Aw, crap, 3 months, really?

Where have I been for three months?

Well, with the kids, I guess. It was a failed experiment. It was a worthy one. I wanted to be the working mom who was able to meet the kids at the school bus alongside the (seemingly-smug) stay-at-home moms (why do I judge the stay-at-home moms as smug when I didn't want to be stay-at-home, even having a problem being at home as much as I am?) and say, "see, I can have both - work, and family." I wanted to be able to pick up the kids, get dinner started, worked another hour or two on the computer, while the kids played with their neighbors and dinner cooked, and have it all.

Like the rest of motherhood, the fantasy was vastly different than the reality. I would feel frustrated leaving work in the middle of a project, and feel exhausted picking up the kids rushing away from work. And then, once home, it was supremely hard to get started on work again. And then, when getting focused on work, hard to be interrupted every five minutes by the kids. I felt I was losing at every turn - not doing enough at home, not enough with the kids, not enough with work.

So the little guy, Reed, is back to his old daycare where they love him (we did not dig Montessori (too much "work" not enough "play" - they're just kids, let them be as wild and crazy as they can be) and we're pitching the after-care at the school to Quinn as a "bonus" fun thing he gets to do (and so far he's buying it).

We couldn't afford it, of course. But, as they way things go, I got a raise just after I increased their daycare - just enough to cover the extra daycare, not quite enough to pay the bills, but that's how it goes.

And what the hell is up with the economy anyway? I thought it was bad when I was searching for a job...now that I'm the hiring person I get just how bad it is - for an $11/hour job we had 50 applicants (the posting was open one week), everyone was qualified, half were over-qualified and of them I hired a Masters in Communication, because, hey, we're redoing our website too, might as well take what we can get. But, fuck, it's saying something when the most entry level job has near-executives fighting over it.

So what does this have to do with our reunion? nothing. not much anyway. It's just what's been getting in the way. Life.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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Why It's Worth It

I know that a lot of the blog can focus on the more difficult side of reunion, so Kate had mentioned that it would be good to write on the lighter, happier sides. I agreed, but where to go from there?

There's more love. There's more of everything - more family, more mothers (my husband has to deal with not one, but three mother-in-laws), more grandparents, more family conflicts and family drama, but in the end, more love.

My kids won't grow up thinking adoption is bad, or that Kate is bad for giving me up - they'll have questions about it, I'm sure, but for now they're content that Kate was pregnant with me but that my parents are the ones who raised me. And they get to know Kate as a grandmother and it's a different kind of grandmother than my mom and dad or Dane's parents. Not better or worse, just different, and that they have more people that love them and care for them is definitely a good thing.

I understand myself if a deeper way than I ever could have without knowing my birthfamilies. As someone who is always struggling to understand myself better, that is priceless to me. I get to see who I am from a whole variety of different angles I didn't have access to before.

But all of those things sound hollow and it's the whole of them all (and all the countless others I haven't mentioned here) that makes it significant. And I guess that's it - I feel whole. Without knowing my birthfamilies, there were big parts of who I am that were sealed from me, invisible to me. I could easily live my life without knowing those things, but they would always feel like they were missing. My parents gave me everything I could want, and as far as parents and family, they were enough, it never felt lacking. I never felt like I didn't have a family or that I was any "less than" in my family. That part wasn't lacking. But it was the parts of who I am that were lacking.

I like knowing that all the women in Kate's family, including myself, have these strange bumps on the sides of the nose. Well, I thought they were strange growing up, but now it seems normal. I like that after meeting my birthfather, John, that my quietness didn't seem a defect anymore, something wrong with me, but just a trait that I inherited from him. I like that when I flake on remembering a birthday, that Kate reminds me it's a "Power Failure," a trait in her family. So, things about me that I don't necessarily like or understand suddenly seem normal and familiar.

And, that things that were from where I came from and who raised me are apparent too - like my sense of humor and quick wit come from my dad or that when I wipe down the table after dinner, I think of how my mom would do that every night. And that when I'm sick and feeling like I want to be coddled, I know I will call my parents before anyone else ("What's wrong?" my mom will ask. "A COLD?" Oh, you poor thing! Have you been taking your vitamins? You need to rest. Of course you should take off work.").

