Scars

I have been marveling at the way I am healing, but also feeling more than a little frustration. Here is what my wrist looks like at six weeks out.

It's definitely still swollen. I cannot flex it worth a damn. I am fighting against the metal plate that's in there, but I am giving it all I have. The scar doesn't look bad. It just needs time. Both my primary care doctor and a friend who's a psychiatrist said to me, "Wow, it looks like you tried to kill yourself." All I could say was,"Not this time."

It's too neat a job for that, anyway. I think my surgeon would be offended to think his work was compared to a slice and dice. I don't think I'll tell him what they said. I don't want to hurt his feelings

So I got to thinking about scars and wounds and healing. And how you get over things, and how it takes time. How scars mean that you've been through something and emerged on the other side. They're a visual marker of past trauma on the body.

My friend just returned from Cambodia, and my scar made me think of him and his writing project on trauma, the legacy of the Vietnam War, and visual culture in Southeast Asia and its diaspora. We had a great heart-to-heart yesterday, and he told me about some amazing moments he had at a conference in which people were horrifically out of line. He now has the status and power to put them in their place. When a white woman declared that she IS the authority on Khmer masculinity, although she isn't fluent in Khmer, and hasn't done a lot of fieldwork, my friend stood up and said, "White woman, go home!" I hope she was well shamed. White people need to understand that political and cultural colonialism is over. Check your ego at the door, and think about your power. Yes, you have it. My friend and I had some very interesting talks about power and agendas and narratives, and he sympathized with what's been going on in adoptoland and the narrative controlling. Race is always, always, always the elephant in the room.

Then he and I were reminiscing about our younger years, and he said, "Remember when I said that I was eccentric? I was lying. I was crazy. You and I are both crazy. And you know why we're crazy? It's not our fault. It's THEM. The rest of the world makes us this way. With all their incessant bullshit and ignorance. Don't worry, darling. You're fine." It's true. All of his friends are batshit crazy. Never a dull moment. I am honored to be in such exalted company.

Back to painful tendon stretching and True Blood. And craziness. And maybe some Dumas, for some ideas on retribution. Just kidding. Sort of.

Disenchantment

I am excited about the upcoming Adoptee Rights protest in San Antonio, even though I am not going. I am sad that I will miss the excitement of being "normal" among my friends; not having to explain anything as we sit and talk over coffee and drinks and meals. As we cry and tell our stories and nod and know that we are not alone. My experience in Louisville last summer, especially as it was tied to my visit to my family's graves in Indiana, was both exquisitely painful and cathartic. I remember sitting in a bar and nursing drinks while tears ran silently down my face, wondering "Why, why, why?" I still don't know why. I will never know why, but I have slowly come to peace with some of the worst parts of it, and of course, I am on speaking terms with my mother and brother, which takes some of the sting out of it. At least I am a PERSON, not a ghost.

There is still so much to be done in terms of advocacy and activism. So many states, so little openness.

And then a few nights ago I nearly lost my mind when I read the results of the legislative session in Missouri that pretty much change nothing and get me no closer to my OBC. The people on the ground there encourage us to take the long view. It takes time to chip away at convention, they say. But it appears they are not vehement opponents of the CI system, as I believe they should be. NO ONE needs a third-party to conduct private business between adults. Moreover, adoptees are being used to fundraise pay for the changes. We have to fork out extraordinary amounts of money, $500 and up, to get our identifying information, provided that our "biological" families approve, or that we can prove that they are deceased. Oh, and if my brother had found out about me, and wanted to get identifying information about me, he couldn't under the law. It's only the parents and adoptees than can. It's so Byzantine and patriarchal and disgusting.

As far as the OBCs go, I would still need to petition the court with good reason, and have the permission of my mother. I don't think I'd need my father's permission, as he is not named on my OBC. It pisses me off that I need ANYONE's permission to get an official document as an adult. My children won't need my permission when they are adults. Sigh. As Joy said, if I had just been born a bastard, I could have my OBC. It was the ACT of my legitimization that made me a second-class citizen. I had more rights as a bastard than I do now.

The only good thing to come out of this law, as far as I can tell, is that adoptees don't have to get the notarized permission of their APs for non-identifying information or identifying information anymore.

So on the one hand, I feel like a total bitch, because what did I do? I didn't draft the law. I didn't do anything in terms of grassroots work except write to legislators back in the spring and complain about the law because I found it grossly unfair and Byzantine and patronizing.

Are "baby steps" towards good legislation better than nothing? Or have we now enshrined more bad precedents? I am curious to hear what you all think, if you have opinions.

Here is a link to the Missouri Adoptee Rights Movement Web site.

Please don't take my bitter words for anything, and if you can find a silver lining in all this muck, I would be all too happy to hear about it. I know it will supposedly be "better" for adoptees born after 2010, but seriously? How much better, and why give us older adoptees such a big middle finger?

