The Prodigal Cousin

Shortly after my adoptive mom died and her home was cleaned out for resale, I was handed a box of memories.  Included in the box was a large envelope full of notes or letters either to me or from me that she'd kept for unknown reasons.  It's also unclear when some of the items came into her possession.  As I pulled out and read more of the notes and letters I grew increasingly horrified when I wondered how many of these my mom had actually read. There is probably a whole novel of essays that could be written about what happened as a result of opening the letters inside this Pandora's envelope but I'm only going to write about one today.

The letter in question was from a cousin I'd been pen pals with as a teenager. We had been close once, this cousin and I.  Close in age, we were in the same grade though at different schools. When her family moved away, we saw each other less and less.  She found new friends and gradually we stopped writing to one another.  I went to her wedding and visited her once, but our lives had diverged and slowly we drifted apart.  I didn't even know that her mother had died until I discovered it while building a family tree on a research website.  It was important to me to write to her and I sent a condolence card to her last known address.  She responded with a sympathy card for the loss of my mom.  And once again we had stuff in common.

The old letter I'd pulled from the stack was her response to my confession of recently acquired carnal knowledge. There were no parental recriminations that I recall, so this must have come into my mom's possession after I moved away, possibly left behind in a hiding place that I'd forgotten.  When I mentioned to my cousin the discovery of her letter in my mom's possession (and now mine), she was justifiably dismayed at what could only be called my betrayal. We had revealed secrets to one another and I allowed a letter of hers to fall into someone else's possession.  I did not tell her of my own dismay at the discovery of things I'd long forgotten about myself, or how I'd discussed with a close friend whether to read the rest of the letters or to just burn them like trash and release the negativity.  It may take years of therapy to recover from this assault on my memories. But, like other mistakes, they provide an opening for starting over.

My cousin provided her number in the card and I sent her a text acknowledging it.  And just like that we were having a conversation.  Within a couple of hours, I brought her up to speed on the last 30 years since we'd spoken and to me it feels like picking up where we left off.  I shared this blog with her and we talked about my writing. I mentioned an essay I'd written about the day I was adopted but I haven't been able to find a copy of it.  All I really remember is the title, "Hot Breakfast on a Wednesday" which was supposed to cleverly allude to a day that wasn't like all the others.  Now that I regularly have a hot breakfast, this seems less clever.  At the time, it was one of the most powerful essays I'd ever written. I've been encouraged to write down what I remember and I will do so in time.  For now, I'm relishing being the prodigal cousin. I'm rejoicing not only at having found my way back to family but at being allowed back in. Kill the fatted calf!  I'll bring the beer.