Letter Three

Oops, I took a LONG vacation from this. So here is the next one anyway

Dear parents (Dave and Grace),

Regarding the fact that now, and growing up, I harbored few feelings of hatred or angst towards you, I feel that this letter may be shorter than other angry teens who are doing this. To all of my friends you are the wonder parents out of dreams, everything that parents should be and nothing that they shouldn't. I would have to say that I agree with their assessment too. Even now i'm looking at a room scattered with pictures of our family and i think its safe to say you two did a real good job raising 4 kids.

I owe probably everything i have to you two. I have always wanted to make you guys proud of me, to do the right thing in your eyes, be the "top" kid in the house. I feel like in many ways I have achieved so much of what i have today because i was always pushed by this need. But it was a need derived from Love not anything else. I wanted you to be proud of me in the way i can be proud of you. Similarly to the way i spend a lot of time boasting about how cool and perfect you are, i wanted to be able to give you that pleasure, of talking about your daughter like she was the next best thing from sliced bread. I hope i have done that for you guys. And hopefully there is more to come.

You have given me unconditional love and i will be spending the rest of my life trying to repay you for that. I don't think that I ever can but i don't think you can blame a girl for trying. When i raise my children I want them to be able to say and feel the way I feel now. They never have to doubt their love for their mother, because they know it is never going away. Rather they will always, as i do, try to find ways of building that love. Similarly for my father, every time i look at a man seriously i size him up to DAVE. You guys have kind of screwed me up the way that now i have REALLY high standards!

Thanks for being too good.

Love always and forever,

Genevieve