My APs and I are a good match, and that had to happen in St. Louis. Other than that, I am horrified that I was born in Missouri. The conservative values enshrined in adoption laws there are so opposed to my own ideas of equality.

Humor

As I was driving back from Santa Cruz yesterday, I listened to Kirsty MacColl and fell in love with her all over, as I do when I haven't listened to her for a little while. Her voice is seductive, but above all, her lyrics are arch and make me laugh. I mourn her untimely death and the loss of a lifetime of songs like "Innocence."

I got home and watched her video for this again, and just had to post it. So '80's, so funny. So dedicated to trolls, horrible ex-boyfriends, rock collections, dumbass art historians, and all people lacking brains who think they have brains.

True Blue

Sometimes I fight seeing things. I get tunnel vision and get caught in my battles. It's capricious, to be certain, but I forget that I am surrounded by people who love me, who have loved me for years. People who do have histories with me, who want to be my family, who choose to be my family, even though they don't share my blood.

I have mentioned before that I have a very, very dear friend with whom I suffered graduate school. We met in 1993 and bonded as we found ourselves slung to the edges of our department. We had no money, no support, no anything really, except each other. He is worldly and brilliant. He saw things in me that I didn't. He picked me up when I hated myself and kept shaking off the dust that the scornful people kept heaping on me. He saw me through lots of horrible boyfriends. He improved my fashion sense a thousand fold. We went on adventures together in India and England. I nursed him through many illnesses before I was a nurse. We were inseparable, and in the department we were called "the twins."

He was my maid of honor at my wedding. He looked better in his silk suit that I did in my wedding dress, and that's the honest truth.

While "writing" our dissertations, we would skive off and see movies, go shopping, eat--do anything except what we were supposed to. I watched him climb the academic ladder, and he commiserated with me as I didn't move ahead. And he astutely told me why I didn't move ahead: it was because I didn't want to. I could have committed to it and pushed ahead and made my contacts and fought the good fight against my evil adviser. I just never liked the nasty circus that it was. I hated the bullshit and the teaching of eejits. He was right.

And in the fall of 2003, he moved away to take up his first big teaching post. I was pregnant with my first son, and I knew I would miss him like mad. How was I going to do this parenting thing without him? He had predicted way in advance--before the wedding, even--that my marriage was going to be rough, and he is nothing if not perceptive.

Time went by, we spoke on the phone frequently, but life gets in the way, and I missed him like hell. How could all those the years have gone by?

I know that he loves me, but somehow as an adoptee, I feel that when I am absent from someone's life, or when I don't talk to them, I disappear from their minds. Not that they disappear from mine--this is a one-way equation. It has to do with my perception of that initial loss of my mother, I think.

Anyway, my friend is now a powerful, successful, wonderful, sought-after professor at Santa Cruz. Brilliant and fantastic, and I knew he always would be. He is writing a book and has been away in Cambodia doing research. I was at his apartment, watering his plants and chilling out, as he offered it as a place for respite and repose. And walking around his place, I cried. I could see how much our lives have been entwined, and how much I matter to him. There's the Iznik tile I brought back from Istanbul for him; the Arts and Crafts tile I brought back from London. The matching scarves we bought years ago; the gorgeous photograph of him at my wedding! The postcards. The photos of my children next to those of his family. The incense burned in front of his Buddha that I know was burned to ask for my recovery after my surgery. I matter. I am not absent, I am not problematic, I am loved. Here is a person who knows me inside out, and who has loved me for going on 20 years.

I truly feel that sometimes I am living a ghost life, that I am touching no one. Moments such as those I had at my friend's, when I see proof of a bond, mean more to me than I can say.

My friend suffered greatly during the genocide, as I mentioned before, and he says that he chooses now to make his family out of his friends. He is loyal beyond loyal. He will never leave me, and if I need him, I know he will not fail me. He is fiercely protective. He hasn't liked to watch what I've been going through. To be honest, most of my friends haven't.

I think that if I had been born and raised knowing who I was, it would be easier to walk away from painful situations. It's the not knowing, and the hunger to know people like me, and then the loving of people who are like me that is so hard to turn away from.

What I can say, then, is that I am grateful--and not in an annoying, rainbow-farting way--to have my true-blue friends in my corner. Even when they shake their heads and roll their eyes and say, "I cannot for the life of me figure out why you do this," I know they love me and will stick with me and let me go back into the darkness that is my attempt to figure out who I am and how I fit into the world.

Thanks to all of my friends who are reading this, especially those who are not adoptees, who support me (or other adoptees) and allow me to pull away and test you. Thank you for not abandoning me; thank you for listening to my litanies of frustration; thank you for showing me in ways, large and small, that I matter to you.

