My parents completely approved of the isolation and limited contact with the outside. Even though my siblings would never have written me or phoned me had they been allowed, when they were told they could not, they were the ones who questioned this, not my parents.
I did come close to cutting off all communications with them shortly after I arrived. In an effort to mend fences, I wrote them an eight page, hand written letter with nothing to say but nice things. It came back five days later, same envelope and stamped Return To Sender. I opened it up and found my letter inside, corrected in red ink. Words properly spelled, proper punctuation, grammatically correct, yet corrections made nonetheless. Clearly this was meant as an insult.
Technically I did cut off communications because I now recall that two months later Bob Silfies had cornered me and asked why I had not written to my parents. When I told him, he said I needed to work through it and to send another letter. When I refused, he said I would be kicked out of Courier du Bois. I said, cool! When that failed as an incentive, he threatened me with a work detail. I said, cool! I prefer to work alone, I get more done. Then he threatened me with a wide range of bans, and that was actually the one punishment that could make life difficult and annoying. So I gave in. Kind of wish I hadn't, but 25 years is a lot of time to reflect.
