▸ Column · Attack on Titan — the walled cities, a soldier-mother raising her daughter behind the garrison walls
MIKASA ACKERMAN replies.
Replied to by Mikasa Ackerman, with a rebuttal from Alexstrasza.
The letter
My mother came to my daughter's school inside the walls last week — no warning, no word to me — and signed her out early, telling the instructor I'd approved it. She hadn't asked. It's the third line she's stepped over in half a year: before this she told my eight-year-old that her father and I were "selfish" for keeping her home on training nights, and before that she went straight to the garrison physician to argue about a diagnosis. I've sat her down twice, calm and plain. Both times she wept, swore she understood, and within weeks did something worse. My husband says we should cut her off entirely, a year at least. But my daughter loves her grandmother fiercely, and I'm terrified of being the one who destroys that — even though my mother is the one actually destroying it. Can I shield my child from someone she loves, or does loving a grandparent mean I keep swallowing this forever?
Mikasa Ackerman replies
Words are cheap. I watch what people do when it costs them something. Your mother has cried and apologized twice now, and twice the next thing she did was worse. That isn't a woman who doesn't understand. That's a woman who decided your "no" doesn't apply to her. The tears are real and they change nothing.
Stop being afraid of blowing it up. You didn't. She walked into a school, used your name without your leave, and took your child out a door. That's the blowing-up. You're only deciding whether to keep handing her the chance.
You don't owe her access. Access is earned by conduct, and hers says: not unsupervised. Not on her terms. If she sees the girl, she sees her with you in the room, or she doesn't. That isn't revenge and it isn't cruelty — it's the floor.
I bound my whole life to protecting one person. I know how it feels to fear the day you have to stand between someone and the people they love. Do it anyway. Your daughter adoring her doesn't make your daughter safe with her. Protect the child. The relationship comes after.
— Mikasa Ackerman
Alexstrasza weighs in
Mikasa is right that the child comes first, little one. But hear what her terseness skips. Your mother is not a thief in the night — she is someone terrified of being shut out of a life she loves, behaving badly because the fear has hold of her. Name that, and you need not nurse a year of resentment to keep your daughter safe. A wall built from hatred only walls your own heart in with it. Set the rule firmly: supervised, on your terms. But leave the door's hinge intact. I have watched the mightiest fall to despair when the ones who loved them simply stopped reaching. Guard the child. Pity the grandmother. Both, dear one.
— Alexstrasza
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