I still don’t know how to tell you this – but all the inheritance money from my Grandma is gone and I really don’t know for sure if the book really will be published. You know how much I love each and every one of you kids. But as I sit here listening to John Lennon croon “Imagine” I think of a world in which none of us ever had to struggle, a world in which I didn’t have to work all the time and leave you guys at home alone so much left to your own devices. If I’m going to have any life regrets, it’s going to be that I wasn’t there for you as much as I wanted to be, as much as I dreamed to be – no matter how hard I tried to think of things.
I know I kept telling all four of you that when I get the book out, then we won’t struggle anymore – then it was “when we move back down to San Francisco, everything will be okay.” I kept thinking it would be, really I did. But I thought if I could just keep hope alive for all of us, then we could keep afloat even after Grandma died suddenly back in 1997. We moved back down here to California on a shoestring and a prayer, literally. It’s been that way every single time. I know that I pretended that it wasn’t like that – I don’t know if that was good or bad, it was just the best that I could do at the time.
So yes, I still don’t know how to tell you how much I really love you, more than anyone else I’ll probably ever love in this lifetime, but I’m afraid I have nothing to leave you if something happens to me – there is no money in the bank, no hidden funds, just a small life insurance policy through my workplace and of course you’re the beneficiaries, and a bunch of books, a couple of guitars.
But just know that you should never give up hope – that life is filled with hopes and dreams and anything still is possible – and even though the book never got published and I ended up spending my Grandma’s inheritance money on stuff we needed and one hell of a nice Christmas in 1999, always live life to its fullest.
Just this past weekend, we were up in Virginia City – I had pretty much run out of money because I didn’t expect to have to buy those tires and I thought you, Melissa, would be able to pay me back that money from your unemployment check. I know it’s not your fault the unemployment check didn’t arrive because you didn’t check one certain box and we were kind of stuck up in Virginia City – yet not stuck.
And that’s when I realized that maybe the people who live in Virginia City have it right, and the rest of the world could really learn from those people. Everyone I talked to who lives in a world that’s like going back in time 150 years,
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Okay, you called this a rant, but in a way, I thought it was lovely. I always love the way you write about your feelings for your children. That's what keeps this from being a rant - and from turning whiny. It's really about motherhood - and that part of it is universal.
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