When Genevieve Kingston was a child in primary school, her classmates would draw pictures of their families with crayons. All the white children, including Kingston, would use the orange crayon to draw skin. ‘But my mum really is orange,’ said a young Kingston, ‘so it’s realistic.’
She was right. When Kingston was three, her mother Kristina was diagnosed with an advanced form of breast cancer. She tried every treatment available: medical and homeopathic. This included chemotherapy but also drinking vast quantities of carrot smoothies – which, apparently, could help. She consumed so much of the stuff that her hands and face turned orange.
Four years later, Kristina was told the cancer was incurable. With ‘aggressive treatment’, doctors thought she might live for another year. The family – Kingston, her mother, her father and her elder brother – were living in Santa Rosa, California, at the time and both parents ran a nutritional beverage company.
Her mother stopped working and began another project. She decided to write a letter for every birthday for both her children until they turned 30. She would also leave letters for big life events: finishing school, passing a driving test, going to university, getting engaged, getting married, having a child.
Genevieve aged four with her mother Kristina, whose messages have kept her spirit alive for more than 20 years
The project was time-consuming. Kingston remembers the dining room being turned into a card factory. The table was covered with scissors and glue, wrapping paper and ribbons. Alongside the cards, Kristina left presents and cassette tapes on which she had recorded herself reading the letters out loud. When she was finished, she put the contents into two cardboard chests, one for each child, which she then handpainted.
Kingston was around seven when her mother started writing the cards. ‘I had a real impatience and was jealous of all the time she was pouring into it,’ she says, now a 35-year-old playwright, and speaking over Zoom from her apartment in Manhattan.
‘People in our extended family also thought it was a bit odd, and worried that this was not the right way to spend the precious time that was left – because it was an elaborate undertaking. But I think my mother was incredibly far-sighted.
I mean, it’s 23 years since I lost her and I’m having new conversations with her, because there are still letters in the box that I haven’t read. She could always see that bigger picture.’
In 2001, ten days before Kingston and her mother’s shared February birthday, Kristina died, aged 48. She had lived four years longer than any of the doctors expected.
Kristina had wanted to be buried in the cemetery at the end of their street, which was in the same area where she had grown up. She was first told it was full but, thankfully, her oncologist had a family plot with an open space for him; he gave it up for Kristina.
Ten years later, Kingston bumped into the doctor at a memorial. ‘Did I ever tell you,’ he said, ‘how your mother asked me for the plot?’ Kingston said no. ‘Well,’ the doctor explained, ‘she said that she wanted to be buried in that cemetery because as a girl she used to play there, and she remembered peeing behind the headstones. How could I say no to that?’ (That phrase, ‘did I ever tell you?’, is now the title of Kingston’s memoir – which tells the story of her mother and is published this month.)
Kingston remembers the early agony of waiting to open her mother’s letters. ‘I needed them so much. It was almost like holding your breath for a full year waiting for the next one. The letters really felt like a lifeline.’
Kristina had foreseen and prepared for almost every landmark; when Kingston started her period, she opened a four-page letter from her mother advising her on what to do. But on some occasions – events her mother could not have predicted – there was nothing.
When Kingston was 22, her father took his own life. He did not leave a note. ‘I did not see it coming,’ she says. There was a ‘stark contrast’ between how her parents died: ‘Both in terms of a long death and a sudden death, but also this preparation [from her mother] and this silence [from her father].’
Still, ‘From the beginning I had this feeling that, like my mother, he did the best he could and tried his hardest to stay with us. And if he’s not here, it’s because he couldn’t be.’
Some of the beautifully written and wrapped notes and presents from Genevieve’s mother (who called her Gwenny)
When Kingston was 22, her father took his own life. He did not leave a note. ‘I did not see it coming,’ she says. There was a ‘stark contrast’ between how her parents died: ‘Both in terms of a long death and a sudden death, but also this preparation [from her mother] and this silence [from her father].’ Still, ‘From the beginning I had this feeling that, like my mother, he did the best he could and tried his hardest to stay with us. And if he’s not here, it’s because he couldn’t be.’
In her early 20s, Kingston started to find opening her mother’s letters a sad process.
‘It was almost like we didn’t know each other any more. She didn’t know all these things that had happened to me and who I had become. And I thought: “How could she possibly predict what I would need?”’ But as Kingston grew up, and got closer to the age Kristina was when she was diagnosed, I started to see things almost from her perspective. I thought about what it must have been like for her, putting these letters together, and what it must have cost her.
I had this upswell of gratitude and awe for the courage and the conviction that it took to execute this incredible plan.’
After Kingston turned 30, she had opened all the birthday cards from her mother and now had just three letters left: one for her engagement, one for her wedding, one for her first child. In all the years of reading the notes, Kingston had never opened one early. But she was in a three-year relationship and didn’t think she believed in marriage. The engagement letter was thick; full of promise and Kristina’s advice. Kingston opened it.
In its several pages, her mother revealed that her own marriage, to Kingston’s father, had been unhappy but that they had stayed together for the children.
In a true marriage, partners hold each other’s souls with the greatest tenderness and respect
Kristina added: ‘A true marriage is a marriage of what is most sacred in both of you. In a true marriage, partners hold each other’s souls with the greatest of tenderness and respect… One must have an ease about both giving and receiving, a capacity for forgiveness for oneself as well as for the other, a personal sense of balance that is not dependent on the balance of the other, a kind of loving detachment.’
Today, Kingston – who is still with her partner – has the marriage and baby letters left. They are kept inside the same handpainted cardboard chest, which sits on a bookcase in her flat. Since Kingston doesn’t know if she’ll get married or have children, does she think about when she might open these last two notes?
‘You know,’ she says, ‘one way or another, I’ve got what I needed from the chest. I’ve got the reassurance that I am, and have been, loved and cared for and thought of, and that my connection with [my mother] is solid.
So I love that there’s a little bit left in the box, and I look forward to reading those letters some day. Either because I have chosen that life path or because I decided that it’s time. But I’m not worried about when I open them any more. I’m just grateful I have them.’
Genevieve’s memoir Did I Ever Tell You? is published by Quercus, £20. To order a copy for £17 until 2 June, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.
