Dear Sophia,
We were so busy back then. Your dad was the star player and our team was only weeks away from being included in the World Cup and we were always on the move, playing on average six to seven matches with every team all over the country. Sometimes we didn't even get a full day off during the week, between practice and the promotion work and the interviews and photo-shoots. We'd gotten so wrapped up in the machine that there didn't seem to be time for anything else. I've been using that word a lot in these letters, seem, but back then so much of our lives were structured around appearances. We had mastered a game that was much more about what you looked like than it was about who you really were.
By that summer there was so little privacy in our lives it was hard to believe in the possibility that we—your father, and I—could have secrets from one another. There were the press, following our every turn, making mountains out of molehills. And there were the tabloids, lying in wait for any chance to make Everest out of the Adirondacks. And then, on top of it all, there was quidditch. I don't know if you'll ever experience the life of a quidditch player, but it's pretty uncomfortable, especially with half your family and friends on the team. You couldn't sigh without everyone on the bus asking you what was wrong. And yet, your father was keeping a big secret, the biggest secret possible…he was falling in love.
That summer there was one last meeting with your mother scheduled. This one took place in a restaurant near to our stadium. Your mother waltzed into the restaurant in a billowing, wildly printed dress robes and huge sunglasses and I can still remember hearing your father inhale sharply at the sight of her. This, of course, struck me as ridiculous. Just weeks earlier he'd stood next to her, fighting for her attention, only to watch her kiss another man.
She was looking down, furiously typing on that muggle death machine when she entered, and the moment she put it down, your father was quick to wave her over to the table with the biggest smile I'd seen on his face in ages. Her expression didn't change as she wove between other crowded tables on her way to join us; she did not crack a smile or wave in return. Looking on, I couldn't understand your father's behaviour at all, but he remained, as ever, undaunted. I couldn't believe that proving himself to any girl would be worth the repeated rejection, let alone this girl. To me, winning the war, so to speak, was not worth the wounds he'd sustain through the battles. And yet, for your father it seemed like sport. He appeared to be actually enjoying the chase.
When the meeting ended your mother was, for the third time, cordial but professional and she excused herself as quickly as possible. She left the very first moment she could, citing a long walk through the park back to her home office. I suppose your father took this as some kind of invitation, because he leapt up from the table not moments after your mother left, and without much word he ran out of the restaurant before anyone could stop him.
It was hours before your father returned to the apartment, only just barely on time to grab the portkey for the ride to France. He said nothing of what occurred while he was gone and the look on his face was, once again, strangely unreadable. He spent most of the time lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling quietly. Even after repeated (heated) questioning, your father revealed nothing. This was a side of him I was completely unfamiliar with. At that point, it seemed like your father was always talking, always over-sharing, always on. I found it exhausting. I often longed for silence. But this silence…I should have known better, should have known something was up. Instead, I took this new behaviour—uncharacteristic silence, unfamiliar facial expression—to mean nothing good happened while he was gone. It wasn't until much later that I would learn I was wrong.
Your father's strange, new behaviour only continued from that moment: he grew more and more unfamiliar with each passing day. And none of us seemed to have any insight into what was going on. None of us could break through. This was uncharted territory in our relationship, as a team and as a family.
The timing was terrible, I suppose. The games were still moving at breakneck speed. We were all exhausted, beginning to lose touch, and struggling to relate even when we were together. Things felt different then, today I'd even say things felt awful then, but we just chalked it up to stress and exhaustion. It was the easy answer and we didn't have time for anything else. So we pledged to slow down just as soon as the final game of the season ended. We paid a lot of lip service to 'getting back to ourselves.'
It was around then that your father began to disappear for days at a time. Sometimes it was just mental and emotional absence—he'd hole up in his room and refuse to emerge. But sometimes it was physical, sometimes when he left us we literally had no idea where he was. We were all so angry with him. With the way he was acting, with the lack of commitment we felt he was showing to the band, with his insensitivity. The anger was overwhelming. I see now that the anger was, once again, the easy answer. It required no thought, no sensitivity, and no investment of our time.
Your father never gave us much in return, vacillating between reflecting our empty anger in kind and simply ignoring us. There was no communication—not of any value at least—just a lot of yelling. The fighting was bleeding over into every aspect of our lives. Before we knew it, we'd begun sleeping in separate hotel rooms.
Before we knew it, our entire lives were different. We were too busy to acknowledge this. And everyone around us—all so heavily invested in our career—was quick to offer plausible excuses for each and every change. We began to believe those excuses. We began to live the lives that had been laid out before us, no longer charting our own course.
These changes, so universal in their nature, began to obscure the details. We only saw the forest, never the trees. Looking back, I realize that it was probably the only way we could get through our days: denial. So we stopped investing our time in anything that seemed like minutiae, and by that time, if it wasn't a show or an interview or a taping, well, it was minutiae.
Still, the biggest thing in any of our lives was there, bubbling beneath the surface, not long from boiling over. And none of us knew it.
All my Love,
Uncle Al