Writing Priorities

I had a bit of an "oh, shit, what have I done?" day. I kinda quit a job. Not my real, full-time job, that is mostly accounting (bleh) and management (which I like), but my "extra" job that is a lot of event planning (bleh) and marketing/program development (which I like).

My boss had wanted my help on another project he worked on (the College's Innovation Program) and it would give me more money, so i took it. I liked it better than my regular job because it was more interesting, but I discovered I really don't like event management and that was a big part of it. But I liked the organization of building up a new program and putting processes in place.

But then there was one weekend of work that happened only weeks after I accepted the position. It was hell - all the work and none of the glory of pulling off a successful event for the first time (I am hoping my boss doesn't read my blogs. I don't think he has the time or inclination. If I'm wrong - hey, you're a great boss. It's not really anything I haven't said to you before. It's not you - it's me. Or, it's the system. Anyway, don't fire me).

After all, I am only "staff" and not "faculty," and somehow staff aren't seen as real contributors in the university. They are "the help," or "support staff." They just do the work. Well, let me say for the record having been on both sides - it's a hell of a lot easier to come up with an interesting idea than taking an idea and doing what it takes to make it real. Hell, I could write a whole blog on the antiquated hierarchical bullshit that is the university system. Coming from the corporate / design world where results were everything and degree and background were mostly irrelevant, I find it fascinating to go into a system where degrees are everything and results are irrelevant.

There was a meeting on Monday and my boss listed all the things that they want to do with the program, INCLUDING another hell weekend. I still think he has no idea how much work was involved with pulling that off, since his role was just imagining what it should look like and telling me so that I can make it happen (not that there's anything wrong with that, oh very nice boss). 

I instantly felt sick. I couldn't do it again. I need the money, but I couldn't do it anymore. I have been doing the program on top of my regular job for just three months and it's been hell. I've been working my ass off and only doing a half-ass job at both positions. I had known it would mean more work, but it was more challenging work (which I desperately crave, since my regular job is below my skill-level), and I needed the money so I sucked it up and figured it would work itself out. After that meeting, I realized it's not going to work itself out.

I told my boss I couldn't do the program anymore. I couldn't pull off both jobs. And even though I would rather do the work with the Innovation Program, I needed to focus on my "real" job, even if I don't particularly like it all that much.

He understood. He said he was happy that I recognized it, that it showed integrity that I could see that and it wasn't someone coming to him saying I wasn't getting things done. I felt bad about it, because he had gone out of his way to get this position for me, but he didn't seem bothered by it. He was rather matter-of-fact, which disappointed me really - I kinda thought he would be lost without me, but that's what everyone hopes and thinks about their work and at the end of the day, you just move on.

But when my boss brought up that part of the incentive of the additional job was because I needed it financially, I burst into tears. Big tears. I HATE crying at work. But, I knew that by quitting the extra work we'd be in dire financial straights. Even though I knew we'd be screwed financially, I had to quit. I told him I didn't know what we're going to do.

The point of this (and the relevance to writing about it here), is that I discovered something important in all this. I didn't quit my writing time. That wasn't something that came into the equation for me. Looking at it practically, I could have given up my Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings to work rather than write. That would have been a practical solution. I had an opportunity to make more money, provide more for my family. But it wouldn't work for me. Right now it's a higher priority to write than to work and make more money. Without intentionally looking at it as a matter of priorities, I was pleased that I did that for myself - I made writing a priority (and then I realized I specifically set out to make that a priority, which I hadn't really meant it to turn into quitting a project. I meant it to help in prioritizing projects, but this took it to an unexpected level. I go into it more in my other "Carless and Carefree" blog).

Sure, I worry that some people may look on this as me being selfish.  But, any art (writing, painting, music - whatever) is inherently selfish. It's not about making money or contributing. It's not about anything other than what's compelling you, within yourself, to create. It's doing it, because without doing it, life is just the flat exterior of "making a living." I've discovered that what is meaningful to me in life isn't at all practical. What's different is that I'm actually starting to make the impractical the priority.

I hope I'm choosing the right priorities. I think they're right - when I'm compelled to do something so strongly, and specifically against my "better judgement," I do find it usually is the right choice in the end. But, it's just the harder choice. Now, I just have to wait and see. It's a "leap and the net will appear" kind of thing. I leapt, now I'm looking around for the net. Um, net...you there? Net?

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

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Far Away From Here

Somehow, I got to live in the same city with Kate for about fifteen years. Even though I was an adult by the time I moved out to Portland, I was a "young" adult.

I got used to having her close by, though I don't think I ever took it for granted. We never really got to the point that things were so comfortable between us that we could just pop by unannounced, except once in a blue moon. Now, it seems a shame we hadn't.

Kate and Steve had sold their business, decided to go on their own as artists / musicians. Portland was expensive and constraining. They had to figure out their next steps. My sister, Abby, lived in Olympia, a couple hours north of Portland, and could use the help of having the grandparents around with her young daughter. Olympia was between Portland and Seattle so was a great in-between spot for them.

After almost ten years of living just about a mile from each other, we were now going to be a hundred times that distance apart.