I know I pull away. I know I am not always the easiest to get along with. But I am also loyal as hell, and I appreciate how loyal and loving you are, too. Sorry if I forget sometimes.

Awareness

I don't post as often about my afamily as I do about my nfamily, but that's because my relationship with my afamily is stable, good, run-of-the mill. Not too much drama, not that much excitement. My parents are great, and always have been. The spin of fortune's wheel was gentle to me on that count.

I am not saying that they're perfect, or that I was perfect. I know I was a pain in the ass and that there were bad times along with the good. But overall, we were an excellent fit. I have many adoptee friends who fit much less well with their afamilies in terms of interests, goals, personalities, and looks, and were ridiculed, marginalized, and treated badly--or worse. Some were abused, ostracized, or raped. Adoption is sold as a "win-win" situation, but it certainly isn't when the adopted child isn't welcomed, loved, and put first, just as any child should be in any family.

My extended afamily is equally warm and kind. I am not fabulously close with many of my relatives, but I love and appreciate my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was never treated differently than any of the cousins who belong by blood; I am also not the only adoptee on either side. That said, adoption was not a subject that was ever really broached. There were times when it came up, but I never actually sat down with my other adopted cousins and asked them how they felt about it. Some of them are much older than I am; all of them lived very far away from me. My extended family is scattered across the Midwest and West, although usually we would gather in groups at least once a summer.

One particular segment of my dad's family settled in California long ago, and I have been getting to know them better over the past 20 or so years, since I moved out here. I really, really like them. When I was at my parents' last week, my cousin and his wife had us over for dinner, and I met up with my cousin's son and his wife, who are fantastic people. They played with my son, we had really interesting conversations about life and family, and when the topic turned to genealogy and family trees, I sat back, enjoyed the night sky, and took some deep breaths. Once again, it's my family, but it's not my family tree.

Then the unexpected happened. For the FIRST time EVER in a family situation, someone turned and asked me, quietly, how it was for me to sit and listen to topics like this. I almost cried with relief. After so many years of living this life, what I can do? It just is my life to be talked over. To have someone ask me how I felt in that situation? Surreal. And welcome.

It is amazing to have someone in my family now who is aware that adoption is not "as if born to." It can't be. It hurts me when people pretend that I am not different, although I also don't want to be told that I don't belong. While I love my family dearly, there are things about me that they just can't know about; things they can't tell me; things that will forever be a mystery. That sucks. Ambivalence sucks. Adoption is a complex, constantly changing, organic experience.

The more people we have to support us, listen to us, love us, share with us, and be aware of how things might affect us? The better.

Dreams, feelings, and memories

I saw my orthopedic surgeon yesterday for another post-surgical checkup. I am almost five weeks after surgery now, and he says I am doing great. I love this doc. He has amazing bedside manner; he is both smart and gentle, and he takes time to check in about my broken bone and the bigger picture (clotting, going back to work, etc.). I would crush on my doctor a little if it didn't feel weird.

He must be about my brother's age, and even looks a little like him. Same build, blond, blue eyes, charming. I can imagine that A, if he were in a specialty that dealt with patients face-to-face, would be as kind, warm, and solicitous.

Anyway, back to topic. I remember reading something in my non-identifying information back in 1997 that threw me for a loop.

As long as I've remembered, I have had this attraction to boys/men who are really tall (over 6'1 preferably), with dark hair and green eyes (although blue is also acceptable ;-). I always attributed this to a boy I knew from childhood and loved for most of my life. (I actually dreamed about him last night--we were saving the world together in an exciting, fantastic action sequence. The dream must have been inspired by seeing the new Harry Potter film last week.) He was the first in a pretty long series of men I sought out in real life who fit this "look." [Note to self: You might have had better luck if you went with men with good hearts rather than those who looked good. Luckily, Mark is both.]

It's a type: Clive Owen/Matthew Macfadyen/John Cusack, you get the picture. Oh yes, and Irish/English. And now Michael Fassbender isn't all that bad, either.

Mark finds me endearingly ridiculous, but on my desk I have an autographed photograph of Matthew Macfadyen that Nalini procured for me one birthday. She is the best. Try not to laugh at me. ;-)

It was just my thing.

So when I wrote off in 1997 for my non-identifying information and got my twelve pages of summary, imagine my surprise when I read that my grandfather was "about 6'2, black hair, green eyes." Argh. Had I subconsciously been looking for a man that matched some genetic imprint I had in my head? Was I a weirdo? And then when I found out that my grandfather indeed came from English/Irish/Scottish stock, what did that mean?

I remember seeing the first picture of my grandfather, taken when he was about 33. I was knocked for six, because he looked so much like a male version of me, except that I am very glad that I didn't get his nose and ears.

