Dear Joyce,

I’ve tried talking with you but have never yet got past the ‘me’ that you’ve heard from other people & so I feel you still think of me as that small child.

which is sad for it’s own sake: you were the first person I ever fell in love with, your looks, your kindness & smile. that you had the same name as my absent mother was just coincidence. yet you failed to notice this love, this child adoration, if I didn’t.

I remember the Christmas & birthday gifts you gave me, those kindnesses. worse, I remember being on a bus with you, you getting off at a stop & pulled a playful face at you & you getting upset, seeing the insult not the childish fun. I got punished for that.

just one more smack, one more punch another kicking.

you never saw any of this either, the look I’d get knowing I’d be in trouble when I got home, the violence to come.

seeing instead a stepmother (your sister in law) struggling with rotten naughty kids, who were always ungrateful, always a pain to her.

instead I was a kid who’d lost his mum & was never allowed to find out what happened to her or even mention that name same as your own.

that same sister-in-law that punched me, kicked me most every day-I had to wear long socks to school to hide the bruises on my legs. she even once put my head through a window.

I acted out of course I did, running away at times, nobody, not even you ever asked me why. I was just a rotten kid eh?

your kindness: in my early offering to talk with me Friday nights over a coffee at your house, I thought this would be great. what you didn’t know & I couldn’t tell: I was scripted by gill & my dad on what I could say, what I couldn’t say & what I was not allowed to talk about.

I guess you saw my reluctance to speak as me being a difficult kid, when all it really was, avoidance of being beaten if I spoke out of turn. of course, you promised me confidence but could never hold it, snippets would be repeated to me over the week to be modified when I next met with you.

& if I did say anything they felt as wrong punishment would follow.

it never entered your mind that any time I saw you I was always accompanied-even into my adult life, if we ever met we were chaperoned by my stepmother. who’d be watching what I said for later recrimination.

which always came.

that’s about it I guess, I loved you once as a child does to an adult who is kind to them when their world is bleak:

I’d lost my mother & didn’t know why, then a year in a children’s home to be brought out & abused by a family supposed to be there to look after me. then came a stepmother who continued that physical & mental abuse while wanting the world to look on & offer sympathy for looking after rotten kids who had no gratitude for her care. I wonder why eh?