My Secret Left Me Unable to Help

The New York Times, Sunday, July 26, 2009

My Secret Left Me Unable to Help

-By Joyce Maynard

Eventually parents and children have to part ways, emotionally if not in actuality. It is inevitable that their paths diverge. This can be a difficult lesson for both child and parent.

This article is about an attempted trip to the heart via e-mail. It is about two secrets, really; one the mother has at violating the privacy of her daughter, the other is the secret to be revealed in the words of the e-mail the mother finds herself reading. (Despite her own respect for her daughter’s privacy, she violates it.)

The article, in my opinion, discusses three trips. On one of them, the mother never reaches her destination. This is the trip to her daughter’s heart. It is on its own journey. As it must be.

Joyce Maynard writes about parting ways with her children, but, also, the heavy burden of still caring for them quite deeply. She read her daughter’s e-mails to discover the details of her daughter’s troubles during her volunteer work in The Dominican Republic. This is far from their comfortable life in Marin, CA.

The details of her daughter’s danger is spelled out in the e-mails the mother is reading. And the mother suffers angst at the distance, both physical and emotional, which prevents her from helping her daughter. Besides, nothing can be done, really.

For a parent, after a certain age, when your children have grown into adulthood, there will be no password into their heart. The heart becomes a moving target. And the parent must, once again, begin their own journey.

I’ve read Joyce Maynard’s excellent article in The New York Times.

Read Joyce Maynard’s book: Labor Day, published July 28th.

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