My dearest, I wonder if there's still a chance you might appear. I try not to hold out hope - and yet. I'm still here, unwavering always, til Wednesday.

Clouds are thickening and it feels like summer, perhaps it's going to rain. Missed you very much today, you were very much in my thoughts. I walked up to Borough Hall and took the IRT all the way to the Bronx, and went to the New York Botanic Garden. Actually, I woke up this morning really not knowing at all what to do with myself today. Received two lovely Easter greetings and wellwishes, one from my aunt, and one from My Friend in Finland, a very nice way to start the day, with such messages. Though the one from my aunt contained a bit of disturbing news, that my father is ill, no details. My father & I severed relations a long time ago, the mid-nineties sometime. I adored him when I was a baby and toddler, and then as I got older (grade school) and my mother told me that his erratic behavior was due to alcoholism, which upended my world, he and I were at odds, too often violent, after that, whether he was drinking or not, and there did come a point that he did stop, after a very bad accident, but his rage, fury whatever did not abate, it seemed if anything to concentrate. Anyway. I don't mean to dwell. I didn't mean when I sat down to write, to write about this. And yet. I know that in the realms of How Things Are Supposed To Be Done, I'm supposed to dutifully contact someone, inquire, visit, be there at his side whether it's deathbed or not, but I have to tell you - this will not happen. It may well be a poor reflection on me. But it would be false on my part. Not that I'm such a purist - I can fake things if need be. But - you know my feelings on this really are a jumble, something that's been deep-sixed for a very long time - he caused me an incredible lot of psychic pain, and I simply had to excise him, though I believe he excised me first. He and I were never close - until my mother died, in 1990. Then, amazingly, for six years after that, he and I became very, very close, enjoyed a very warm relationship. I could hardly believe it, and it meant a lot to me. I couldn't explain what had happened between us, why suddenly there was this very close rapport - there was something about the dynamic of my mother that had come between the father/daughter relationship.

But, essentially, he dropped me in an instant when he found his second wife. There wasn't room for her, and for me.

Kropka.

I was devastated, really mourned. I felt emotionally used, he needed me as long as he needed me and when he didn't -

So it's done, I won't be contacting him or anyone about this, and I have already imagined that (not that I'm rushing him) I will not be attending his funeral. Ironically, it's possible that you might, not that I wish that on you, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, I guess I just feel a need to explain myself a bit to someone - you're about the only one there is, who I figure won't 'throw the book' at me for not 'hopping to.' I get the feeling that you have huge stores of empathy, and you must on some level be nonjudgmental, or else why would you stick with me, in these pages? I am very grateful to you, so much, for that.

Also I have no relationship at this point with any of my siblings. My brothers simply fell away (shades of my father, perhaps, wives trumping all), and my sister and I were like oil & water, and I think she played unconscious games that I was on the bad-receiving end of, where I was cast as the villain who upset her.

You know? It's nice to view myself, or try to, as a pretty nice, decent person who was never understood or much liked by her birth family.

I have had much warmer contact with Jersey, as limited as it is, than my own family of origin.

Darling, I guess I just wanted you to know this about me, I don't want you to think that I'm angry, or stubborn - it's just - well, that's just how it's been with my family, for decades upon decades...

Sweetheart, loving you very much. Thanks for listening -

XOXO