Because of her. 

I hate my mother.  

Brittany

    January 14^th, 2007

My dad moved out today.  

He left this morning, and it was terrible.  I watched from my bedroom window as he finished loading up his car, then turned to face Mom.  She stood at the end of the driveway with her arms crossed, and gave him this totally awkward hug before he got in the car and drove away.

She stood there for almost twenty minutes after he was gone, in that exact same position, like she didn’t know what to do now.  I saw her wipe at her face a few times like she was crying, and part of me felt bad for her.  But another part felt like it was her decision in the first place, so she shouldn’t be crying over it.

Part of me feels like if she’s the one who wanted to break up this family, she’s the one who should have to move out, not Daddy.  But part of me is glad to have her here.

The truth is I’m not sure what to feel.  I don’t know which one to believe, which one to be mad at, which one to hug, which one to turn and walk away from.  There’s a part of me that wants to do all of the above, and a part of me that wants to do none of the above.

But all of me is breaking apart inside, watching Emma pack up her things.  Emma isn’t part anything – she’s all for moving in with Dad.  And because she’s 16, she gets to decide which parent she wants to live with.  I’ve still got two years to go, and watching her get ready to leave just hours after my dad left makes me want to be angry at my mom. 

I think this makes Emma happy, because she’s so angry with mom, and wants me to be on her side.

“I’ll come pick you up anytime,” she is saying.  “Come stay at Dads for as much time as you can, and two years will pass in no time.”

I am sitting on her bed holding the stuffed dog that she has had since she was little.  I know I probably look like a little kid, sitting here trying not to cry, but I don’t care.

“And I’ll see you at school every day,” she continues on as she stuffs the last of her sweaters into her suitcase.  I think of all the times we’ve borrowed each other’s clothes, just walked into the other’s room in the morning and rifled through the closet.  It’s always caused fights – now I don’t see how I’m going to live without it. 

“Things are going to be so different,” my lip starts to quiver and I bite down hard.

“Well, she should have thought that through before she went and ruined our family,” Emma practically hisses.  I can actually see her anger, like in those cartoons when you can see steam or smoke or whatever coming out of someone’s ears.

“But I’m going to miss you,” I say pathetically.  We’ve always been close, as far as sisters go, and except for petty fights over stupid sister stuff, we get along really well.  I thought we’d at least have each other through this – now she’s standing at the door about to leave me.

“I’ll miss you too,” she fidgets, looking anywhere but at me, before finally reaching out and grabbing the stuffed animal I’m holding.  “I need to take him with me,” now she’s clutching him, a memento of a childhood that suddenly seems like it was in another lifetime.  

“Ok,” I stand up, unsure of what to do.  “See you tomorrow at school I guess,” I try to duck past her in the doorway but she grabs me and pulls me into a bear hug.

“Love everything about you,” she says softly into my hair before pulling away.

“Love everything about you,” I parrot as I watch her walk away.   That’s the way we end all our conversations, no matter how small … and though it’s never felt like this before, tonight it feels like a goodbye.

I hurry back to my perch by my bedroom window, the one that looks over the driveway.  Emma propels herself out the door, and my mom is on her heels.  She’s not yelling or anything, I think she’s just concerned.  Emma slams her suitcase in the trunk of the Toyota Highlander that my mom bought her last fall for her 16^th birthday, and glares at my mom as she climbs quickly into the drivers seat.  She doesn’t wave, she doesn’t honk, just peels out of the drive way and into the night.

I watch my mom carefully – she’s standing the same way she did this morning when Dad left, but this time I can tell she’s crying.  Her shoulders are bouncing up and down and her head’s kind of stooped forward at a really awkward angle.

This time there’s no parts of me, just all of me that wants to go to her, and so I fly down the stairs, out the door, and to her side, where I wrap my arms around her.  She cries onto my shoulder, and I cry too, because I don’t really know what else to do.  

