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To my smallest darling,
The night grows long, but I cannot sleep. Given the harrowing day I have just lived through, I should be exhausted and sleeping as peacefully as your dear, dear mother but I find myself unable to look away from her and from you.
You are far from my first attempt at parenthood, my tiny love, but for the first time, I find myself daunted by the prospect of raising a child. Perhaps because I have made so very many mistakes in the past.
I first assumed the mantle of fatherhood, in a manner, as a much younger man in New Orleans. I was young and ill-equipped, though my intentions were good. My ward was a troublesome boy, too handsome and charming for his own good. My commitment to him came not through love, but honour. Many have assumed he must be my by-blow, for why else would the rogue that I was take responsibility for him? I have never known who his father was and I have never cared, for his mother was a good woman who did not deserve the cards fate dealt her. I was a poor excuse for a father to the boy, man now, but I cannot but think what his destiny would have been had I not intervened, as limited and problematic as my intervention was. Here, at least, I have done some good.
Then your brother. Sweet, dear Wade! Those years during the war as I called on your mother I fell in love with that baby boy. So many nights sitting on the porch at Aunt Pitty’s I would pretend. Pretend Scarlett was my wife and Wade my son and bask in the comfort of the family my mind had created. In those days I swore black and blue I was not a marrying man. I had deluded myself I was trying only to tempt Scarlett into becoming my mistress, never my wife! I was callous and flippant, setting the tone of our relationship for so many years to come. I wonder now, if I had risked my pride, opened up to Scarlett and allowed her to see that she had invaded my heart (quite against my will!) if things may have been different through all the following years. Wade, more than any of our other children, has borne the brunt of our fractious relationship. I will never live down the shame of how I have failed him, I have no right to call him my son, except, by some miracle, he forgives me. Wade was such a sweet baby, so quiet and so happy to simply be held and now, as he approaches manhood, he is just as easy to please. I can only hope he learns from the numerous mistakes he has seen me make and knows that I will never let him down again.
Those hungry, cold, wretched months I spent with the Confederate army, I dreamed of Scarlett and Wade, my perfect little family. And as I sat in that Yankee horse jail I thought every dream I had was coming true. I hope you will never experience the pain I felt, my dear little one, when only two weeks after throwing herself at me, I found Scarlett married to another man.
And then Ella, our dear Ella. I knew of her existence, I believe, before Scarlett did, so attuned I am to every change and nuance of her body. How her swelling figure tortured me! Not for the reasons Scarlett would believe, for she is never more beautiful in my eyes than when she is enceinte, but because the idea of another man touching her, coming over her, being inside her, was worse than anything I could have imagined. The pain I felt in those long months of ’66! The self-control it took to see that Frank Kennedy did not die by my hand! I tried to flee, but how could I when your mother needed me? And again, my dreams intruded in those long summer months as I sat beside Scarlett in that God forsaken buggy and watched her waist swell and her discomfort grow and pretended that it was my child growing strong inside of her. I was finally strong enough to leave as she entered her confinement and I could no longer be of any use to her. The image of Scarlett dead in the birthing bed haunted my dreams for the long months until I could return to her. And then she greeted me on the porch, handing over the baby and as I looked at our darling Ella Lorena, I loved her just as much as if she were mine.
Bonnie. Bonnie Blue. My tragic darling. She was the best of both of us and she bought out the very worst of us too. I poured all the love I had repressed for her mother into our dear Bonnie; I spoiled her and pampered her and poisoned her against the mother that loved her as best she could. Scarlett implores me to remember the good though and I try. Her laugh, her tenacity, the fierceness of her love, they are all still with me and shall be, I hope, until my dying day. I shall never forgive myself for what I did to our Bonnie, but I shall endeavour to learn and to be a better father to you then I was ever to her.
Something else I will never forgive myself for, the baby whose existence I learnt of only to have it snatched away from me moments later, almost taking its mother with it. I shall always regret my cruelty, my harsh words and my bitterness that ended my child’s life before it could even begin. To learn (years later!) that Scarlett was glad to be pregnant with that child that was lost to us is exquisitely painful, but again, I can only hope to do better, to be better, moving forward…
And now you, my darling miracle child! You who represent the very long road we have travelled to make it to this point as you lay nestled beside me. More than that though, you represent our every hope for the future, our future as a family. I feel as if today I draw breath for the first time since your mother told me we were expecting you. I would not let myself feel any excitement for the fear that choked me, that something would happen to you, or your mother; that fate would cruelly snatch away the happiness we had finally felt together. I drove your poor mother to distraction I believe these last six months. But now you are here and for the first time since I can remember my lungs are full of sweet, fresh air and my heart has doubled in size. I vow to do right by you, my smallest darling, to be the father you need me to be and to love you always, just as I will love your siblings and your very dear mother.
We are all, my son, so very glad you are here.
I am and always will be,
Your loving father.