And, the things that aren't able to be explained from any of these sides gets to be truly, uniquely mine. Who I am. Instead of the whole of me being a mystery, I am easily explained, and so I am unique in who I am, how I am, just by who I am and not by what is unknown, but because of what is known (and if you've followed that sentence, you're in good form). Just for that, it's so worth it.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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When I was a boy

(Inspired from a writing workshop, of an essay that started with "When I was a boy...")

When I was a boy, I wanted to see the world. Bit by bit, it happened. In 1981, at the age of ten I flew with my mother from our suburban square home in Parsippany, New Jersey, to an unmapped life in Portland, OR. She, leaving her husband by choice, me leaving the only father I had known, in confusion.

In our first apartment of many, my mother divided the middle room with a batik curtain so that we could have separate “bedrooms,” my bed being a bunk over the piano across from the desk. She started playing guitar at Irish music sessions in a dark loud bar called they called the East Ave. I would do my homework at the booth while she played. At home, I would drift off to sleep while listening to the music being played by my mother and her friends on the other side of the wall in the kitchen: guitar, fiddle, bones, bohran. Sometimes waking up from their laughter deep in the night, and being late to school the next day.

I spent my adolescent summers drifting around, smoking pot, hitchhiking. I found my way to Fairbanks, Alaska, living on my own at the age of fifteen, more or less – I stayed on the couch of a friend of my mother’s, Tim, whom she had contacted when she found out where I was. I would spend my evenings in the “Buffalo Nickel” a smoky bar near Tim’s house. I think the staff let me hang out there, even thought I was underage, because they knew I had nowhere else to go.

Growing tired of the cold and the dark, I hopped in my friend’s truck one day without having planned to, and four days later found myself in San Diego. The sun felt strange on my naked skin after its year-long hibernation under layers of clothes. I noticed I could still taste the salt on my lips hours after coming out of the ocean. Doing nothing felt like a good day’s work.

I had always played music. I wrote my first song when I was three and could play guitar by five, though I hadn’t had any formal lessons. So in San Diego, I started busking for money on the corners by the beach, where the tourists would be passing. I made enough money to keep me going and had enough left over for drinks that night at the session. I would find my way home to Portland, maybe even to Jersey – sometime – but for now I would see where the world led me.

But that was when I was a boy. That was the life that may have been, had my life been what my birthfather was told: that my mother had me, that I was a boy, and that she married someone else. My birthfather worried that the husband may have thought the baby was his. So any thoughts of seeing the baby again were relinquished and he was left only with the imaginings of what my life might be.

In fact, my birthmother had me, but I was a girl, and she didn’t keep me, but gave me up for adoption. She did get married, so soon after my birth that her breasts leaked milk in her wedding dress. But her husband, Bob, had known the baby wasn’t his. He had told her she could keep the baby, but she had decided already and kept with her instinct.

Had my life been the life told to my birthfather, I imagine I would be much different than I am today. I probably would have been more confident in my creativity. I would have grown up surrounded by musicians and artists; rather than by my adoptive parents, who appreciated art from a distance. I would have been playing music from the beginning, naturally, rather than taking piano lessons but giving it up because I never felt able to make it my own.

I do, however, imagine I would be less confident in other ways had I been raised in my “birthfamily.” My adoptive family had the stability of a two-parent home in a square house on a square lot in New Jersey, one house my whole life. My dad worked as a chemist, my mom as a homemaker, with dinner on the table every night at 6pm sharp. College was planned for and paid for. I was brought up in the certainty of being loved and wanted and accepted. Certainly, that brings gifts not easily defined.

But what is hard for me to imagine is the two me’s – the boy who plays music on the beach and the girl quietly writing alone in her room – being, in fact, the same person.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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Eighteen Years Later

I've been struggling about writing about my beach weekend with Kate. I think I'm trying to make too much out of it, trying to give it meaning, but I haven't really sorted that out yet.

