Dear Junior,

            I am too in shock of tonight’s events to tell you this in person, so I will write to you before I lose my nerve. Today, your mother’s friend, Clare, had died. Your mother tries to shield you from life’s troubles—racism, sex, and the like. However, I cannot in good conscious do so and think I have raised my sons properly.

Clare has fallen out the window, a beautiful light now extinguished forever. I suspect that she had been pushed by her racist husband, Mr. Bellew, who was enraged to find out she had been “passing” and that his nickname for her actually rang true. Your mother was close enough to see it happen to, within arm’s reach.

I have been a good father. I have provided for our family. Earlier, I told you mother, “I wanted to get them (you boys) out of this hellish place years ago. You wouldn’t let me. I gave up the idea, because you objected. Don’t expect me to giving up everything” (232, Passing).  I have longed to leave the United States, to take you and Ted away from this dreadful country, and start my practice in Brazil. But your mother has stopped me from doing so. She represents everything I should be aspiring towards, in terms of the politics of respectability.

Son, I warn you, do not follow in my footsteps. Though I love you and your brother dearly, though I have found familial security, I have not found happiness in achieving financial security. I am sick and tired of aiding sick people. For once, I found a happiness, a thrill, in my relationship with Clare. Funny, that I should become enamored with a married woman who has “passed” in white society for over a dozen years of her adult life! She certainly is unlike the descriptions your mother gave of her. Belittling, selfish, and unfeeling—that is what your mother saw. To me, she was a breath of fresh air in this stale repetitive dance we call life. As she began visiting Harlem more and more, she began to straddle dual, opposing lives—one where she “passed” in white society and played by the rules, and the other, in which she threw caution to the wind and went about things with her “having” sort of attitude.

She seduced me into giving into what I have wanted all along—putting my own needs first. This may be love, or this may be infatuation, or this may be adventure. I don’t know son. When your mother and I got married, neither of us had an inkling about what true love meant. All we knew was that we wanted stability. Security.

I need to gather my thoughts as I decide the next step in life. Son, I hope you grow up and allow yourself to throw caution to the wind.

Love,

Dad

Bruno Mars - "Locked Out of Heaven" 
Never had much faith in love or miracles
Never wanna put my heart on the line
But swimming in your world is something spiritual
I'm born again every time you spend the night
(If curious, Bruno Mars's dad is Puerto Rican, & Jewish (from Hungary and Ukraine) and his mom is Filipina)