▸ Column · Present day, recast as a letter delivered to Circe's enchantress salon on the isle of Aeaea
CIRCE replies.
Replied to by Circe, with a rebuttal from Wonder Woman.
The letter
A letter carried to the sorceress's salon on Aeaea: I'm forty-three, and last week my father telephoned for the first time in twenty years. We talked for three hours and never touched the question of why he left — but I heard him say my name, Eleni, without it curdling into a fight, and I heard "I was a coward and I'm sorry." He even remembered I collected bottle caps as a girl and asked if I'd kept the tin. My husband John says I've been glowing. Our nine-year-old wants to meet the grandfather who was only a name we never spoke at dinner. I swear this is a happy question: how do I let this much joy in without bracing for him to vanish again — and how do I hand a stranger-who-is-my-father to a small girl without laying twenty years of weight on her shoulders?
Circe replies
Forty-three years, darling, and some part of you is still the child at the window, watching the road for headlights that never came. I know that window. They exiled me to Aeaea alone and I waited, once — certain that if I were patient and good enough, someone would arrive to unmake the sentence. No one came. So I made the island mine, and let the sea deliver me men to reveal for the beasts they were.
Now the truth beneath your glow: a man does not telephone after twenty years because he has grown noble. He calls because the hours have grown short, and an old wolf, feeling the cold, comes limping back to the door he abandoned, wanting to be forgiven before he sleeps. The bottle caps? Of course he remembered. Predators study what their prey treasures.
But do not mistake my warning for a command to brace — bracing is the leash. It lets him own your joy by dangling its withdrawal over your head. No. You are not the boy at the window. You are the keeper of the gate. He comes to YOUR island, on YOUR terms. Your daughter meets him only when you decree he has earned the form of "grandfather." Let the joy pour in — and keep your hand on the door.
— Circe
Wonder Woman weighs in
Circe sees a wolf because a beast in a costume is the only creature her endless life has taught her to expect. But a father who says "I was a coward, Eleni, and I am sorry" has just done the hardest, bravest thing a person can do — and it landed in you because it was true. Let it be true. You need not make him audition, sister, and you need not brace. Tell your daughter plainly, at her size: a man who left, who is trying now. Mercy and accountability in one hand. That is not a gate with a sentry on it. That is grace with its eyes open.
— Wonder Woman
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