should I, can I, release her?

I had a surprising exchange with a neighbor's daughter yesterday. This daughter is an adult, maybe thirty. She doesn't live here. She is African American and, as many African Americans do, but certainly not all, she has usually ignored me. So many AA seem unaccustomed to casually greeing a white person in a building that is mostly inhabited by African Americans that I have grown used to it.

When the building first opened, I was like an eager little puppy, eagerly seeking to interact with my neighbors. No my black ones, or the Chinese ones, or the ones from India. My neighbors. I hoped to get to know many and find new friends, lasting friendships, true neighborliness. The most I have achieved is some of my neighbors greet me in the elevator.  None of them know who I am, only my race and appearance. I know nothing about them because a 30 second elevator ride is not enough time to form bonds.

It probably is my own energy that has kept me from forming friendships with my neighbors.  I think it is also cultural conditioning, mine and my neighbors.

The neighbor's daughter I had a startling encounter with yesterday has never before acknowledged me. I have let her up the elevator. I don't let total strangers up into the residential floors but if I have seen someone come and go enough times that I remember them, I let them up. I have let this young woman up so her elderly mom didn't have to go down to admit her. And every time I have done this, the neighbor's daughter has held herself tightly, avoided eye contact with me and, in my humanly imperfect perception,  I have felt rejected, maybe in anger, maybe coldness, maybe just disinterest.

It probably should not bruise me but it does when someone folds their arms in the elevator and looks at the elevator doors so they don't have to look at me. I stand there, respecting the person's choice but aching for the absence of simple neighborliness or kindness.

So. For six+ years, I have run into this woman. She has never said a word to me before.

Yesterday, she was sitting in the lobby when I came home, waiting for her mom to come down. I had a temptation to offer to let her up but her years of cold shouldering me kept me silent. Then her mom arrived in the lobby, just as the elevator would have opened for me. We all went into the elevator together and we all got off at the sixth floor.

Then our day went on. I went out again, having forgotten to buy raw walnuts at the market. She went out to run an errand for her mom, but had her mom's elevator fob. When I saw her, I said "Oh, I won't get to let you up". She smiled.She behaved warmly. As we walked side by side to the elevator, I said "I am thinking of how my daughter might react if I said to her "Please let me help you, I care about you"

Suddenly the young woman was talking at me, not to me. She began to lecture me, on that very limited exchange on my relationship with my daughter.

To cut short the lecture, partly because the young woman spoke with great intensity, even leaning into my face, but mostly because the subject of my daughter is so tender for me.

When the young woman did not give up lecturing me, occasionally interrupting herself to remind me she was speaking God's words and I wasn't getting what she said, I tried to stop her lecture by saying "My daughter turns 33 this month, she hasn't talked to me since I dropped her off at Cornell in 2001."  I never say that without tearing up and I teared up.

Then this young woman began to angrily lecture me, telling me why my daughter had disowned me and what I needed to do to heal the relationship. Her advice was full of 'you need to tell her this" and "you need to tell her that" so I shared that if she won't talk to me and has never given me any indication of why she has disowned me, I could not do what this young woman was almost shouting into my face.

When she kept on lecturing me, leading me to wonder what kind of issues she might have with her mother although I did not dare speculate aloud on that, I interjected "My daughter was incested by her father when she was five. Whatever is going on with her, it's her work, her damage. I can't do any of the things you say if she will not talk to me."

I thought those comments might have dulled the attack. Instead the young woman said "Now I understand.  You are crude. You should not have told me your daughter was raped and you should have mpathy for the fact that she was. You have no empathy for what she went through. You have to give her space and accept her choice and she will come back."

By then, although the young woman lectured me for a few more minutes, I began to say "Than kyou for sharing. I will give your comments some thought. Thank you."

Finally, I just walked to my apartment.

My daughter's rape by her father was a hole in both of us her entire childhood. It is a hole still in me. I don't know if her rape is why she disowned me. I don't know anything about why she left me.

When she first left me, I wrote many imploring letters, begging her to at least tell me why she has severed herself from me. I knew as soon as she did it she would not come back. She is severely OCD and never goes back on decisions. I guess she also thinks in the rigid black and white that a borderline can get caught in.

I don't know why she left me.

One good thing:  I have not seen her since she was 19. I don't know anything about her anymore except her job title.  Not knowing what kind of adult she has turned out to me, not knowing if she has humor or love in her heart, makes it easier to accept this loss. 

I keen for a ghost, not for an actual person.

I felt beaten up by that neighbor's daughter.  She said "You have no empathy for the fat that she is raped."  I tried to tell her that Rosie had therapy about it, that Rosie and I had joint therapy about it and that I did what I could to protect her but this neighbor's daughter just kept shrieking at me that I had no empathy for my daughter and that she will only come back to me when I do.

So confusing, that interaction.

So difficult, the loss of my only child.