CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LOVE LETTERS!

A year and three months have passed since we last saw each other 
for the first time in 23 years. I have been thinking about writing 
to you in depth about my feelings, for a long time. You talk about 
feelings coming up for you when you wrote your book, during, after, 
etc...

A painful time for you. I have had a gut-wrenching feeling in my 
heart all of my life. It use to be the wonder if you were alive or 
dead, the little girl in me wanting her daddy. A lot of that was 
resolved when I came to visit you. The waiting was over.

Since then I have been to afraid to tell you, that I still have an 
aching in my heart. Fear of your rejection. Fear of you thinking I'm 
giving you some kind of guilt trip. I realise that I am an adult now 
and what you could have given me as a child you can not give me know.

I still can't understand why I want something a child might want. 
Your approval of me, your opinion of me, I want to be seen.

I get excited about writing letters to anyone and everyone about 
trying to get you back here. I feel it is my way to be seen by you.

I am your oldest daughter and want you to be proud of me. Clara is 
smart and in college. Jenny is a black-belt and is going to school, 
or was going. I am the daughter you never knew who was raised on welfare.

I was trying to stay high on pot all of my teenage years to block 
the bullshit out. Since I've married and became a mother I don't 
need drugs anymore. I have my family to pacify me now. -So I enjoy 
writing to people  about you in your behalf because maybe I can make 
you proud of me.

I am a good person. I know I'm not stupid and I feel like I just 
want to be equal to Clara and Jenny. You probably think I'm fucking 
crazy. I talked to Clara a long time ago on the telephone. She 
mentioned that you called her crying and upset about everything 
to do with Bobby,Mikey and myself.

I wish you could tell me of this pain about us. I want to know 
what your feelings are about me. What did you think of me when I 
was visiting you? What was going through your head as I cried at 
your kitchen table when I was there? I'm sorry if I am jumping 
around in this letter and confusing you. My head is filled with 
so much it feels like I'm going to fucking explode.

I am probably just jealous of Clara and Jenny. Sibling rivalry in a 
warped kind of way! HA! HA! I'm sure maybe you see all of your kids 
in the same light. It is probably my insecurity and low self-esteem 
bullshit talking.

Maybe nothing can be said about anything. You and I can not change 
the fucked up circumstances that caused you not to be here. Maybe 
I need to accept that still. I am thoroughly pissed off because I 
missed out on knowing you. Do you want to know why?

Because my impression of you is that you are a kind, intelligent, 
loving person. You are wonderful with Pontus. I also see a lot of 
anger and hurt in you. All I want is for you to open up that door 
a little for me.

Not only do I want to be seen but I want to see what my dad's really 
all about. Can you do that for me? Even though we will probably be 
separated the rest of our lives.

Maybe you can not talk to me about your feelings. Men aren't supposed  
to show emotions right? That's a bunch of bullshit. I want to hear 
about anything you would be kind enough to share with me. I do not 
have a hang-up     about you and I am not blaming you for anything.

Writing your book helped you somewhat. Well I need something to heal 
that little girl inside crying for her daddy. I've been to fucking 
therapists and counsellors, nothing heals that feeling inside of me. 
Maybe I am a fucking nut-bag. Maybe I will always hurt inside and 
there is nothing you can do about it.

Please do not think that I am expecting you to do something you 
cannot. I just want you to try your best to share with me some of 
your feelings. You have       got to feel something. How does this 
letter I'm writing make you feel? Do you feel the hurt I feel? Are 
you crying like I am? I want to be close to my dad - I know I am 
an adult now, and you can't give me what you could give me as a 
little girl.

Adults share their emotions with each other though. If you have 
nothing to say about any of this I will try to accept that. 
Realistically we will only see each other a few more times in this 
lifetime, if nothing changes with you not being able to come here. 
So I just want to get as close to each other as the situation 
will allow, if it is possible. I hope my honesty doesn't push you 
away. I just needed to say all of this once. I have been holding 
back because of this incredible feeling that I might lose you again. 
Please don't be angry...

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A year and three months, how time flies! Time keeps flying by and 
the United States government is preventing me to be with my children 
and grandchildren. That is really bad. Circumstances surrounding my 
children and my life so far has been pretty confusing. Its not easy 
being, trying to relate to children in general and because of the 
circumstances involved here, even more difficult.


