June, 2024. In response to Kazumi Tanaka and Jayoung Yoon
Christina Ladd is a writer based in NYC.
June 6, 2024
Dear Jayoung and Kazumi,
I wanted to thank both of you for your art and for your conversation, and for being willing to share both of those with the world and with me. Your creativity and vulnerability moved me very deeply. What you shared about your families, especially your mothers, and about your traditions was very powerful, and I cried several times to think about the connection between mothers and daughters, and also the many kinds of separation we endure from the moment we are born.
My mother was born in Sweden. She came to the U.S. when she was eight. After the war, there was very little opportunity for my grandparents, so they decided they had to leave. My grandfather worked as a waiter and my grandmother took care of the home and children. My grandmother made rugs from scraps and sewed designs on everything. I still remember their house, full of simple but beautiful things. Even the air was lovely. No one else I knew put out dried flowers to make their home smell nice.Â
My own mother died of cancer when I was eight. It is a wound that will never heal. Lately I had been thinking that I had “closure,” which is a foolish thing, especially for an artist. I don’t really believe in it, and yet I thought I had achieved it, because I was not sad in the same way. But my grief is not a fading echo. It is a ghost, and it follows me wherever I go.
Your work reminded me to reach out my hand and take the hand of my grief. It is the only way I have right now of holding my mother’s hand. All our other ties have been severed: my umbilical cord was cut, her hair all fell out from the chemotherapy, and even the chain of the necklace she left for me.
The necklace is one of the few things I have from her. When she died, my father got rid of almost everything of hers. He couldn’t bear to look at her clothing, her bags, the things she had left behind. The only thing he really kept was her jewelry, to give to me on my 18th birthday. This included a necklace she had engraved for me before she died. It is a simply locket, and on the back it says “Love always, Mom.”Â
I wore the necklace and held the locket in my hand so often that I accidentally broke the chain. That is the chain you see in the picture. I now wear the locket on a different chain; I never fixed that one. It felt too symbolic: the circle of our embrace, a mother and daughter reaching out to each other, was broken forever.Â
I am now 37, the same age my mother was when she died. Another circle comes around. I wonder, will I survive this year? Am I fated to die like she did? What will my legacy be? I have no children. The chain of DNA linking back to our past and all our mothers ends with me.Â
But there are more ways than birth and death to think of legacy. I may still have a child, even if not from my body. I may still continue her legacy through the other ways she wove herself into this world: her kindness, her love of beauty, her smile.Â
I have given you a picture of the gold chain she left me, but I hope to also leave you with kindness, love of beauty, and a smile.
To think of her hair woven with mine
To think of her DNA braided into mine
To think of us so far away
Her homeland across the sea
Her—home.
I hope, in death, she is home again
I hope, following a shining cord, one day
I will find her there.
Love always,
ChristinaÂ