Dear Descendants

Dear Descendants,

If I told you how he tricked me into marrying him, you would not believe me. You would call me a liar, but I'm not. He used an apple. And somehow from the apple he convinced me that I was pregnant. And then he convinced me that I should be his wife. My family wanted nothing to do with him. When my father learned of this man's plans for me, his mind spun in a thousand different directions. He wanted me to marry someone else. He told me that this careless man was no good, a trickster. I was fearful at the time that he was absolutely right. My father worked with a serious man who was only a few years younger than I. He had been sold to me by my father because he loved my father more than he probably would ever love me. I wasn't sure if this would be a problem. After all, my father was a powerful influence in my life and to be married to a man who worshiped him would probably mean my father might let me breathe a little. But I knew if I married the apple man, my father would be a blight.

Dear Ancestor,

We are absolutely surprised to hear from you! My brothers and my sisters have all had a chance to read your letter, and we are gobsmacked. You are so far back in time that we feel like we are reading the letters of a stranger. And yet…we also feel connected to you. We are sorry about your father. Despite the fact that he is an ancestor, we all agree that he's an ass. I don’t know if you will accept this, but it’s clear that the stubborn insult is applicable in many ways.

We look forward to finding more letters in the forest that surrounds our family home.

Signed (in descending order by birth) Kiki, Bruce, Gary, Michael, Sophia, Jemma, and Dale.

Dear Descendants,

My father would do all he could to tear me from the apple man. I told him that I was pregnant. My father said women get pregnant every day. He told me this should not be the grounds for marriage. But the apple man was wily. He understood the minds of many different types of people. And he certainly understood mine.

I love learning your names. I am Chloe, but you might have known that already.

Dear Ancestor (Chloe),

This is Gary. I was chosen to write this letter by my brothers and my sisters. Our parents are both gone. Our mom died years ago of cancer, and sadly our father took his own life just last month.

Our parents were loving and supportive parents, so I am heartbroken to know that this was not true for you. Your father seems like he is very controlling. I will admit that my father was a headstrong man, too. He was ruled by his routines. A “letter of the law” kind of fella. He and my mother did so many things in cycles. Yearly summer trips to Cape Cod. Fish on Fridays. Multi colored Christmas lights affixed to the outside of our three story home, taken down promptly on January 6.

We grew up in a small town in New England. My mother died in a nursing home, and my father hanged himself in our basement at the tail end of a massive blizzard. It was a devastating tragedy, but no surprise for any of us. When our mom died, he didn’t just lose his other half. You see, Chloe, our father was an all or nothing kind of man, so when our mother lost her war with cancer, our father died, too. The years that followed were empty and without routine. He came to live with me and my wife since I am the only sibling without kids and room enough to let him have his space.

We didn’t sell their house since it was paid for. We shut it down the way they used to shut it down in June and July, driving up to the cape summer after summer.

I believe that he is your direct descendant since his family came to this country before its independence. My wife was the one who found him. It haunts her still.

-Gary

Dear Gary,

I don’t know what to say about your parents. Death is like a house guest. It always stays too long.

One day when I was at the store, the apple man took an apple and he sliced it in half. Inside the apple he used a hot knife to write two words. “Our child.” He mended the apple and sealed it back up. When I came home he sat me down and challenged me. He said, "What is inside this apple is inside of you. And when you cut this apple in half, you will see what I am saying is true. If you can eat the apple even with what's inside, I will leave you alone forever." Of course when I cut into the apple and saw the message, I understood what he was saying.

I married him that night in a rush at the church. The priest was half asleep, but he agreed that our sin needed a fix-it. It was a quick ceremony, but we said our vows and listened to the latin that he mumbled. It was beautiful, to be honest.

All these years later after both my parents have died, I am watching my son playing with my daughters. There are four apples running around our backyard. This trickster of mine found many ways into my womb, and I grew our family for years.

Dear Chloe,

This is Jemma. I am the youngest girl in our family, and I am the only one who is divorced. I have two children, and my ex-husband is a scoundrel. He pays no money and little attention. I have raised these two since they were babies. (My children are twins.) I am sorry that you had a trickster for a husband. That word struck me because I feel that way about my ex. A scoundrel! I’ll say it again. My boys are now old enough to know that the empty black hole they felt as babies is the empty spot that their father ripped from them almost since birth. I do what I can to play both roles, but there is no way to replace that hand and smell and tone of voice of a father.

My own father was awkward with me. He had had so many children that by the time that I was born he seemed to have relented. I was too heavy for his worn out shoulders. He didn’t carry me as he had my older siblings. And he seemed to be out of things to say. But he was there. My black hole was smaller than my sons’.

At least I knew his face even though he barely had the strength to memorize mine.

Sending you love,

Jemma.

Dear Jemma (and all descendants),

Even though I can hear the voice of my father calling this man every name I've ever heard him call the termites in the wood of our basement, I can also hear my children’s voices in his. My parents opted out of being grandparents. They died before they died as far as we were concerned. But they have no choice but to live on in the lives of this “bastard's” offspring. I am a mother. And I am a wife. And I am not afraid to be either.

Dear Chloe,

I, too, am not afraid.

This is Kiki. My name is also Chloe, but a speech impediment as a child left me stuck with the nickname. I am not going to waste time marveling at this coincidence. I like Kiki, better. It’s short and tough like me. I have a giant brood of my own children (six before my son died). Now there are only five. One for each finger on my good hand. It was a car accident that took my son and my other hand. I am disabled, but I get along.