Maybe if I'd grown up around my grandfather, uncle, etc., I would still have chased after all the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed Irish boys in town. Maybe not. Was my "type" connected to my pull to try to find my way back to the family I was born into? Was it based on some unconscious memory of my tribe? Or are tall, dark Irish guys just what I like? Because growing up around Scandinavians sure didn't make me want Alexander Skarsgard. You can have him. And yes, this is a rhetorical question.

Which brings me circuitously to Verrier. I was visiting my parents this past week and picked up my copy of The Primal Wound to reread after two years. While I concede that the lack of footnotes and scant primary research on Verrier's part are definitely, definitely problematic, I don't see her hypotheses (based on what we truly *do* know about obstetrics) as being the catastrophic adoptee-prisons that the naysayers do. Then again, they haven't even read the book!

This is what the naysayers often argue, as Verrier knew they would:

"Adoption as Concept

The other trend in trying to understand and eliminate the problems connected with adoption is to view them as conceptual. According to this school of thought, the problems stem from the child being told about adoption, the idea of having two mothers, the reason for having been relinquished, and the feeling this brings up for him. In other words, it is the intellectual knowledge that he is adopted which confuses and disturbs the child. One gets the feeling that adoption is only a theory, and that if we don't say too much about it, it won't have too much effect."

Her counterargument to this makes me cry, because it is the same one that Joy, and Lulubelle, and Von, and Linda, and theadoptedones, and Amanda, and many others reiterate ad nauseam:

"All of this rhetoric ignores one simple but critical fact: The adoptee was there. The child actually experienced being left alone by the biological mother and being handed over to strangers. That he may have been only a few days or a few minutes old makes no difference. He shared a 40-week experience with a person with whom he probably bonded in utero, a person to whom he is biologically, genetically, historically, and perhaps even more importantly, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually connected, and some people would like to believe that it is the telling of the experience that makes him feel so bad!"

If you don't like Verrier, fine. If you don't feel affected by adoption, fine. More power to you. But HOW DARE YOU sit there and tell those of us who are LIVING this that this is a fucking intellectual theory. It is PART of us. It is not something we made up, it is not a planted memory. It cannot be carved out of our souls like a corrupt thought. It is not a bad joke.

I am strong enough to believe in my own memories, my own soul, my own strength. I know what I feel, and I know who I am. It may be a "fun" argument for you, but it's my life. Thank goodness for my wonderful community of fellow adoptees, friends, and family.

Needs, Rights, and My OBC

I have been following some interesting debate over on FMF about whether people have a universal "need" to know who they are. My sense is that all people will eventually ask about the birds and the bees, but many won't care about their family trees, or whose blood runs in their veins. I care deeply. My aparents love genealogy. I was dragged to many cemeteries in my youth. Doing rubbings of headstones was an interesting diversion, even when it wasn't my ancestors.

Anyway, back at FMF I found myself agreeing with someone who said that people should have "a universal right to find out family history if one wants to." Seems reasonable to me. It's a "right" then, not a "need."

A "right" is something that is agreed upon by society a large, or the majority, or elected officials in a democracy representing that majority. A "need" is a personal want that might become a "right" but is not necessarily a "right," unless it is so agreed upon by the aforementioned majority.

I noticed in the discussions at FMF that "equality" was of course important, and certainly I would like to be considered equal under the law and don't feel so as I do not have access to my original birth certificate (OBC), as non-adopted individuals do. In some states in this fine country, some adoptees can access their OBCs if they are of a certain age, or if they are born between certain dates, etc. Adoption is a matter of states' rights, not federal jurisdiction, so there is great difference between states in how things are handled. Not that I think we'd have a great chance of getting our OBCs released to us if we could be heard in front of the current Supreme Court, but then again, I am a Poor Innocent Dismissed Diseased cynic with little faith in the conservative patriarchal system in place. I wouldn't bet much on the chances of trying to persuade Justices Alito or Scalia, who would have the Catholic Church and the adoption industry lobbyists yipping in their ears to preserve the "rights" of the poor closeted mothers being tormented by us uncouth adoptees with our separate-but-equal amended birth certificates. We'd be told that our place at the back of the bus is quite good enough, what is to be gained by all of this nonsense? Go home, children!

Separate is NOT equal. Did we not learn that? We CANNOT separate the emotional content from the rational part of of the argument, however much we dream we can, because we are human. The people men making decisions about this, about us, are human, too. They are prejudiced by THEIR emotions, however much they claim they are not. It's a farce. Humans do best by ourselves by being honest about our motivations and prejudices. And these people, by and large, are APs, or PAPs, or have friends who are APs or PAPs. Where does the power lie? With the APs and the industry. Not with us, and usually not with our natural families.

Sigh.