I was 18 when I met Kate (well, except for when I was born, of course, but it's not like I remember that meeting). Meeting was brief – a first meeting for a day, and then a get together at her sister’s house another day, and then nothing for four years outside of letters. But the letters were good for me. I wasn’t ready to fully step into her world. It was more manageable for me to ease into it, facing wave by wave. A letter would come in, I would read it. Then, I would wait to respond to it in my own time, and when it was ready, send it out. Until the next wave came in, I was on land, at home, where the two worlds meet but remain distinctly different – land and sea. 

Here I was, deep at sea now, having come to her home, Oregon, the other side of the world from Jersey. And now it was refreshing to be able to talk together, instead of write letters and be able to take in the wholeness of the sea of her world surrounding me. Her world was Portland, Oregon, and I had come out after graduating from college to spend the summer with her. Not long after I arrived, we were off to the coast for a weekend. A co-worker of Kate's paid for a weekend at a beach house for us to have some time together at the coast. It was an amazing gesture, that someone who was a stranger to me would be so generous.

I was excited, but nervous, so I was relieved when I found out that friend of Kate's (a guy / fellow musician) was going to drive us and that my brand-spanking new "boyfriend," Felim, could come along that first night. It took the pressure off all the time just being me and Kate together, alone. It's funny, I had a lot of time alone with Kate in Portland on my visit, but something about being alone together at the beach felt more intense.

The Oregon coast was completely different from the Jersey shore that I grew up with. Kate, who had also grown up in Jersey, had said it took her a long time to get used to the ocean being on her right when driving south. I was taken aback that you can't smell the ocean the way you can in Jersey, when you can smell the sea long before you can see it. And there are the obvious differences - the Jersey shore is a party atmosphere where you pay to get on the beach, it's loud and fun and crazy. The Oregon Coast is stunning, beautiful and fierce - where nature is wild rather than the people.

We settled into the beach house and the next morning the guys left and Kate and I were alone together. We just hung out there on the deck overlooking the ocean and watched the water and talked. There were hours of time we just spent talking. While we talked, I saw my first whale (and then many whales) that trip. It made me think of sea-monsters, imagining the first sailors seeing a hump of black rise out and spout water only to be followed by another hump rising a hundred yards later, and then again to finish with a splash of a tail. We hadn't left the house that whole day, other than a trip to the market on the corner to get some wine, and it was perfect. 

But somehow in the course of things, we invited the guys to come back the next night. I don't remember how it happened, but I feel Kate had suggested it and I jumped at the chance to have them come back. I remember opening the door to Felim with him having a huge smile on his face, and I'm sure mine mirrored his.

Even though I had agreed, maybe even persuaded Kate to invite the guys back, I felt resentful that she invited them back. She was no more to blame than I was, but it didn’t stop me from being bitter about it.

It took 18 more years for us to take a trip alone together again. And it wound up being just a few miles away from where we stayed the first trip. The second trip was a grand gesture of Kate's to whisk me away for my fortieth (ack!) birthday. She had planned to take me to Victoria, B.C., but the place she had in mind had closed. It worked out to have it at the coast, and I don't think she even put together all the syncronicities of it - that it was 18 years later, and just miles away from where we first were.

And where I get stuck is trying to work out the difference in it all. What does a trip for a mother and daughter newly in reunion look like copared to ones who have been in reunion for more than 18 years?
The structure was very much the same - relaxing, reading, and lots and lots of talking and all the talking is deep and important and random. But, it felt much different, and that's the hard part to get across.

Who we were was very different - Kate was 41, single, a musician, and living in an apartment with her day job as a secretary. I was 22, free-floating, waitressing, with a new unexpected boyfriend and I had no idea what my life was going to look like 18 months from then much less 18 years later.

Eighteen years later, I'm the age Kate was then, but I'm married, with two kids, a house in Portland that was 2 miles away from Kate's house and miles away from who Kate was at this age. I desperately miss that 22 year-old self and all her hopes and dreams and hope to make her proud one of these days when I've finished with all this domesticity.

Kate is 59 and has sold her house and business and sort of free-floating the way I was then - trying to find her next phase of life, not quite sure what her life is going to look like in 18 months or 18 years.