I had thought that by writing the book, my children and further on 
my grandchildren would have a better understanding of what Bob was. 
It is an attempt to tell my children, although I could not be around 
all the time, I was trying to make the world a better place to live 
in, especially for poor and working class kids.

Perhaps my crusading to save the world is also the search for the 
childhood which I missed out on. Perhaps the hate I have for the 
rich and powerful is because of what they did to me and my family. 
Certainly they are one of the reasons I have wound up the way I am. 
It could have gone another way. I could have become an alcoholic and 
stayed around and beat the shit out of you kids! But I didn't. I 
lived my life and fought and then I wrote the book. Many kids who 
grow up with their parents, get all the material shit, but still 
never know who there dad was. I at least have left you something 
I hope you can be proud of. That is more then most kids get.

I love all my kids. My daughters a college student, a black belt 
and you who has given me two grandsons. However that does not make 
any of you better then the other. That goes for the boys too. However 
I can not change the past. Some of you got to spend more time with 
me then others. Yes! Well I never got to know my dad at all! So all 
of you have been more fortunate on that end. In fact all of you 
except Pontus got the book to throw in the face of the world (Pontus 
will get it when he is a little older). This was my dad! That is 
the best I can do just now. My experience of dad, children 
relationships does not exist.                                                

Who the fuck was my dad?

Heather, I love my children, there are no price tickets on that. I 
don't think my kids should be running around trying to impress me 
about what they have accomplished with their lives. However I do 
hope that my kids stand on the side of the poor and working-class 
people. But history has told me that in civil war brother can fight 
against brother and father against son or daughter.                          


Besides I won't be around to see it.

You say you are my oldest daughter and want to be treated equally. 
OK but that does not mean I have to cry on the telephone to you. In 
fact I can tell you that I am a bit pissed off at your sisters 
because they are so lazy in helping me. But I would not tell them 
that. Just as it is not necessary to tell you I was upset on the 
phone one time when talking to them. I still love you all. I do not 
go around expecting my kids to impress me. I expect them to live 
their lives the best they can.

Yes it would be nice if we could see each other more often. However 
as things are just now that is impossible. If the book becomes a 
best seller, or I get the right to return, perhaps we will be able 
to see each other more. But there is no reason to stand about 
whining about it. It will not change things!

No, I do not feel the hurt you feel. I feel the hurt I feel! I 
am me and you are you. Everybody has their own axe to grind, 
including fathers and daughters. And as far as sharing emotions 
and feelings--Besides being a person with and 8th grade education, 
I have become an expert at hiding my feelings. Because of my 
childhood, because of my life so far, I can not let anyone in 
there to share the horrors. Over the years I have found perhaps four 
or five people I can say anything too. I doubt that there will be 
many more in my life.

My kids have certainly not been sharing a lot of my emotions and 
feelings because of my fatherly instinct to protect them from the 
hate, the anger, the rage, the horror, the sorrow I feel for poor 
and working class people.  However, I have done this and probably 
will continue to do this if I do not go crazy!
T
oday I try to take it day to day, sometimes hour for hour and even 
less. This in order to hold on to reality, which is sometimes very 
difficult.

You say in your letter, adults share their feelings. That is true 
in a sense. However, adults are so busy trying to survive, it usually 
means that adults  spend most of the time stabbing each other in 
the back in order to become king  of the mountain. The human race 
has become so ego tripped that noble feelings  of love, solidarity 
and all the rest mean nothing!

Another thing I can tell you is, I think I am a little kid still. 
The honest kid who faced the world with warmth, love and curiosity. 
But I have to say I have not gotten much in return. How do you feel 
about that? I also feel that these feelings have given me the 
willpower to gone on through life. Otherwise I would have jumped 
off the nearest bridge along time ago...


Perhaps you are right and we will only see each other a few more times. 
If that is true, pick up my book once and awhile and read it. Then 
remember  that I and you was this little innocent kid one time. 
Curious, innocent, helpless, waiting to see what life was all about 
just as you were. My book is what I got, now write your own book. 
OK! Maybe your book will be better or worse, but you are going to 
have to write it and face up to it yourself.

Finally you are going to have to find your own answers to the pain 
and sorrow of your lost childhood. It took me many, many years to 
figure this stuff out. A lot of it in the book. Perhaps in the 
future, collective childcare will help children to get the warmth 
and love they need while their moms and dads are out fighting the 
fatcats. Only the future struggles will give the answer. I love 
you my oldest daughter. OK...