Gift

I received in the mail this week a "gift" of sorts from my mother. She mailed it just in time for me to get it right before Mother's Day.
The note she included with it explained that she had been going through old boxes and had ran across this letter that she have written to me when i was 13 years old. She said that she wanted me to have it now.

I reopened that letter she had written to me all those years ago and I have to be honest. I don't ever remember getting that letter. I don't ever remember my mother saying all those loving things to me whether written or said aloud. In this letter she says how proud she is of me, How she knows that she can be stubborn when it comes to me. That when the teenage years come that we will face them together and get through them. How she knows that she doesn't tell me how much she loves me and is proud of me.

I can tell you that we did not and do not have the mother daughter relationship that she had hoped for. If not for my husband these past few years we would have no  relationship at all.

There is alot of water....OK more like raging rapids, under that bridge for both of us. So even though we have a very tentative relationship at best, it is still something.
To have my mother pass this letter on to me, or should I say, back to me....... I really didn't know what to think. Or even how to feel about it.

So for now, I am choosing to take this as a small olive branch of peace from her. As for how I feel about it............still not sure. I read that letter through eyes that has seen alot on my life's journey. Because of my husband I have been able to fill in alot of those "pot holes" on that road which helped me to look/read it with a softer set of eyes and heart.
 But since I know my mom,(and her history) I am going to hold back on the feeling part for abit.
Unless it is proven otherwise I will accept the olive branch and see where she goes from here.