They start showing up in the mailbox on Thursday. By Saturday there’s a haphazard stack of 10 oversized greeting card envelopes in assorted pastels teetering on the kitchen counter.
The first time it happened, eight years ago, there had only been one. It was a heavy, multi-paneled Mother’s Day card—the kind that needs extra postage and always gets bent in the mailbox.
It came from a stranger named Kate. She had written inside in precise, looping cursive, “On a day when no one wants to remember you’re a mother, I see you.” Next to her name was the number four.
Google confirmed what I already suspected. The thumbnail image associated with Kate’s full name was a grainy yearbook photo of her son Liam. He killed three classmates and then himself when he was 15.
My number is six. That’s the number of people Seth killed at the garage where he worked. But my son didn’t turn the gun on himself. He sat down in the small reception area surrounded by his dead or dying coworkers and called 9-1-1.
#
Hank and I don’t have much of a marriage anymore. My therapist said I shouldn’t blame myself, but of course I do.
When it first happened, we circled the wagons. We didn’t have a choice. The world hated us, so we chose to love each other more. But—slow and soft-pedaled at first, then constant and cruel—Hank’s accusations started.
I should have noticed Seth’s isolation.
I should have gotten him help.
I should have been a better mother.
These are things I tell myself, too, but it hits differently when Hank says it.
If he could—if I’d let him—Hank would erase Seth and what he did from our family history.
Like it didn’t happen.
Like Seth didn’t happen.
Every time Hank walks past the stack of cards, I hear his heavy sigh, see his face turn red. He’s disgusted with the cards. With me. With all of it.
You’re not like these women he says. But I am. I am exactly like them.
#
I wasn’t prepared to be a mom, let alone a mom to two headstrong twin boys. Reed and Seth were in no way identical—not in their temperament, not in their appearance, certainly not in their stories. From the minute they entered the world, they were on different paths, no matter how hard I tried to herd them together.
Reed was born to please, happily organizing his toys and eating his vegetables. Friendly, athletic—the natural sun the rest of us orbited around.
Seth, prone to tears and prolonged silences, was different—separate. Whatever sport or activity we signed him up for, he recoiled from it. He didn’t seem to have many friends, nor did he want any.
As the boys grew older, Reed’s spotlight burned brighter while Seth’s light kept getting dimmer and dimmer.
Hank said I should just let him be. That Seth didn’t need to be more like Reed. But I picked at Seth like a scab, like a problem to solve. I kept thinking this hobby or that activity would be the one that turned everything around. I kept trying to make Seth be who I wanted him to be and not who he was. I kept trying to fix him, but I ended up breaking him instead.
#
When I opened Kate’s first card, I clutched it tight against my heart. Relief, love, acceptance—all three instantly washing over me from that one small, unsolicited kindness.
I squirreled the card away in the top drawer of my nightstand, but I took it out of the drawer dozens of times that first year. Ran my fingers over the embossed flowers on the front, let tears fall onto the handwritten words inside.
As Mother’s Day approached, I searched endless racks looking for the perfect card to send to Kate. I picked a simple blank one with forget-me-nots on the front. It took me hours to decide what I wanted to say. I finally settled on, “Thank you for seeing me.”
I sent two additional cards that year. To other mothers like Kate and me. The next year I got four in return, Seven the year after that. Broken women from the farthest corners of the country, shattered mothers from just a few hundred miles away. Reaching out into the void, offering each other acceptance, absolution.
We were in this together. This club no one wants to be in. This club no one can leave. This club no one talks about.
#
Seth started piano at 10—a bit late, but he was a natural. When his teacher started throwing words like prodigy around, I thought Seth had found his niche. I went all in—lessons four days a week, a vacation at the Cliburn where he could see what a future as a concert pianist would look like.
Hank said I was living my dreams through Seth. There’s probably some truth to that—but I also saw what music did for Seth—how it finally placed him squarely in the spotlight and out of Reed’s shadow.
His teacher chose Schumann’s Kinderszenen for his first real showcase. It’s a beautiful piece—an up-and-down journey through childhood. Tender, melancholy, chaotic—Seth in a collection of piano miniatures.
While Seth loved to play piano, he didn’t love performing in front of people. He was 15. Old enough to say he didn’t want to do the showcase. Young enough to be pressured into doing it anyway.
He made it through the first three minutes of the 20-minute piece before rushing off the stage in a bitter barrage of tears. He never played again.
#
I don’t expect Hank, Reed or anyone else to understand how we—as mothers—see each other in a way no one else can. How we see each other when the rest of the world looks away. We raised what the world considers monsters. People see us as cautionary tales. We must have done something—or failed to do something—to cause this.
I wish our little group was a stagnant number. But there is always another mass shooting. Always another troubled, misunderstood child. Always another shell-shocked parent to welcome into the fold.
