Return To Sender
Return To Sender
Your silence is deafening, I lamented. Perhaps I spoke too soon. I had hoped you were perhaps a better version of myself. I long to sit quietly, reserved like the mother I strive to emulate but fail to mimic. My words come before my silence and though I try to weigh them carefully, I struggle to remain quiet in the midst of a raging storm. My own volatile temper competes with the dark clouds, the threatening hail and wind, my personality rivals the greatest hurricane spinning on the radar. So you see, I don’t throw stones too quickly and I know myself and my weaknesses well, all the more reason my lack of compassion should be a stern warning. Your son a convicted rapist and you, his biggest cheerleader.
We will never be happy again, you said. Never be happy again? Really? Did you see that a child was killed by an alligator on a warm summer evening at Disney World? Don’t you dare write a letter and claim that you will never be happy again. Jiminy Cricket. I can hardly get through your letter. I feel like I’m reading an in depth character analysis by the FBI where a mother pulled out all the stops to create a persona known as “the perfect son.” Quite crafty and ingenious of you, but you have forgotten that we are all mothers and we know real we when we read it. I am a mother of four myself and yet, if you put all mine together they don’t collectively make the son you have painted so magnificently.
Your own portrayal of parenting leaves little to be desired. A successful son, athlete and scholar, yet parents that never considered pushing him. Just a little fellow who longed to swim competitively at age four like his big brother and you cheered from the sidelines, drove him to national competitions around the country. Your older children borrowed money for college and again, I feel like you are luring me to condone your parenting and the youngest son, who is in fact, a convicted rapist. While your children are weighted down with college debt, a friend of your family has started a go fund me page to fuel your youngest child’s legal bills. Why does this whole picture scream to me that this is fictional?
I beg of you to show mercy, you begged the judge. Mercy. What is mercy? Be kind and merciful to my beautiful son, you plead. I read your words and I shake my head but I try to understand. I really am trying to understand your viewpoint. Perhaps your son told you that his victim wanted sex and so, they had it but she passed out during the twenty minute action session. Is that what he said? If so, I bet that was terrible to hear especially as you tend to err on the side of caution and ponder your child, his beauty, his innocence, his sentence, his life. His, his, his. Me, me, me. I hear you and I know where’re your coming from; it’s so clear.
Return to sender. I thought perhaps I would like you, sympathize with the mother of a son who had made a terrible mistake. I was wrong. I don’t wish you ill will, but your words have not tugged at my heart strings. I can’t stop thinking about my daughter, the little girl who is beautiful and has done nothing in the world to deserve unkindness and the future connection she has to the victim is what keeps me up at night. What about her? What about her mother? What about her baby brother with special needs? What about her four grandparents? What about her big brothers? You know, the ones that were told to protect her at all cost. Her, her, her. She, she, she.
Where is she in all this? Thank you but no thank you. I preferred your silence.