Friday, May 30, 2014

Ignorance is Bliss...?

This past week, I've been visiting my old friends in New Jersey. We're back East for my husband's nephew's wedding in Pennsylvania, so took some extra time to visit my life-long friends whom I grew up with in Jersey.

Our first days here were Memorial Day Weekend. We joined my best friend, Olga, on Long Beach Island. I'd spent a lot of time on the Jersey Shore growing up, but mainly at Seaside Heights. Seaside is classic Jersey Shore with a long boardwalk of food stands, arcades, carnival games, and big amusement-park rides. 

I'd loved Seaside Heights as a kid, but the thought of visiting it as a parent was less exciting. I'd pictured the kids being manic, over-stimulated with a lot of running around from one thing to another. But, still, I was willing to go because I wanted them to see a little bit about where I came from.

Long beach Island was nothing like Seaside. The harbor was on one side, walk a few blocks and you're on the other side of the island at the ocean. No boardwalk, a direct walk onto the beach. It was a sweet, quaint seaside where the kids could play at the beach and go for pizza or ice cream after and visit the one, small arcade and amusement rides in the middle of town.

I sat on the beach with Olga, catching up, while my 6 and 8 year old boys played with her 11 and 9 year old boys. Her youngest, a girl, 4 years-old, played in the sand while my husband stood with her husband, watching the kids in the ocean or throwing the football to them.

Olga asked about my mom and, later, about Kate. She asked what the boys called her. I explained that Kate's husband had become "Uncle Grandpa Steve," by the kids, which fit him perfectly. Kate refers to herself as "Grammy Kate," but the boys often just call her Kate. Not calling her Grammy isn't so much about not thinking of her as a grandmother, but that "Grammy," just isn't a word they (we) would use.

"How much do they know..." Olga asked cryptically. I was jolted back into the world I grew up in. Adoption was a dark, dirty secret that wasn't to be spoken of openly. "Oh," I said,  "they know everything...have for as long as they can remember." I shrugged, "They're kids, and it's part of their lives, so for them it's normal."

"Yeah," Olga agreed, "I remember when you found out that you were adopted, you were fine with it, it didn't bother you."

I realized then how much she doesn't know. Olga is one of my best friends, even though we might not talk for a year, or see each other for several years, I know that I can call her in the middle of the night if I needed to (my measure of friendship). Yet, she still knows me only as the person I was before reunion.

We've always been opposites. She is traditional and old-fashioned. While she knows I met my birthmother and father and their family, she doesn't understand the relationship or really why I want them in my life. With every question, I hear her tone of concern for my adoptive parents.

Watching the ocean, I wondered if I should explain more about what it was like for me, have her understand the complexity of adoption and reunion, but that would take longer than a weekend. I just let her comment drift out on the waves.

I thought about when I was in the fog, where adoption was okay and wasn't a big deal for me. When I didn't know what I'd lost. There was a comfort in that. But, given the choice, I'd rather walk in the sun and get a burn than to stumble in the fog.



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



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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Jersey Girls - Friends Forever

Today I'll be flying back to New Jersey with all my boys (husband, Dane, and two sons, Quinn and Reed). My husband's nephew is getting married in Pennsylvania, just a couple hours drive from my friends in Jersey.

It's strange going back. I suppose it is for anyone who has moved away from where they grew up. But, for adoptees in reunion, there is the knowing of where you came from that goes farther back from simply, "where you came from." There's what came before, that world that you weren't part of. Last time I went back I was struck for the first time with feeling, I wasn't supposed to be here, this isn't where I was supposed to grow up, this isn't my environment, my people. It's foreign. But, I just hadn't known it as a child. Even though I knew I was adopted, I hadn't gotten what that meant. It meant that I was taken out of my natural environment and put in one strange to me.

But, now, it's where I came from. I still consider the girlfriends that I grew up with to be my best friends, even if we don't talk more than once every couple years. They are who knew me from the beginning, who knew me for who I was before I had a chance to decide who that would be. Just me.

They were the ones who listened to me about being adopted growing up. I don't know how much I really said. I feel like I mostly didn't know what to feel about it, or was convinced I didn't care. But then
at 18 I decided to search, and my friends were there. They offered to go with me to Catholic Charities when I went to find out my "non-identifying information," though I insisted to go on my own. They are the ones I talked to when I came back, having found out she wanted to meet me, and about getting a cassette tape and pictures from my birthmother, but refusing to open it because I wanted to meet her in person first. They are who I marveled to about meeting all these people, my first families, who I had so many unexpected things in common with. About meeting people who "got me." They understood, they already "got me. "

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Kate never visited me in my home in New Jersey. She had promised to, back when I was living back at home for a year after we had met and been in a reunion for awhile. I don't know what she was thinking, I couldn't imagine her going through with it. Seeing the world I grew up in, the one she chose for me. How foreign would it be for her? How startling.

