Dear D.L.D.,

I have been wondering what would happen if I showed up on your doorstep. Bleeding, and wearing clothes that were too small. How I would want you to take me in and guide me. Accept me, despite our disagreements. You could have mothered me, as you were never mothered, as I was never.

I was watching the sun rise over the lake this morning, running past the swans – butt-up along the shore – wondering if you would have turned me away. How it would have been to vie for attention among all of the unbalanced people walking in and out of the basements and the sheds in your part of the world.

I wondered if you would bring me a bowl of fruit. Sit me in front of the computer and tell me to write.
Or forbid me to write.

I am, you know: writing again. Working backwards and picking up breadcrumbs from the decades I have moved through. Remembering what it was to write before the fear of expectations. Before I felt I had to explain.

Sometimes – just sometimes – I envy young people their hubris. The more we know, the more we know we do not know. How to marry that knowledge with daring? Socrates did it, right?

They say he was a jerk.

And you – and me – we are too open with ourselves, and our opinions. I was wondering if you knew the last time you stepped off the stagecoach, it was the last time? If when you took to the room in the hospital you founded, you knew you would become a foundling again?

The blind leading the blind somewhere in the labyrinth.

Respectfully,
Ren