And Kate and I are still getting to know each other. I think what was most significant about this last trip, our second trip alone together, was that we are still getting to know each other, and that we are still somewhat unsure of each other, but we're used to it now. The first trip, we couldn't quite face that. By the second trip, we had gotten comfortable with the discomfort.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Guilt

I still haven't gotten past feeling guilty about my relationship with my birthparents, towards my parents. Even though they know I have a relationship with both my birthparents, they know I have a very close relationship with my birthmother, yet I still find myself caging comments and editing myself when I'm talking to them.

They haven't really contributed to the guilt. They will ask about my birthparents and don't seem to have any bad feelings towards them, so why do I edit myself.

Recently, Kate took me to the coast for my fortieth birthday. Had I been going with a girlfriend, I would have told my parents all about it. But, since I was going with Kate, I played it down - made it seem like just an overnight instead of a long weekend, didn't go into details.

And because my parents are old-fashioned and polite, they don't ask more questions than what I offer - they wouldn't want to "pry." But if they did pry, I wouldn't mind - it would make it seem more okay.

I am feeling particularly guilty today because I screwed up big-time with my parents. I didn't call my mom, and didn't do anything for her eightieth birthday. Yes, lovely, I know.

Do I have excuses - sure. Her birthday was the day before our department graduation, an event that I spend a lot of time and energy and stress on and 2 days later was our 5 year old's birthday party and it was all a whirlwind. But, do any of those excuses make my missing my mom's birthday - her 80th - acceptable - of course not.

What made it worse, is that I was spending that day with my birthmom, with her helping us with the ukulele graduation event, doing a dress rehearsal for that. Then she and Steve babysat the kids so Dane and I could go out. All of this while I was forgetting my mom's birthday.

The thing that makes it worse is that I didn't forget - I kept remembering during the day that it was her birthday and I should call. I had forgotten that it was her eightieth, or else I wouldn't have been so careless about it. I kept putting it off and then didn't do it.

I called a couple days later and apologized (still not remembering that it was her eightieth), she was mad. Called again today. She's mostly over it, but my dad's not talking to me. I feel awful.

And I deserve to feel guilty for that, I messed up. I'm human, I suck at birthdays and events like that that girls are supposed to be good at, that my mom is good at. But I suck all the same.

But, I wish I still didn't feel guilty for my relationship with my birthfamilies. I wish I could just talk openly and honestly and have it be normal. Even though I call my birth-sisters my sisters, and Kate's siblings aunts and uncles - I don't refer to them by those designations to my parents (Mary, instead of "Aunt Mary," Abby instead of "my sister." And playing down the time I spend with them and things like that. I don't think I'll ever quite get past that. But, maybe if I try, and nothing bad happens, then I'll get used to it. Maybe I'll try that.

But, for now, I just have to figure out how to make up for my mom's birthday.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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A daughter by any other name is still a daughter, but what about a mother?

This week my birthmother, Kate, came through in a big way. After too much caffiene, I had the "brilliant" idea of coercing all of the faculty and staff in my engineering department into doing a big ukulele performance at the end of our department's graduation. The idea wasn't totally crazy - one of my staff guys is an amazing musician and has already performed songs at previous graduations, while Kate and Steve's (her husband) schtick is to teach ukulele to non-musicians. Kate and Steve had 26 ukuleles they could lend us, Jay could sing the song, it was a vision.

The next day when the coffee had worn off, I had started to rethink the idea. But, by then, my wonderful staff had bought into the idea and supported me through it. Two weeks later, Jay (the staffer musician) had written the song, the rest of the staff (women) co-ordinated a simple dance routine and the faculty were told they were going to be given ukes to play and offered lessons from Kate and Steve to get them ready for it and that was that.

This was the result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv7kb_vfQZ8
(I'll try to get a better video up soon. I'm the one in the white dress, and Kate and Steve are on the far right standing and playing ukulele)

Kate was wonderful. She and Steve drove 2 hours down from Olympia the day before to bring in the ukes and do a rehearsal (that I had gone back and forth on). When they got there, I was stuck with how to introduce her and Steve. Most of the people I work with, the ones I talk with regularly, know my story just from it coming up in conversation. You would think by now we would have it down, but when the time came to introduce Kate, I choked.