Shawna is our newest member. She’s raising her grandchildren. Her son murdered their mother and a neighbor who was trying to help her leave. He set the house on fire before killing himself. The kids ask her why—but what answer could there possibly be?
We lost Bev this year. Her number was 14. Her son smuggled a gun into a junior high chess tournament. Bev strung a rope from a big oak tree in her backyard on what would have been his graduation day. She didn’t leave a note.
#
Reed has a beautiful little girl now. Mia runs into Hank’s arms like he’s a prince in a fairy tale. She kisses me on the cheek when Reed tells her to.
Before things went so wrong, Reed complained that I was “extra” as a parent. I tried too hard, did too much. You’d think I’d be that way as a grandma—forever baking and spoiling and doting.
But I’m not that person anymore. I sit quietly at her softball games and dance recitals. I play act the part, but I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Mia’s favorite toys or closest friends.
Reed tries his best. He offered to take me out for Mother’s Day brunch. I appreciate the thought, but how can I celebrate Mother’s Day when Seth is the reason six other women can’t? I’m not going to sit in some bistro toasting to our happiness when so much misery lays at our feet.
I try to explain that to Reed on the phone, but his sigh is as exasperated as Hank’s. He gives up—says he’ll bring Mia by instead.
At Christmas, I overheard Reed tell Hank that he hasn’t just lost a brother. He’s lost his mom, too.
#
After he stopped playing piano, Seth became a phantom—a faint shadow that rarely crossed our path. He’d always been shy, unconcerned with friends and parties and dating. But now that isolation was coupled with a quiet, seething anger. Sullen and silent, he spent all his time in his room.
The first year after high school, we didn’t push—we let him lick his wounds. But then Hank and I took a hard line. If Seth was going to continue living with us, he had to get a job or go to college.
Seth got hired at a local garage. It was small—mostly oil changes and preventative maintenance. Seth seemed to like it at first. It was simple, repetitive work, but work he took pride in.
Much like piano, it went south quickly. After six months, Seth told us he was going to quit. Hank and I told him he couldn’t until he found another job. The next morning, he bought a gun. The morning after that he used it to kill everyone on his shift.
We found out later he’d been accused of stealing tools and was about to be fired. It was an accusation Seth vehemently denied, but the tools were found in the trunk of his car after the shooting.
He’s been on death row for 11 years. We haven’t seen him in five.
#
The house is lively when Mia is here. Reed picked up barbeque and my favorite icebox cake. His wife has Mia dolled up with a big bow in her hair. There are flowers and hugs and smiles. It’s a loud, long lunch—everyone seems happy, even me. But by the time the last dishes are put away, my anxiety sets in.
My mind travels time and again to the stack of cards on the kitchen counter. Over the years they’ve become much more than generic cards. Now they bulge with memories we’re reluctant to share with anyone else. Photocopies of Crayola drawings and wrinkled snapshots
from simpler times. Halloween costumes, Christmas mornings, Bar Mitzvahs, graduations. Evidence of who our boys once were.
I imagine these women all over the country seeing Seth, loving Seth as I did—a sweet boy with a runny nose and a toothless smile, a shy teen with gangly limbs hunched over the piano.
These boys belong to each of us, to all of us.
#
The rest of the family settles into a game of Old Maid over the kitchen table. I pick up my stack of Mother’s Day cards and excuse myself. Settling into my favorite chair, I start reading, looking at the pictures and memories the other mothers have shared.
Halfway through the stack, I find an envelope addressed to Gigi, my granddaughter’s name for me. I see a small, bowed head watching from the doorway.
“Mia, did you put this card in the stack?”
“Daddy says your favorite thing about Mother’s Day is getting cards in the mail. I didn’t have a stamp, but I made one for you. You aren’t mad, are you?”
“Of course not. It’s beautiful. Thank you.” I open it up. “Did you draw this?”
She nods shyly.
“Well come here and show me.”
It’s a drawing of her and I having a tea party. Something we’ve never done. Something we should have done a thousand times over.
I set the Mother’s Day cards down.
Mia and I walk to the kitchen hand-in-hand, placing her drawing on the fridge with a big magnet.
I put a kettle of water on to boil, take my fanciest lace napkins out of the cupboard and start making finger sandwiches.
Author: Lisa Robertson is a magazine editor and features writer living in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas. Her work has appeared in Writer’s Playground, Elegant Literature, Next Tribe and Stone’s Throw. When she’s not writing, she’s often baking or spoiling her grandson, often with things she bakes.
Read our interview with Lisa about the story behind the story…
Incredibly moving. Such a gut wrenching but important and emotionally evocative read. So much guilt is wrapped up in parenting. I love the perspective this offers—especially at the end.
The writing was powerful, kept me reading when I wanted to stop. Such a gut-wrenching story and a perspective we don't often see or hear about. And as others have said, the ending was what got me.