E-mail from dad

My father is amongst the most well-intentioned of men. He would not hurt me deliberately - and he would be sad to know that he had hurt me.

I've wanted to write to him lately. I think about him and mom a lot. I am the second of six kids and don't really require much from them by way of physical or financial support. Accordingly, those who need attention get it. But it is difficult to almost completely lose contact with them as they focus on the other kids and the grandkids. So I try to write more frequently. Dad writes back. Today, these were his words:

"Let me be frank. So good to hear from you... Quite independently, I've been thinking of you.... I've been thinking that you should decide what kind of man would be the very best husband and father for your children... Then move back here, which I think is the very best place to find a good husband... Then put these men through the test to find the best one.  Simple.  Oh yeah... and then there is the part where God who can read hearts... finds the guy with the true heart."

I pulled the message down just before I got on a train through Germany. I meant to spend the time on the train writing a response. But the process made me cry. So I sat on the train, my computer propped in my lap, writing to my dad and crying. I used the blue linen scarf I carried as a handkerchief.

I have to think of all the things he doesn't mean. But it is difficult to miss the things that he does mean. It is so simple for him. So straightforward. It is a calculation in the same way that relationships are calculations for so many other people: seek out a target-rich environment and find a suitable companion. Marry. Reproduce.

Does he not see me? How can he not understand what has happened? Does he not know?

Does he not even remember who I am?  I am the woman who would absolutely terrify the shit out of any good Utah Mormon boy.

I decided to be as honest with him as I could.

"I appreciate that you try to think of ways for me to be happy. I know that you love me and want me to be happy. You have been frank with me so I will be frank with you. You think that it will make me happy to be married to a man with a good heart who can be a good companion and a good father to my children. You believe it is lack of opportunity that keeps me single.

"If I could name companionship as my goal then I could find a companion. I could find someone who has good intentions and a good heart (even outside of Utah!). Before now, this may have been sufficient. Sometimes I wish very much that I could have stayed with Hans and never known anything different. I loved him so very much and he has such a good heart.  But I found the companion soul to my soul. I knew this the first moment I saw Sjors.

"When I am honest with myself (and I try to be) I know that, to be with anyone other than him is a lie. Even if I could somehow adjust my feelings so that I could spend the rest of my days with another man, it would not be kind to this theoretical good-hearted man to commit to be with him when I will always know that I belong with someone else.  I often wonder why I was damned enough to see and feel and know this truth only to spend the rest of my life feeling its lack.

"Why be shown a truth if you cannot touch it? If there is a god, then there is such cruelty in this act. But I suppose it is unreasonable to believe that everyone is supposed to have happiness. So few people do.  I see suffering all over the world and know that mine is not the only pain, nor the greatest.

"If you pray for anything, then pray that this deep sorrow will be alleviated enough so that, even if I can’t have the husband I was meant for, then I can at least have children.  Daniel has kindly volunteered to donate for me – but it is so unkind to have children if you are unhappy and I have been tremendously depressed.  Children should be born and raised in a place of joy. I would not be so cruel."