It shouldn't matter. The time together and the shared experiences should cushion that gap. But, somehow the delicate nature of our relationship makes these shifts surprisingly scary. Why it's surprising is because in the most core ways, our relationship doesn't feel delicate at all. I know I'll know Kate in my life, for the rest of my life. I know she won't go away.

But, the part that's scary, is that some part of me doesn't know that in some primal way. She wasn't a part of my life, and she could just not be part of it again. And, if she fades away, what about that part of me that became solidified by knowing her?

When I first moved out here almost (crap!) twenty years ago, Kate was younger than I am now and lived more unconstrained than I do now - single, twice divorced, living in a tiny apartment, without children to raise (Abby was already a teenager), working a job she didn't much care about and playing music that she did care about. I didn't think of her as an "adult," just more as an older kind of "me."

But not long after that, she fell in love, bought a house, had her husband's kids to help raise, helped run the business, and became more of what I think of as settled and, I guess, "adult." And despite my own aversion to having that for myself (or so I thought), it was a grounding thing for me. A home to visit, a fireplace, dinner, holidays, even a bed to spend the night if I needed to.

After almost a decade in Portland, I had to move back home to New Jersey to be with my family. But, somehow without my quite noticing, Portland had become a home to me. And Kate had become that center point, the staking for my tent. The luxury I imagined at staying in fancy hotels in Portland paid for by my job left me feeling cold and alone and instead I would stay with Kate at her home in her guestroom.

After just over a year back in Jersey, I returned to Portland. I was in love, bought a home, had a job, got married, had kids. So, another almost ten years and Kate and I have come full-circle in a way. Kate went from independence to domesticity and back to an (adjusted) independence where she's traveling around and trying to find her grounding. I've gone from being just out of school, traveling, trying to find my grounding to being the home where Kate comes to spend the night when she's visiting Portland and fantasizing about having the freedom I did back then.

I guess we're still trying to find our way with each other as we find our ways in the world for ourselves. Still vulnerable, still afraid, even after all these years. But, hey, we're here, and even the distance doesn't get in the way of that.

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

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Extraordinary Ordinariness

I haven't seen Kate for months. I'm not sure how many. It was before the holidays, before her birthday in October.

Now we sit writing together, separately, in the Starbucks around the corner from my house on a surprisingly sunny Sunday afternoon. It seems silly to spend our time together this way maybe, but it's become our thing. 

It has started three summers ago, when I got laid off from my job and had the summer of severance to do what I wanted. Kate had recently sold the music shop, so we both had time. So we would get together to write on our co-memoir - together, but separately. Not reading each other's writing or even talking about it, but just having the practice of getting together writing together, face to face but with the laptops back to back. Like gym buddies, but for writing, and writing on the same project.

I think the most amazing thing about our relationship, the thing I find most interesting, is how extraordinarily ordinary it's become. We have our routines, our shared history. An ability to fall into things as if they were normal.

But, of course, it's not normal because even as I try to write to express it, I can't. Like a...normal mother and daughter? No, that's not quite right. Like old friends? No, that doesn' fit it either. As I've written about before in another post, there's not really a name for it, so just the fact that it can feel ordinthink given the choice ,she would rathI ary when there's not a word for it, is quite extraordinary.

Maybe part of it's me. I have a thing for "unusual" relationships that feel quite right to me - like one of my best friends being my ex-boyfriend that's accepted into our life with my husband and kids like a part of the family. It's just sorting out what feels right.

Part of me wonders if we've been working on the book so long that we've forgotten to how to just be together in who we are - "birthmother and daughter" for whatever it is - without it being about the book - where we are in the writing, next steps, it is a shard project, and our project togther. 

Although we've been a part of each other's lives so long, it's not without discomforts and feeling of awkwardness.

Kate and Steve stayed at our house last night after they had a gig they've done for years, Winterfolk. I was in bed by 11pm, and they didn't roll in until 2am following the show's after-party, which amuses me - being that they are the grandparents. But Kate's always been the more wild one of the two of us, I think. Though, "wild" and "folksinger" don't really go together in my mind either : )

However, I remember as a recent college-graduate feeling hard-pressed to keep up with her when it came to parties and socializing and being out at the bars and shows and such. Most nights I would rather be in, cozied up on the couch with a book than out at a loud, crowded show. Ironically, given the choice, I think she would choose that too. But being a musician, a performer, she doesn't have much choice.

This morning, they were up early and playing with the boys. I rolled out of bed and said the perfunctory morning greetings on my way to the coffeepot. We go out to breakfast, and I know they will insist on picking up the tab. I know that Steve will take the boys for a walk so that Kate and I can have some chatting time alone together.

And, really, it's no more awkward than when anyone else stays at our house. Even when my parents stay for their long stretches over winter or summer, their presence has it's own discomforts and awkwardness - wondering how they're judging me as a parent, thinking they are worried about me or that I'm not doing a good enough job.

So, I think that's part of it - my relationship with Kate feels ordinary. Not perfect, not without flaws, but not dramatically awful either. And that it can be just ordinary is extraordinary.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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