Earlier in reunion, I was braver. Twelve years ago, when I had a work party at a bar (a goodbye party for me after a layoff in nonprofit), Kate came along. We were already sitting around the table when she came in, so there was nothing to do but introduce her and so I did - as my birthmother. Everyone was nice enough not to comment on it right then, but it certainly put an awkward pause in the conversation.

One of the women I worked with at the time came up to me later when I was alone and asked if I had said that that woman was my "birthmother." "Yes," I replied, a little too bruskly, but by then I had learned that telling the story tended to "sensationalize" it to the listener, even when we were friends. It became marginalized either into a sweet romance of sorts - finding each other again - or a tale of adventure and danger. And while it is all those things, there's a lot of crap in between that's dark and fuzzy and hard to explain to someone who hasn't been though it. So I braced myself for her asking me my story.

It turned out she was an adoptee too and newly in reunion herself. From there, I was the one hooked on her story. It was the first time I could talk to someone so freely and openly about the whole experience and have her understand me instantly (in "shorthand" a therapist who saw both of us in an "adoptees in reunion" therapy group, called it later). So, I was glad I had introduced Kate as my birthmother.

Even though I may have been braver back then, with the fire of first learning about adoption issues lit under me (I had just started reading Betty Jean Lifton), but it was a selfish bravery. Me introducing Kate as my birthmother didn't say much about me that people could judge me about (other than that I was in touch with my birthmother) but now I realize, after getting to know Kate and her experience more, that it gives people a lot to judge her about - being a mother that chose to relinquish a child for adoption carries a heavy stigma with it and introducing her with that in front is very exposing.

Still, it seemed unfair. Kate could (and would, frequently,) introduce me as her "daughter" and have that be perfectly valid. You can have many daughters. Even if you give them away to be raised by another family, it is still your daughter. But, mother has a whole weight on it that's different. I talked about it a bit in the "Mother's Day" blog earlier. I can't just call Kate my "mother," I only have one. But, birthmother, that seemed to work for me, for us. And, without better words, that's what we've stuck with.

And, if it's unfair that Kate can introduce me as her daughter without issue being raised ("she's not my mom," I would retort silently in my thoughts), it's also not fair that I can't introduce her as my birthmother and it automatically raises issues and questions. A few weeks ago, we went to the beach, just Kate and I, for a weekend to ourselves in celebration of my birthday (more to come on that soon), and, again, Kate would introduce me as her daughter and I would just evade questions about us. It's strange, but there's no good way around it.

But there's one thing that's significant. Early on, I would think of her her as my "birthMOTHER." Now, I almost always think of her as my "birthMOM." I've gotten comfortable enough to go from mother to mom with the growth of our relationship, so I think that says something, even if it only makes sense to the few of us who stuggle with this.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Birthmother's Blog

For those of you who might be interested, my birthmother, Kate, is also doing a blog - http://mothertone.wordpress.com/. Keeping in the same spirit as the memoir, we've decided to do the same with the blogs, and not them influence each other's writing until all is said and done. I hope at some point we can converge and comment back and forth on each other's writing, and that will be part of the fun - or, maybe not fun, but interesting and thought-provoking anyway.

In the meantime, it's just too easy to be influenced by the other's memories so we wanted to steer clear of that. What we will probably do is agree on "prompts" or topics that we find interesting and both comment on it from our individual sides, but not read each others' postings - for now anyway!

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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The Meaning of ReunionEyes

I came up with the name ReunionEyes for several reasons.

The first is that eyes have always held a lot of meaning for me in reunion. Growing up, no one I knew had eye color that was like mine – a strange melding of colors that are neither blue, nor green, nor grey, but something of them all that blended together once could not be duplicated.

The first thing I wished to see in my birthmother was her eyes. I was sure that I would see in hers, the color of my own. But they weren’t. In fact, one of the first things she said to me was that I had the most amazing color eyes. Disappointed, I’d asked if there was anyone in her family she thought they came from. “No,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it.”

Meeting my birthfather, who has brown eyes, wasn’t much more help. Though he said that he did think that he had family with similar-colored eyes, he wasn’t in touch with many of them so there was no way to know for sure.

