Dear Alice

I've read a lot of Alice Munro stories over the years, as well as about her, and including interviews with her. And I'm not sure, but I think at one point I was surprised to learn she was a mother. And again, I'm not sure, but I think once I did, Alice Munro became less about being a writer and more about being a mother who didn't seem even remotely interested in discussing her role as a mother.

It wasn't just me. It was me, her interviewers, and every Tom, Dick and Mary who wrote about her.

And the reason for this, I think, is because Alice Munro was so vague on the subject of being a mother, so reticent, because the reality of her life didn't match at all the expectations we all had, that naturally, being a mother her children were her priority.

So how did she fit her writing around her children?

Meanwhile, the idea that a man might be her priority, and not her children or her writing, never occurred, although my guess is a re-reading of her canon and it would fair leap off every page that it was ever thus.

I do know I found her vagueness about being a mother - because she was nothing if not vague about it - endlessly frustrating. I don't care if you're one of the greatest short story writers in the world, I want to know about you being a mother now that you're being so mysterious about it. What kind of mother are you? What about your kids? What's it like for them, you being their mother?

Well, now we know, don't we, because her daughter, Andrea Munro, has told us.

It wasn't about being a mother at all, not even a bit. It wasn't even about being a writer.

It was all about being a woman with a man.

It's an Alice Munro short story if ever I read one.

We can be shocked about Alice Munro's betrayal of her daughter to the man who sexually abused her, not to mention the other little girls her second husband Gerald Fremlin sexually abused, sure. But anyone my age knows fully well, Alice Munro was not unlike a lot of mothers of her time, a time before reliable birth control and no fault divorce.

And lest we forget, there's a reason we had to bring in a law that an adult in a position of authority must report any suspected sexual abuse of a child by another adult in a position of authority.

Which brings us to Jim Munro.

When Andrea Munro returned home to her father Jim Munro's house after her summer visit to her mother, she told her stepbrother about her stepfather Gerald Fremlin's sexual abuse of her. Her stepbrother told her to tell his mother, her stepmother, which she did. Her stepmother then told her father, who, for whatever reason, didn't tell Alice Munro.

Then Jim Munro continued to knowingly send his daughter every summer into the sexually abusive hands of her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin.

No one seems to be asking, so let it be me, but what kind of father was Jim Munro?

But no, everyone is correct, of course. Alice Munro standing by her man, a man guilty of serial child sexual abuse, including that of her own daughter, is the worst. It's not just rejection, although it's certainly that, it's betrayal.

I grew up knowing I was planned because my mother made a point of telling me when I complained of probably being an accident since my parents already had a girl and a boy.

"Actually you were all planned so you'll have to find something else to complain about."

And I know she was telling the truth because otherwise she was pretty much Red from That 70s Show.

Well, a lot of people my age and older weren't planned, and they grew up with resentful mothers and absent fathers, people who should never have become parents, fathers who would sexually abuse them and mothers who would betray them, and on and on and on it went and still goes, although not so much now we have more choices.

It's sad, and we all feel let down, but what, for the love of all that sustains us, does any of it have to do with art?