  Caroline

    January 15^th, 2007

I study my face in the mirror, and keep thinking of the same word.  Tired.  I look exhausted, like I haven’t slept in years.  There are lines around my eyes and mouth that I don’t even think were there yesterday, that’s how quickly they’ve popped up.

I sigh and switch off the vanity lamp, but I don’t move.  I sit where I am, watching my reflection in the pre-dawn darkness and wait for my eyes to adjust to it.

I’ve been called beautiful my whole life, but had never considered myself so until I saw my features reflected in my daughters as they grew up.  Their azure eyes and long dark waves painted the picture of loveliness, and with each passing year as they grew I could be sure of two things – that they would begin to look more like me, and more like each other.  They are often mistaken for twins, and when the three of us are out together we get strange looks as though no one can imagine three people who look so similar.   

I see the boys stare at them as we walk by, and with a hint of recognition, recall getting the same looks when I was their age.  Yet it occurs to me now that it may be a long time until we are all three out together again.  Maybe it will never happen again.

They are my clones in looks, but in temperament they could not be more like their father.  Or so I thought, until the day that Emma told me she wanted nothing to do with me, packed up, and left.  Just like that.  

That, it would seem, she got from me.

Sometimes late at night I let myself wonder why it is my genes that have been so strong and not Mark’s.  I look exactly like my mother before me, and she hers, so really it should be no surprise.  But I’ve always believed it a punishment of sorts – I’d married someone I didn’t really love, and since I couldn’t give myself completely to him, I’d given myself to my daughters.  I’d created miniature me’s, ones I was afraid would make the same mistakes I had, ones that every time I look at now, I see myself in 1974.  In Africa.  With Henry.

That is my punishment.  Every time I look at the two people I love most in the world, I must be reminded of the other person I loved most in the world.

Henry and I knew each other backwards.  We knew the big things, those things you lock deep in your heart and don’t share with just anybody.  I knew his aspirations for the future, what he wanted to name his son, what he’d dreamt of as a child, how he’d felt when his grandfather died.  It was the space in-between we’d missed, or perhaps had skipped over because we’d thought we’d have all the time in the world to catch up on it.

With Mark, I know the little things.   I know what size shoe he wears, I know that his family had ham and hard rolls on Saturday mornings when he was a kid; I know that he takes his coffee with sugar but no cream.  

For years I held these facts like the trophies of my marriage.  I could laugh at book club about my husband who hated mowing the lawn but refused to hire a landscaping service.  I could comment on the sidelines of Brittany’s soccer practice that my husband had been the only goalie in the history of his college to go an entire season without letting an opposing team score a goal.  I could gripe to my dentist’s assistant about how my husband drinks seven Diet Cokes a day.  These were the little facts that made up my marriage.  They made me feel connected to Mark when deep down I think I’ve always known I wasn’t.  But I’d thought it would be enough.  It wasn’t until the approach of his 50^th birthday that I realized I’d never known what he dreamt of doing when he retired – that I’d never bothered, never cared, to ask.  A psychiatrist might tell me that this is a result of my subconscious knowing that I would not want to stay with him into our retirement, but I know better.  I know that it is simply because I never bothered to look past what I wanted to do with mine.  

Yet as I sit at the travel agency, wringing my hands nervously around the brochure in my hands while I wait for the next available agent, something feels wrong.  The last time I went to Africa, the continent held excitement, wonder, discovery.  For those blissful months after my return it held my love.  Since the day I found out about him, it’s held only emptiness.  How can you fly to emptiness?

Quickly I rise and let myself out, the bell jingling behind me merrily, leaving behind the happy couple planning their honeymoon, the college student planning his trip abroad, feeling older than I’ve felt in years.  Wondering what lies ahead of me now.

But even as I throw the brochure into the trash and climb into my car, I know I will be back, and probably soon.

After all, of all the things Africa has held for me over the years, it has always held my heart.

And I can’t very well go about gluing it back together until I’ve found it again, can I?