So, for me, eyes became symbolic of the search for self in adoption and that by looking at our birthfamilies for explanations of ourselves we inevitably find that we are who we are – unique and not easily explained. Part of all of our families, a blend, but not an identical descendant of any one.

That’s the one part.

The other is the idea of Reunion in and of itself. To Reunionize. To talk about reunion and to normalize it. Not that it’s any great mystery in this day and age, except, that somehow, it still is. It’s a unique phenomenom. A time when women were more or less cornered into a closed adoption system where the only choices were abortion (if they conceived after 1970), or closed adoption, or keeping the baby and getting married. No appealing options.

And, again, to talk and have discussions from us who have been in reunion for awhile now. Not that I don’t want to hear about those who are new in reunion. I remember that time, and I empathize with it. It’s an emotional time with honeymoon-highs and lashing lows that send your soul into lightness and darkness that is exhausting and confusing. But this blog isn’t about that. It’s about the bewildering and amazing place that we’ve gotten to that by riding through the storm we come to a place we didn’t know existed so couldn’t have planned to head here that’s mostly calm and holds the sadness and loss and the gifts together as siblings in this strange family.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Mother's Day, Part 2

So, what do you do about mother's day?

For me, it's always been complicated. It's stressful. I struggle between the right thing to do and what feels right. And realize neither are right.

So what feels right? For my mother - my adoptive mother (and anyone in reunion will know that when I say "my mother" knows that I'm talking about my adoptive mother. it still astounds me that someone who is on the outside of the experience will ask, "which mother?" like there's a choice. There is only one to me) I do the typical things - send flowers, call her on the day, or, if we happen to be together on that day, go to brunch.

For my birthmom - I'm still stumped.

I want to honor her. I want to honor the time she had me in her belly, the years she thought of me and the love she does have for me, as well as the relationship we have now. But she's still not my mother. She's my birthmother. So?

What do you do to celebrate your birthmother? The beauty about mother's day is that doing something for your mother - any simple thing - brings such great delight (if they're a decent mom that is. And from my perspective now being a mom, it doesn't take much of what my kids do for me to make it feel like the most amazing special thing in the world). But, the birthmom. Well. There's baggage there, isn't there. And I don't want my mom to know, to think that she thinks I'm honoring my birthmom as my mom. So.

So usually I do nothing. Or little. A few times - times we lived together in the same town - I would do the right thing. Bring a hanging basket of flowers or bulbs. Make a breakfast and include my husband's mom and her. But it always feels a little false, a little forced, and a whole lot awkward.

I would love to hear from other adoptees in reunion to hear how they celebrated mother's day and what feels right for them.

Thanks for sharing.

***

to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

***

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Mother's Day?

I met my birthmother twenty two years ago. Is that right? 1989. I just graduated high school, was about to go into college and in the middle of all that - we met.

This is my first post to this new blog. I'm wanting it to be a space where adoptees in reunion can talk about their experience. I want to talk about my experience because my experience has a breadth and depth that astounds me. Twenty two years in reunion. We've come a long way, but there will always be issues, always things unresolved, and I still find it all so interesting.

Along the way I've found some friends that are also adoptees, also have been in reunion, and I find it amazing to talk to them. Beause unlike so many other things in life - marriage, kids, parents, work - there isn't much out there about what it's like to be part of this whole big strange family that we're in. Hell, there is plenty out there on mixed-marriages, blended families, gay parenting, all sorts of "non-tranditional" families. But, our strange family - us adoptees in reunion - still feels a little in the dark. It's uncertain, and we all just plod through it on our own. But, when I talk to friends who have had similar experiences as they try to adjust their lives to fit this new, strange, blended family, I am amazed by the reassurance I feel. We are not alone. There are things about this that make sense, that are predictable, that are "normal."

So, I hope to find others out there and hear your stories as well. I don't want this to be all about me. I want to hear from you too. I want to know how other adoptees in reunion handle Mother's Day. I want to hear what it's like for other adoptees in reunion to go to a family reunion. I want to hear your stories and share mine so we all hear what's going on for each other.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Please comment!