#365DaysOfWriting — Day Twenty-Eight
Thursday, February 14th, 2047.
My dearest Tilda,
I remember the day we got little Thom home. How lost he looked, how scared he was of us both. But he also had a hopeful, innocent smile — one that won your heart over immediately, and then mine.
That was 25 years ago.
The world wasn’t as kind or accepting of our relationship back then. We had to survive a terrible World War III, hiding in unused bunkers, in the middle of jungles and God knows where because soldiers were looking for ‘our kind of people’. Nay, not looking, HUNTING our kind of people. In the terrible aftermath, many children were orphaned. I remember what you said, that they were “young fledglings ripped mercilessly out of their nests.”
One such fledgling was Thom.
The war had left the world’s sex ratio so horribly skewed that very few men were left. There were only women, and in a perverse sort of way, we suddenly became ‘normal people’ overnight. Adoption agencies had no choice but to hand over all those poor children to us lesbians.
It feels so normal to write it now. Lesbians.
Although my love, to tell you the truth, it does feel good to have the Simpsons and the McMahons in our neighbourhood. They’re the last of the nuclear families from before the war. The last of what was considered once normal — a father, a mother and a child. It gave us a chance to explain to Thom what life was like back in the day. It gave us perspective. And as you know, Thom gets along famously with their children.
Anyway, I digress. I meant to ask you something else entirely. In the last 10 years or so, I’ve noticed how much Thom wants to be LIKE you. Come to think of it, he looks a lot like you. Red hair, high cheekbones, sharp nose, big eyes… he also takes your side whenever we have a fight.
It’s this question I’ve had in my mind for the last 10 years — is there something about Thom you want to tell me, love?
Yours now and forever,
Cate.