I can't imagine my kids being raised by someone else. It would enrage me. I am their only mother, only I know what they need, how they should be raised. It's not pride, it's instinct - pure, raw, guttural. Kate has come to that feeling of possessiveness too late. Too late to tell me what's best for me, to point me in the right direction. That's lost, for both of us, when it comes to me. I am my own person, no longer able to be parented, refusing to be claimed.

So as I go back to the world I came from I will be stitching together what was, now alongside what should have been, and doing so claim myself.



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



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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Many Sides of Mother's Day

It's been twenty-four Mother's Days that I've been in reunion with my birthmother, Kate, and I still haven't found a way to celebrate it.

My own boys are 8 and 6, so, as a mother, I am in my prime years for Mother's Day enjoyment. They look forward to Mother's Day. They make me gifts at school, and enjoy making them. They will bring me coffee in bed, and then we'll pick an activity that we all enjoy -  a hike or drawing pictures or playing basketball. The best part is that I get their appreciation for the things I do for them the rest of the year.

As the adopted daughter, it's easy for me to celebrate Mother's Day with my adoptive mom. I send flowers and call her and we both seem good with that. I get to appreciate all she's done for me.

As the relinquished daughter, I am stymied. I don't really want to rejoice being relinquished. I don't imagine Kate associates joy with being a desperate and isolated pregnant teenager who is giving away her daughter. Appreciation the years of care and nurture and sacrifice - well, that doesn't work either. And I've come too far to fall back into the old, tired and inaccurate mantra of the birthmother's noble sacrifice to give me a better life.

I love Kate, and am happy to have her in my life. I wish I could acknowledge her in some beautiful way, but I can't seem to find a way to do it. Over dinner last month, while discussing the difficulty of finding the right word for who she is to me (I find birthmother as a term to be weak and missing the whole picture, Kate down-right hates it), Kate insisted that she is my mother. "It's just as a matter of fact," she explained, "I am your mother." She was trying to get across that biologically, it's just fact. I gave a small shrug, unconvinced. While I could see her reasoning, it still didn't ring completely accurate.

Kate  has only been in my life during my adulthood. While she became a mother when I was born, I became the daughter of my adoptive mom by the time Mother's Day came a month after my birth. Although I existed for Kate, though I was out of her life, she didn't really exist for me. Certainly not in my child's mind. To me, she was more imaginary than literal. Saying that I had a birthmother was akin to saying there is a Santa.

While I know Kate is my mother, I can't acknowledge her as my mother because I wasn't mothered by her. Mother is both a noun and a the verb. If the verb isn't part of the relationship, does the noun still stand? In one way but not the other. It doesn't fit.

Yet, there is still pressure to acknowledge the day in some way. Mostly, all I've been able to manage is a phone call to say, "Happy Mother's Day," while trying to keep the question-mark out of my voice.


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



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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Thursday, May 8, 2014

The Men of Reunion


It seems that men often come as an afterthought in reunion conversations. One of the attendees at our talk at the American Adoption Congress asked if I have a relationship with my birthfather. I said that, yes, I do, and that we have a good relationship. But, I also explained that my relationship with him just isn't loaded like it is with my birthmother. I said I don't know why exactly, aside from the obvious part that relinquishment wasn't his decision (he didn't have a part in the decision). But even when it comes to the connection to the larger family, my connection with my birthfather feels less ... important isn't the right word ... less heavy, less significant, less immediate. That's it - less immediate. It feels one step removed.

I talked about this with my birthfather, John. when we spoke a couple weeks ago. He was saying that he finally got it and that it's because the father is NOT the mother. That the relationship with the mother is so fundamental, that it's just a different thing.

I get that, but it still doesn't quite satisfy my curiosity about the difference in relationship with not only my birthfather, but the men in reunion vs. women in reunion. In addition to my birthfather, I have a birth-step-father, Kate's husband, who I've known nearly as long as I've known Kate. There are my uncles, my grandfather (Kate's father is still living). Kate's husband's father just died this past week, and he was more a part of my life than Kate's own father. I feel that loss so much right now and it makes me want to have a stronger connection to the men in my life.

Maybe it's just that men are different than women. Maybe that's as simple as it is. Because they're different the relationship isn't as complicated, isn't as intense, isn't as loaded. And maybe that's okay. It doesn't mean they're not important, it's just that it's easier. And with adoption, I'm totally okay with anything being easier.

After all, my boys will soon be men, and my reunion is theirs as well. They are a part of all of these families in a way that will come much more naturally to them than it has for me. I don't think they'll question their connections with the families in the way that I have. It will be easier.



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



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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!