I have been thinking a great deal also about what Daniel Ibn Zayd has said about the impossibility of true discourse in adoption related to inequality of power. When adoptees are told to "play nice," and treat first parents or APs or PAPs respectfully so that we can all "get along," we are immediately hamstrung. There is no free give and take. When we make comments and are immediately labeled as "angry" or "angsty" or "poor innocent dismissed" or some other tasteless, demeaning pet name du jour, it's hardly the sign of well meaning, let's-get-on-with-it, reform-minded camaraderie. Because it's not about working together. It's a fucking war zone with Bigfoot and alien sightings and grenade launchings and petty dictatorships at every corner.

People cannot see past their noses; they rarely look at the big picture; they revel in offending others for sport; PAPs and APs speak of natural families and adoptees as if they're paper towels. Some natural mothers are downright rude to adoptees. It's disgusting. Why be polite? These people aren't polite. They're aggressive, self-centered people of the worst sort.

On the one hand, it reminds me of that great quote of Gandhi's, who when asked what he thought about Western civilization, replied, "I think it would be a good idea." On the other hand, it drives me to read Frantz Fanon and feel less like Gandhi. I am sick of being treated like an object, spoken for, infantilized; I am sick of watching children being taken from countries abroad and stripped of their cultures and worse. I don't want to be told to be grateful anymore. Why do people think they know what I feel? Why do they think it's their prerogative to *say* what they think I should feel?

Oh yes, the power thing.

And the cycle starts over, because there is no constellation or mosaic or triad or whatever silly thing it is called on Tuesdays. We're not even in it. Because it's not about us, the commodity.

And because we're nonentities, forever children, if we even can be considered children, we cannot have our OBCs. Our mother's rights come first, because she must be protected at all cost, even to that poor last woman in the closet.

Except that we *are* people, and we should have our OBCs, and my favorite people are organizing a protest to convince state legislators that we are people with both needs *and* rights. Please support the Adoptee Rights Coalition (donate!) and contact your state representatives. If you know and love an adoptee, please, please do this! We deserve our OBCs! Just like the real people we are.

Love to you all.  

Arrogant Bastard

No, I am not talking about myself. It's a really good ale. You should try it sometime, if you like beer at all. I think it's fabulous and have had it numerous times at local bars in my neck of the woods, and of course its name makes for great jokes in adoptoland. As it turns out, A took me to lunch at the brewery where Arrogant Bastard is made! You have to love his great taste.

Not to mention that I left the brewery with some marvelous swag, including a hoodie for the brewery's IPA (India Pale Ale) called Ruination (ah, another loaded name for us bastards) that reads appropriately across the front: "I'm very bitter and I like it." A found this one and brought it to me, knowing I'd love it. He is the best little brother EVAH.

So the visit was amazing. I feel a thousand times better, although I broke down several times being in super-danger-trigger zone. I don't think I ever quite convinced him that it wasn't that I was crying about him, it was the always right-under-the-skin losses that seeped through. Men are sweet in wanting to fix things, but adoption isn't a fixable item. I feel secure that he and I can move ahead, which is a HUGE step for me, and he was able to ask me, in return, for certain things that are reasonable to make his life easier. It felt great to have a real conversation about what the heck we're doing, what we both want, and know that we're in this for each other. I am relieved to be off high-alert adoptee mode because it's a fucking living nightmare, and when you love someone, you waste time being a freak when you're hypervigilant around them.

It's a learning process. Baby steps.

And then I learned that my nfamily has read my blog. I am aware it raised some eyebrows. I know that A learned some things from it that he respected and has used to change the way we interact, in a positive way. He wanted to explain about some of the times I felt abandoned, and why he wasn't able to be there for me. He was incredibly supportive about how I felt, and for that I am extremely happy, especially where it comes to coping with my depression. He wants to be one of the people I ask for help when I get into my dark place, which is both unexpected and scary for me. Wonderful because I think he could be of great help, frightening in that when I am depressed, I am at my most vulnerable.

We have agreed also, in the spirit of moving ahead with our relationship, that I will keep our conversations private. I understand that no one wants their dirty laundry aired on the Interwebs, and he fears being savaged by an angry bastard. Fair enough. We are a very scary bunch, we zombies adoptees.

Then as icing on the cake, I had a great talk with C today and discussed my anxiety/abandonment issues with her. I feel like my emotional system is near to a positive reset. I had been so scared to tell her how I was feeling, but all went absolutely well. We talked about the primal wound and my loss and anxiety and extended time in the NICU and guess what? She didn't tell me that my pain is "probably" is due to some other variable, like my amom being depressed, or the color of the nurses' uniforms, or the type of lightbulbs used! In my nonscientific nonstudy, that makes TWO of my mothers who believe in the PW. I  like it.

She and I talked about how we both have our dark, lonely prisons in which we suffer our losses and sadnesses, albeit different ones. She was encouraging and told me that she's sorry that I read her silence as abandonment; she cares for me. Wow. It meant the world to talk to her about my anxiety and have her accept me anyway. She called what happened to us "our story," which was very cool. It is ours.

