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Letter from Joyce Archives
May 11, 2001
Dear Friends,
Whenever
I’m asked how I’m doing, I find I have to stop and think. That’s because
for me the question is all tied up with the answer to another question,
whether it’s been asked or not. That one concerns my children. As any
parent can tell you, it’s impossible to separate how we are from how our
kids are doing. Just because they’re flourishing doesn’t mean our own
lives are going smoothly and well. But one thing’s for sure: if they’re
having problems, we are sure to be distracted, anxious and unable to say
“I’m fine.”
So this letter begins with the happy news that the three people I love best in the world are all doing wonderfully well. Launched in their lives, the central mission of my last two decades of life, to raise my children to independence, is coming to a close.
My daughter Audrey -- a community studies major at UC Santa Cruz -- has been close enough to home this year that I’ve managed to see her regularly, in between the responsibilities of her classes, her participation in a women’s dance group, and her job caring for two young children. She goes off to New York City shortly to begin a six-month field study, working in the area of social service, with an organization yet to be determined. As much as I have taught my oldest child, over her twenty three years of life, I find more and more that she is teaching me: lessons about acceptance, forgiveness, patience, open-mindedness, and the need to withhold judgement. She is a person of large and loving heart, with a spectacular ability to locate joy in any experience. I’m so proud of her.
My son Charlie --
named to the New York City Youth Speaks Poetry slam team, flew off to
the nationals in Ann Arbor Michigan recently. He’s also performing with
a band, painting, making films, hosting a radio show of world music at
NYU and teaching third graders on the lower east side, two days a week.
All that and classes too. He comes home for a couple of months this summer
-- though I also recognize, as he does so, that when he comes home now,
he’s only passing through. If you asked him to define “home” now, I think
he might say it was New York -- and though there’s some sadness for me
in that knowledge, I also love it that he has launched himself in a big,
active independent life as he has.
The only one still
living here full-time -- but not for long -- is my son Willy, who graduates
from high school this June. He’s chosen to defer college for a year. He’s
been working nights for some time now as a waiter at an Italian restaurant
near where we live, a job he does so beautifully his manager recently
got a three page letter from an elderly patron, raving about the service
he gave her, evidently (and citing, as the definitive proof of what a
fine young man my son is, the fact that he treated her so beautifully,
even though, as she pointed out, “it’s not as if I’m some pretty young
lass....”). 
Sometime in the fall, when he’s got enough money saved up, Willy plans to take off travelling -- first stop South America, so he can use his Spanish. Of course I’d probably rest a little easier if he were tucked away in a college dormitory, but I also love it that he’s taking on this big challenge. I will worry about him, of course. But raising and loving children is not for the faint of heart.
As for me, I’ve been hard at work on my novel -- a book I’m not prepared to talk about just yet -- in between the magazine assignments I continue to take on to keep our ship here afloat. For years I thought longingly of how it would be to have vast, uninterrupted expanses of time of the sort that I may finally have, next fal with all the children gone. Now that that time is approaching, I see something else: that much as it has complicated my writing life, to be working and raising children and running a household, the fact that I have been engaged in those things has also provided the central piece of my education as a human being.
Joyce with good
friends, T., Monique and mary. "Among the four of us,
our combined ages added up to over 200. We were proud!"
I am heading into uncharted territory now -- a life no longer defined by my children. No clue where that life will take me. Banjo lessons? Italian class? Finally mastering a flip-turn in the pool? There will be some new kinds of expression emerging, I know that much. More than that, I’ll have to wait to tell you about, when I know it myself.
And what’s been going on with you? I hope you’ll use our forum here to let us know.
Those shining faces in the untitled photos above belong to the children
of Discussion
Forum participants!
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