My darling tempest...Love mom

My darling Tempest,

I was just in your room, making your bed, looking at all your little-girl things, breathing in the soft, sweet scent of you, and wondering how I am ever going to live the next part of my life without you. I know that you know my secret, but I don’t think you truly understand what it means. Every day that I stay on land, I look at the sea and pine for the life I used to have. But when I am in the water, I look at land and pine for you. For you, and my sons and my husband.
I thought, when I married your father, when I had you and your brothers, when I chose land, that this longing would go away. That if it didn’t recede completely, it would at least be bearable.
But there is nothing bearable about the pain I feel, as if I’ve been wrenched into so many pieces I can never be put together again—at least not here, on the shore. I tell you this not because I want your understanding, as I know that will be hard to come by, but because soon you too will have to make such a choice.
Already you have special gifts—your affinity for the water and your ability, even now, to stay strong where others would give in—and there will come a time when you will be graced with so many more. Things are complicated now, more complicated than I had ever imagined they would be. There is so much I want to tell you, and so much that I can’t. So I must settle for this.
When that time comes, when the totality of your gifts makes itself known—sometime after your seventeenth birthday—you will begin to change. And you will have three months to make a choice: to stay with what you know or to become like me, for you cannot be both. When that time comes, when you begin the change, you will crave the ocean unconditionally, and I’m sure you will be frightened and confused. Though things are complicated in relationships between mermaids and humans, if it is at all possible, I will come back to you. I will help you, though I know that you can handle whatever you are faced with.
Please know that whether you choose my way or your father’s, I will love you forever. This is not good-bye, only farewell for now.
I love you,
Mom

Ik moest huilen toen ik dat las. Ik ben benieuwd wat er nog komt.

Weet je wat ik ze mooi vind, de kaft, ik vind die fasinerend om naar te kijken. En die tattoo op haar rug, is magnifiek en op de boeken percies ook telkens anders. Zou dat zijn of ben ik er naast. Wie weet :-)...