Almelo, september the 25th 2003,

Dear Mary,

I am writing to you this letter just to let you know that I am doing fine right now. At the moment I am staying with Mrs. Gerrard and her children, it is very nice of her to let me come to learn more about her background, her dreams and wishes, that I will tell you later in this letter. If it were not the phoneline that broke down, I would have called you of course, but I have to write you instead.

First I wil tell you something about her life when she was a little girl. Mrs. Gerrard grew up in this amazing family, a family every child in the world has dreamt of: a mother, who was at home all the time and loved baking cakes, and a father, who worked very hard and took good care of his responsibility to look after her. When she went to bed, there was always one of them willing to read her a little story or a book. It was at the time she started dreaming of a family and many children of her own.

Unfortunately her dream did not come true. In fact, she has been married twice! Now she is a single mother with two children from her first marriage and two children from her second marriage.
It all goes quite well, but it is not the future she wanted for her four lovely children. Mrs. Gerrard wished to give her children a family like she had herself when she was young. One of her four children, a girl named Patricia, told me that she finds it hard to choose between her both parents, and because of that she sometimes feels homesick at her father’s and her mother’s house.
I think I would have had the same problem when I was growing up in two families, it will always be a difficult choice.

The people in the neighbourhood said to her, that it would be much better for her children to grow up with two parents and live in a so-called “nuclear family”. By that, they mean a family that count a mother, a father, two children and a pet. Mrs. Gerrards family can not be called a nuclear family, because she is divorced and brings up her children on her own.
Mrs. Gerrard does not feel comfortable with the comments of her environ-ment: her opinion is, that she does everything to give her children a happy youth, and they have certainly a better youth than the one they would have had when she had stayed married.

I hope you understand a little bit about her and her household now, at least I tried to make it as clear as I could. You are always welcome, if you have any questions about the whole situation here.

Lots of love,