I don’t know how your letters get to us, and I certainly don’t know how you are reading our letters to you. However, I want to say that it’s enough. As the oldest I am going to end these epistles. It does us no good to see that your life was as difficult as ours. You’d think over centuries of time our families would have found a better way to cope with loss. Your God and our God are the same. I am sure you sent off prayers. Yes?

I pray nightly, but I cannot afford to pray for you, ancestor. And so think of this as a door shutting. I’ll uproot the forest if I have to just to keep your letters from falling into these ancient trees.

-Kiki

Dear Descendants,

You can’t all feel as your oldest sibling, and so I will keep writing. If you don’t find my letters in your forest, then you will find them in your chest…written on the bones that protect your hearts. I learned many things from my husband, good and bad, but one thing I taught myself was magic. He’s not the only trickster here, but my tricks are true. So I will keep writing to you all.

Find my grave. It can’t be far from you since I also lived and died in that small New England town. The place my ancestors found as a new home in the new Eden of America. I am Eve to you all, kicked from the garden. I take my punishment, and you take yours. It’s the pain that binds us. It’s the pain that keeps us from slipping into unconsciousness. I am awake for you. Keep your eyes open for me as well.

-Chloe.

Dearest Ancestor (magical Chloe Helen. It is Helen, yes? Your middle name?)

I did as you suggested. I found your grave. You lived a remarkably long life in any century. I sense your years were satisfying. You are strong in ways that Kiki could never understand.

This is Dale. I am the baby. I am a professor at a well-respected New England University. Philosophy. I often say I am a nihilist, but I am also a good Catholic. I like my Mass in Latin as I am sure you can understand. My oldest sibling is a fearful woman. As the babies kept coming, she saw the inheritance getting cut up into smaller and smaller pieces. It wasn't money she was after. It was the love of our parents. She saw us drain the love right out of them. This was true until I came. There was a quiet declaration that I would be the last (and I was), and there was a turn. The hole in the bottom of the bucket was corked, and both of their buckets were refilled with passion for me.

Kiki was a frustrated second mother to me. She loved me, too. There was something about me that inspired all of my siblings to see me as different. I wasn't a talker. I was slow to develop in many ways. Likely autistic, but no one was diagnosing children this way back then.

I played piano before I really mastered walking or going to the toilet. I wrapped my hands and my heart around every instrument discarded by my brothers and sisters. I was a reader before I ever spoke in sentences. It was like I had no complaints, so what was the point of speaking? I had everything I wanted by the intuition and the attention of my family. Even the cat and the dog deferred to me. Puppy, the cat, would wrap me up in her long arms like I was the kitten she could never have. And Riley, our Springer Spaniel, let me ride him like a pony. This caused a lot of jaws to drop since he was known to nip at the bottoms of the babies in the family. It was the diapers he craved. But with me, he was as patient as Job.

I guess what I am getting at is that I am special in an already special family. I say, keep writing. My sister's a battering ram with words, but she wouldn't known the first thing about burning down the woods much less uprooting even the skinniest of baby maple trees.

When I think of my oldest sister, my second mom, I am reminded of a quote from the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote, "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." That is my sister to the letter. She lives, thriving as she suffers. I guess we all do. My father might seem weak to you, and he is likely bound up in hell right now, but he wasn't one who suffered well. I know his heart. I take after him. They raised me to be dependent on love. He was the same.

My mother's death hit me hard, but Kiki was there for me (as she always was). I owe her much. She doesn't know my love for her, and this is likely why she fears you. She feels so little of our love that she hates to see the inheritance go wasted backwards in time to you, our descendant. Our family tree in reverse.

-Dale

Dale,

My goodness you are good with words. You remind me of my late husband. Tragically as I wait for your letters, he has lost his own will to live. His tricks could no longer protect him. My love and the love of our children (and grandchildren), just couldn't replace what he felt was lost. He filled his pockets with rocks from the garden and walked into the river. You know this river. It's just past the old church and the cemetery where you found me buried. He drowned. The apple trick wasn't enough. Nothing was.

He wasn't a trickster after all. He was quite weak. He just didn't know how to receive love. He craved an attention that was not genuine. He wanted magic that lived in the hearts of his family, but not in his. He was a complicated man. Even my aged father grieved his loss. They were both complicated.

Dale, my descendant, I sense that this melancholy runs deep in the sensitive members of our family. You must watch for the signs of it in yourself. I am sure you already know this. Maybe you wish you could find the rope and the beam and the tiny stool that were the unwrapping of your fathers grip on life. You could also fill your pockets and die in the same river as the man who would be your greatest grandfather. I don't know. I just don't know.

Love, Chloe.

Dear Mother,

I wish you were here. The cancer took you too soon. It was an explosion. It took the family by force and left us all injured. Tell father we are sorry. We couldn't save him even though we all saw it coming. It's in our blood. Death after dying. We are all just a few thoughts away from despair. And yet the wordless mouth of a baby who sang before he talked is magic enough. It's not a trick. It's a miracle. Death finds us all. Even Adam and Eve eventually died.

I miss, you mom. Every day. I do my best. Look after your grandchild and pray that Hell might forgive dad. I love you.

Your first and the last to write.

Kiki.