Her advice to me for now was to try to "just be" for a while. To take walks and read books while my arm is healing. I am not very good at living in the moment, but for her, I will do it.

Actions

I know I do poorly when I sit back and wait. I fare better when I am able to take control and do something. This is true both of my physical and emotional well being.

I was thrilled (and scared) to have to start physical therapy this week. I was mortified to see just how far I will have to go to get back full range of motion and fine motor control of my left hand. I have lots of work and pain ahead. The therapist advised me to dive right in before my tendons get stiff and I lose the ability to bend my thumb altogether. Not a pleasant thought. So I have been tenacious: heating the arm, sweating, crying, and repeating the five pages of homework set by the therapist over and over. I will get there, if not in four weeks, then in six or eight weeks. I have faith in myself. This is something absolutely in my control. It's my body, my comfort, my pain, my time.

I also decided that if I want to do something about connecting with my nfamily, I can do so, advisedly, of course. I texted with my brother a couple of nights this week, and we decided we'd get together this coming weekend. I am flying down to San Diego to hang out with him on Sunday. Yes, it's a bit decadent to go only for the day, but this relationship is never going to go anywhere if we don't get some face time. We'll see what happens. The lonely little girl in me is beside herself with joy, as A is one of the people she loves terribly much. It is odd to me how much this is the case; I never would have predicted it before we'd met in person.

Then today I called C on a whim. She didn't pick up, and of course I didn't leave a message. I went to PT, and I was surprised to see that she'd left a message when I checked my phone after my session. She said, "Hi. This is C. I saw that you called. I will be out the rest of the day until late, so don't call back today. Hope you're feeling better." Nice, but not exactly what you'd expect after almost three months of silence. What do I do with that? I'd like to tell her that my feelings are hurt, but I am afraid to put any pressure on her. Why couldn't she call me back in May, or just call if she knew about my broken arm? Conversely, I cannot write off the weird exhilaration I get from hearing her voice: this is my MOTHER. A year ago I would never have thought she'd EVER leave a message for me. She fights so hard to make me into a nobody in her life, probably because there is some deep feeling there. Damage. Adoption has hurt our family profoundly.

There is always a price to be paid; now I am trying to do the best I can with the choices left open to me.

It is at least good to remember that I am best as a woman of action.

And what is it with people telling other people not to fuck with them after they've already fucked with others? It's a lot like closing the barn door after after the horses have already left. I am so bored by this apparent lack of ability to think outside the box or be able to see how self-righteous declarations about how adoption *is* can affect others. I love Joy's blog post today, tangentially on this topic, and our great conversations about the occasional interest of taking a look at rock collections.

On Paper, or Themes and Variations

I saw my surgeon yesterday and am apparently healing quite well, at least physically. The x-ray showed an intriguing fork-like contraption screwed with tiny worm-like pins to the distal part of the radius and then with larger screws to the proximal end of the radius for leverage. I expected to get a cast, but he instead put me in a removable splint and gave me free rein to begin to rehabilitate my poor left hand. He told me to resume typing with two hands, which I am doing right now, sans splint per instructions.

I can tell I will tire quickly, but it is lovely to be able to type as rapidly as I think, or nearly so. The wound is not as gory as I had expected at all; it's held together by four steri-strips and it looks like he did a very neat suturing job. Good man. He was so solicitous about the clotting and pain management. I am relieved that I am able to find some of the decent doctors out there!

Over the past few days I have been feeling the waves of depression wash over me and hearing the siren call of the damned again (on this subject, I recommend the unsettling film Submarine). It's strange how several months ago I couldn't imagine how I was ever in this place, or how it felt, and now I am here again. The fragility of my position has its ebbs and flows, I suppose, and right now I feel myself imprisoned by solitude.

I have many great and wonderful people who love me, and I love them back. It's just that they can't help me get over pain, and sometimes I am not sure that I can do it. There have been times and places when I've been with people in which it seemed like the cage could crack, but something always happened and I was left again. Sometimes I might be able to blame myself for driving people away, but other times I know it wasn't my fault. I will obsess over those times and watch the light recede through the cracks again.

I have moved on from Bach to Tchaikovsky and Swan Lake, which made me think of Black Swan, which made me think of Vincent Cassel, which made me think of La Haine, which made me think of one of my exes. I remember watching La Haine with him in our living room, resting my head in his lap while he stroked my hair. We had this funny code for when I was despondent; I would tell him that I was feeling fragile, and he would gather me up and make me feel loved and taken care of (including the tiny little girl in me) in such an amazing way. Then again, he also knew, better than anyone else, how to devastate me. That's what got me to thinking about things being good on paper.

