The Family Tree

A picture prompt from Magpie Tales

‘Go on then, pick it up.  You can’t deny knowing me.  Yes, I am she, the same she that walked out and abandoned you when you were only three years old. I hoped you wouldn’t be old enough to remember.  It was never my intention to abandon you, merely to escape, find a better life and come back and make things better for both of us.  I hoped that you would be taken care of in a way that I could never hope to do.  I left you in trust, in care with the person I loved and trusted all my life.  I couldn’t stay, I just couldn’t.  But you were too young to know that.  You were too young to understand.  It was all so suffocating, the place, the people and the small town gossip.  But how could I explain that you a three year old with no knowing of how the world worked and weaved outside those white lacy curtains in the drawing room. 

Even today my heart saddens as I recall those strained afternoon teas with the high brow ladies of rich men in the city.  I remember their meek and mild powered faces with spiteful tones and unkind words gushing forth.  I was never really accepted as one of them, merely tolerated because of my marriage to your father.  He was after all a man of great wealth and means.  However, even a man of great wealth and means does not always hold a marriage together.  It takes more, much more.  Maybe you understand that now.  Maybe now that you are older and have found me you understand.

Perhaps even I am not worthy of this bargain price tag of $1.99.  Perhaps the pain of abandonment remains festering within your heart.  Why would you choose to display this picture on your mantelpiece? Why after all this time would you include me in your family tree?   Why would you want to replace my battered picture, the one you’ve always carried in your wallet?  Only you have the answers to these questions, my son. Only you know the reason.’