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  <p><br />
    <a href="postcards.php"><img src="12.Postcards/15.PostcardTent&amp;MoonEdgeLgForWeb.jpg" alt="Tent &amp; Moon" width="600" height="422" border="0"/></a><br /> 
    Tent &amp; Moon</p>
  <p>Dear Mom,<br />
    I wanted you to know that I didn&rsquo;t brush my teeth much until I was about 12 years old.  I also had a hankering for BLT sandwiches in junior high – on toasted white bread with plenty of mayo.  I would cook up a whole package of Oscar Mayer after school and pretty much eat nothing else.  Except Twinkies at lunch, panhandling 20 cents at a time when I ran out of money.<br />
    I didn&rsquo;t think I missed you, telling myself that I was lucky not to have someone telling me what to do all the time.  I got to ride the subways alone in elementary school, I was able to &ldquo;get lost&rdquo; on the uptown IND, taking the express to Harlem and missing Hebrew school now and then.  You weren&rsquo;t there to scold me.  When asked about you, I would murmur that you died, then I&rsquo;d get sympathy, almost foreign to me, like having a wart on my nose which I didn&rsquo;t think was ugly.<br />
    Nothing was wrong, really, until I got to college.  It took about five more years to realize how angry I was, the same span as my birth to your death.  I guess I was awakened to my terrible problem relating to girls.  It wasn&rsquo;t just shyness, it was my fear of abandonment and the rage once it happened.  By then an abstract thinker, I figured out it had something to do with your disappearance.<br />
    This is a forgiveness letter, back-and-forth.  It took 20 more years for my young man to forgive you for leaving.  I&rsquo;m not sure why it took so long, something to do with the concrete needs of a five-year-old.  I was the man in his forties broken down like a kitten with nothing to suck.  I then saw <em>your</em> pain and fear, and your dread of leaving the children behind.  That was unexpected, intellectualized until then, but felt for the first time.  And when it all came out I realized one more thing.  I also needed your forgiveness for the years of blaming you for something you could never control. <br />
  Cancer has a way of calling the shots, including the endgame for some . . .  So this letter comes down to only three things.  I miss you.  I forgive you.  I hope you forgive me.</p>
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