He and I were excellent on paper. Except for being blond, he is definitely my type: very tall, handsome, extremely well educated, witty, a bit wicked. We met through a mutual friend in graduate school, but we could have met two other ways in real life. His sister was the year ahead of me at Haverford, and he was at May Day at Bryn Mawr when I was there. He is half English, and his cousins went to the same school as one of my English exes. It's uncanny. We had the same taste in many, many things; he is a true polymath: brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. He grew up in an 18th century house on a gorgeous farm on the outskirts of Charlottesville, a descendant of Stonewall Jackson. He and I loved to travel and went to odd places together, like Orkney, where we visited prehistoric burials and Viking churches. We spent Christmas in a  small village in Provence one year, going to midnight mass, eating boudin blanc, and making fun of how every French town has a monument to the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, as if they were ALL in it. We drove around in his sister's 2CV, visited the ruins of the Marquis de Sade's castle, drank in Roman and medieval history and tons of wine, took a train to Monte Carlo, and then I cried my eyes out on New Year's because for all of this, when we weren't together, I was an afterthought. I would be in England doing research, and he wouldn't call or send me e-mail. I just wasn't important enough. Basically, he loved me but he would also abandon me. And when I told him it hurt, he would do what A does: change the subject or ignore it.

I loved this man. Really, really loved him. This went on for about three years. I remember being in the middle of Yellowstone, camping with him, when he said that he didn't see a future with me. That was fair enough, but it was horrible. I was 27, I hadn't begun to look for my first family, but I felt a punch to the gut that must have triggered something primal. I lost it. What was it with me and people not loving me enough to make an effort?

We had a miserable drive back to Berkeley. It was LONG. We broke up. We were still living in the same house, which was hard. He went to Laos to juggle (he is also an expert, world renowned juggler) for Thanksgiving, came back, and said that he had decided he wanted to really try. That he loved me. Problem was, I didn't love HIM anymore. The trust was gone, and even after all that, he said he didn't want to commit to anything. What's the point? You either love someone and want to make time for them, or you don't.

Which brings me back to yesterday. I got home, watched Black Swan again, and could really understand how Nina lost her mind. The pressures to find yourself often lead to dark places. Perfection and love have hefty prices.

Ah, you say, but you have your wonderful husband who loves you now. Yes, I do. He is great. But he is handicapped in his own way, a very traumatic way, that leaves me alone in my fortress as well. He will never leave me, that I know. But he will also never love me the way that I need to be healed, that perhaps HE needs to heal himself. It's a big, big mess.

As my dear friend Nalini said to me the day before yesterday, "You can hold and comfort your younger self, but she needed someone to be there for her then.  That's the tragedy you must live with."

I hate feeling like I have to go through the rest of my life just marking the hours from sunrise to sunset, knowing that I look very good on paper but feeling otherwise very much like an erudite, emotionally empty shell.

Unless you piss me off, that is ;-)

Valkyrie

I am named after one of the Valkyries, which is kick ass. In Old Norse, my name means either "the wild, stormy one," or "the curly one," presumably having Odin's curls. So DON'T FUCKING CALL ME "CARE-AH" or I will come slay your sorry self. And not politely.

Yes, I am having one of those days.

I knew it was going to be hard when I instinctively began listening to Bach's work in minor keys. Then I had a great long talk with the smart and supportive Amanda; that went a long way to cheering me up. It is good to feel that I am not alone.

I got home and saw that someone from Osnabrueck in Germany had read my blog and I got to thinking about 20 summers ago when I was haring around Connemara and trying to learn Irish in the company of a wonderful German man named Oliver. I remembered eating delicious fresh salmon and hiking across the Inis Mhor and trying to pack declensions and difficult syntax into my head and despairing. It was great craic, though. I drank way too much Guinness, but I was 22. Who cared?

Oliver was very serious about friendship and what it meant to stick by people. He told me that Germans don't take friendship superficially and build friendships slowly, usually only over years. This being so different from the American veneer of smiles with nothing underneath, it struck me profoundly. It was exactly what a lost young woman wanted to hear: that Freundschaft was real and tangible, and very difficult to rupture if it were true.

I looked around and saw a plethora of falseness, in myself and others. Perhaps it is not such a surprise I married a German after all. Not that I love all the formality and some of the stickier parts of the culture, but German friends really don't let you down. They don't.

I hope Oliver is doing well and enjoying life. I have a very special place in my heart for him.

And then...my own family. I am in this funk in part because I despair of ever having a "normal" relationship with C's family. I spoke with A yesterday, and it was great, sort of. We caught up, I got my endorphin high talking to my little brother, and then I crashed. He is busy with his fellowship applications and was a bit distracted, enough for me to ask if he was upset with me. I hate feeling like I am yet another annoying obligation, which was how I felt afterwards. Will we ever just get to know each other? Is it simply too weird to find a sister in midlife? Do we have too little in common to sustain this? Can he reach out to me, a little? Am I too much of a reminder of a family mistake they'd all like to forget? Can we talk about the awkwardness instead of pretending it's not there?

