Today in celebration of Mother Days I wanted to share a short read from Letters of Note Mothers a collection curated by Shaun Usher
Anne Sexton is one of my favourite poets, her poem ‘Admonitions to a Special Person’ continues to live in my heart, so much so that I wanted my parents to read it at their wedding, unfortunately my mum thought a poem about two dinosaurs who fall in love would be more appropriate…
This is a letter that Anne wrote for her daughter Linda when Anne was forty and Linda was only fifteen, it is particularly poignant to read it now knowing that Anne died of suicide only five years later.
Dear Linda
I am in the middle of a flight to St. Louis to give a reading. I was reading a New Yorker story that made me think of my mother and all alone in the seat I whispered to her “I know, Mother, I know.” (Found a pen!) And I thought of you — someday flying somewhere all alone and me dead perhaps and you wishing to speak to me.
And I want to speak back. (Linda, maybe it won’t be flying, maybe it will be at your own kitchen table drinking tea some afternoon when you are 40. Anytime.) — I want to say back.
1st, I love you.
2. You never let me down
3. I know. I was there once. I too, was 40 and with a dead mother who I needed still.
This is my message to the 40-year-old Linda. No matter what happens you were always my bobolink, my special Linda Gray. Life is not easy. It is awfully lonely. I know that. Now you too know it — wherever you are, Linda, talking to me. But I’ve had a good life — I wrote unhappy — but I lived to the hilt. You too, Linda — Live to the HILT! To the top. I love you, 40-year old Linda, and I love what you do, what you find, what you are! — Be your own woman. Belong to those you love. Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart — I’m in both: if you need me. I lied, Linda. I did love my mother and she loved me. She never held me but I miss her, so that I have to deny I ever loved her — or she me! Silly Anne! So there
XOXOXO
Mom
Letters of Note Mothers is a collection of letters written by or sent to Mothers – including letters from Martin Luther King, Louisa May Alcott , Sylvia Plath, Joan Rivers, Billie Holiday etc etc etc
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