Dear Mrs. Techaapaikhun,
Hello, Wirasuda Vihokratana here. You'll be meeting my son for the first time today, and I wanted to introduce myself. Let me just preface this letter with an assurance: He's not as silly as he looks, I promise. Fortunately or unfortunately, he's looked like that since the day he was born, so I raised him knowing people wouldn't take him seriously at face-value, and that he would have to prove his worth through his actions, always. I can't claim all the credit for how he turned out – and that makes me only more proud of and confident in him. He took the uncertain lessons of a young mother and built a person for himself that people love and respect beyond what I could have hoped. Some days I really can't believe that this silly woman can claim that wonderful boy as hers.
(One thing you may learn today is that Vihokratanas are quite good at chatting – I apologise in advance.)
When I heard that New would be bringing Tay to see you this weekend, I tried to imagine for myself what kind of things you might enjoy hearing about him. And then I started imagining all the ways this meeting could have gone in a different time. If it had been even three years ago, and our boys had had some kind of accidental meet-cute (out of all the possibilities, I've found myself favouring one where they're the only two people in a second-hand bookshop, and my Tawan climbs up a bookshelf to reach some obscure, dusty hardback on the top, and then the shelf starts to tip over and New just happens to be browsing on the other side of it and has to hold it up to stop it from falling into the bookcase next to it, but he can't because of course it's unbelievably heavy, so then the two of them just run out of the way and watch every shelf in the store crash over like a line of dominoes, and then the owner of the store comes out and forces them to work together for a month fixing the place up and serving customers from the wreckage and arguing every day but also sharing their opinions on great books and eventually falling in love)... Hang on, I forgot how I started this sentence. I'm sorry, as you can see this is a handwritten letter, so I can't just go back and delete everything to make it make better sense.
Oh yes, I was wondering how we might have met at a different time in our lives. If our boys had met a few years ago, and brought us together, I think you would have quite liked coming to my mother's place at the seaside. It would have been nice to welcome you at the start of autumn, when the montbretia are blooming orange in the garden. They're one of my favourite flowers. New said you like bright flowers. Right now I have a zygocactus that is covered in amazing pink ones! I can't grow much myself, to be honest, so I'm very fond of this cactus. My son is unashamedly jealous of New's philodendron forest, by the way. I would have definitely asked you to bring one for my mother's house. I think philodendrons have such a cheerful, hardy personality. Tay would have made you put it in the centre of the table and turn it about explaining exactly how you watered it and cared for it to make its leaves so glossy and its stems so strong. After an hour or so he would hopefully feel satisfied, and then he would lift your son onto the table and start his questions all over again, spinning New this way and that, admiring your work in tending to his shining eyes and his firm heart.
Tay loves New very much. I didn't know if he ever would love someone like that. He always said he was more than happy with his family and his friends, and I never doubted him, but I am a self-confessed romantic, and I couldn't help wishing it for him. My own love did not finish a happy one, and part of me thought perhaps that was stopping him from accepting anyone in that way because he only saw it as something that had hurt me. My one regret in life is that I failed to show Tay the kind of perfect love I believe in. My other two children don't watch me like he does. Even as children, if I turned around while I was cooking, or talking on the phone, he would be there looking at me like Muk looked at popstars and Sasin looked at superheroes. It's a lot of pressure to be that to someone! Especially someone for whom you are almost solely responsible. Luckily for me, my mother and even my daughter, who is older than Tay, were quick to step in on the days when I struggled to be as good a person as he needed me to be. He's been raised by a lot of love, and he drops it around himself like a blossom tree in the spring. For as long as he can, I know he intends to absolutely pummel your son with blossoms.
This is quite an organic kind of letter, isn't it? Pretty and a bit disorganised too, I suppose – like wildflowers. One thing you should know about me is that I am every bit as messy as my son! But it's all well-intentioned, I promise.
Have you caught on yet? I've heard you are a very smart woman, so I imagine you understood the reason for my letter perhaps even before it was opened. I don't know if my son is reading this to you right now, or your son, or if they have left it with you unread. I did not seal it, so that they could decide what they wanted to do with it. If they are reading it, I must apologise for the next part, and suggest they skip over it, if they don't want to read an old lady getting much too preemptively melodramatic. In particular I never wanted to show this side of myself to Tay, but it is enough now. It is unfair to hide it from him. He came to me and was honest because he doesn't like to hide things from me, and doesn't like me to hide things from him, and he can usually see it all in me anyway.
Mrs. Techaapaikhun, my son is going to leave me soon. He said he hoped it wouldn't be for very long, but that he had to prepare me because the odds of him coming back couldn't be guaranteed. It's more likely that you will be able to see him a while before I meet him again. Of course part of that thought is very sweet – you really will love him, if I may say so, and I am warmed when I imagine him resting and laughing with you – but I'm sure you as a mother can understand that the bitterness in all this is much more potent to me right now. Indeed, the bitterness stings my throat and my eyes, and makes my hands shake and my stomach lurch. I have experienced this feeling before, when I first lost him, and somehow knowing what is coming just makes me all the more afraid of having to go through it again. If something truly frightens me, it doesn't matter how many times I face it, the fear doesn't fade. I'm the type to hold onto feelings with the express intention of chasing only the good ones and avoiding ever having to experience the unpleasant ones again.
All this being said, if it should come to that, I entrust my son to your capable hands. I wouldn't insult you by asking you if you will look after him – I feel keenly that you will. What I will ask you is this: May I have your permission to look after Thitipoom? Regardless of how everything works out, just for this time that he and I are here, would you accept me into your family, along with Tay, to feed New when he spends his dinner money on cat food, to give him medicine when he's sick, to buy him socks for Christmas, to protect him when he goes out in the dark? I'd be honoured to provide for him, even if I have to work very hard to make him accept it.
(Did you know that I had to ask Tay to hide petrol money in one of New's shoes the last time they came to visit, and your clever boy left his whole sneaker behind so as to be able to refuse it without exposing me in front of my brother, who had been asking for that very thing all weekend even though he bikes over from the next town.)
Oh dear, I did warn you that we Vihokratanas are chatty, but this is properly excessive.
I already feel your answer to my question above, and so I will end my letter awkwardly here! I look forward to discussing every silly thing I've written with you in person one day in the cycle of our lives. I'm certain our times will overlap, at multiple points, and our sons will be tied together for every one of those points, just as I am now tied to you, Sunisa.
Thank you, kindly,
Wirasuda
~~~~
Header: https://images.app.goo.gl/KhFw9b9VPkrZm8qJA
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The Ordinary Haunting II
Fanfiction~Sequel to The Ordinary Haunting~ Tay Tawan was not expecting to get tied to New Thitipoom when he died. He used to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy; the kind with no real troubles or regrets that he considered important enough to stop him from his e...