Hence the lugubrious Bach all morning and me telling Amanda that I don't feel strong enough to deal with this. I am sick of having to feel strong, and then at one point I broke down and felt all the pain of my loss welling up inside me. My little self, the one who feels things most acutely, was crying about all the people she wanted to love and hold her but who couldn't, didn't, or had just failed her. It's a long list, including exes, C herself, etc. I imagined my grown-up self bending down, enfolding her in my arms, and just listening, softly murmuring, "I know, I know." After a minute or two, the pain passed. I couldn't tell if I'd stuffed it down or if it had dissipated because I had acknowledged the child's sense of failure. We'll see. I know I am on the slippery slope to self-loathing/hopelessness/suicidal ideation again, and it's not pretty.

At least there's always Valkyrie Kara as backup.

Trolls

Not that kind of trolls. The REAL kind. The fairytale kind that my dad loved to tease me about, and that we'd see on our trip through the Norwegian countryside visiting family.

I went to see the Norwegian film Trolljegeren with my parents last night and had a great time, although perhaps the 7:30 pm showing was past all of our bedtimes these days. My dad had seen a review and thought he'd like to see a Norwegian film, a rarity even in the Bay Area, and quite unlikely to show in the corner of the desert where they live.

It was bittersweet to see the landscape where we'd driven with our VW Westfalia nigh on 40 years ago; recognize the hutte where people would stay; know how the road would end and you'd simply drive onto the ferry to cross the fjord; understand the smell and feel of the wool Nordland jackets. I have the jacket in my closet that my dad's relatives made for him in Norway in 1959. It's still going strong with its heavy buttons emblazoned with Viking ships.

I needed the subtitles but could recognize some words from my childhood that my father had used, and knew other cognates from German. I loved the dry wit skewering longstanding enmity between Christians and trolls, and jokes about troll diets. It was really quite enjoyable.

And while I was happy that I understood many cultural references, my Scandinavian identity is borrowed. I'm not like my mom, who married into it. I wasn't born into it, like many of my blond, blue-eyed Olsen cousins. I am not a lick Norwegian, although I once used my Olsen-ness to bag myself a very nice Scandinavian scholar boyfriend. (I did 'fess up and have all forgiven, for the record.)

I love my dad with all my heart, and always will, and I know that my also belonging to the Newmans bothers him some. He took my boys to see Kung Fu Panda 2 yesterday, and when he came home, he told me his favorite part was at the end when Po returns, after finding his first family, to tell his adoptive dad "I am YOUR son."

Yes, Dad, I am your daughter and always will be. I just wish the Newman part of me could be as loved as the part of me that has always been yours.

I know you wish that your love could heal it all, but it cannot. And I love you just the same.

Tusen takk.

Not being myself

When is not being myself being myself?

I am feeling more and more lately that when I am put in positions when I cannot be myself as I feel comfortable being myself, I have to change things up. That sometimes means removing myself from situations and sometimes doing things that I have long considered out of character for me. Scary as that is--changing--it's the only way I have to protect myself from what feels like a barrage of very painful dreck lobbed at me or sent carelessly meandering in my direction by others. I have too long been comfortable bearing the weight of others' scorn, derision, disinterest, lack of engagement. Whatever shape their abuse took, from mispronouncing my name, to calling me fat and ugly, to telling me I am nothing special. It is terribly disheartening, and then I realize, as Joy says to me, that I have had expectations of people that they just aren't meeting. Problem is, I am not expecting them to win Nobel Prizes; or be present for me all the time; or do much beyond their human existence other than what they've SAID they would or could do.

I have been noting much lately that people's (friends/acquaintances/colleagues/people in blogland) actions don't match their words. Ah, that old adage about judging by what people do and not what the say is trite but so very constructive. Truth is, humans are a flawed lot, myself included. I am far from perfect, but I will try hard to be there for my friends and let them know how important they are to me.

That's where me not being myself comes back into play. I am taking a new position, one in which I give less and also expect less. It's not necessarily a happier place, but it might be a more secure place, and it's certainly much more under MY control. As Katharine Hepburn once said, "If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased." I used to find that quotation truly self-centered and insufferable, but she sure as hell had a point! No one will love you like you love yourself, and I am not very worried that my shift signifies a wild tip in the opposite direction towards unstoppable narcissism.

Today I read a first father's account of being passive and ambivalent about his teenage son's existence, and it was like a knife to the gut. True his feelings may be, but I pity his son if he reads those words. No child wants to read about a parent's lukewarm, conditional love. It sucks. The confessional was just one of hundreds like it I've choked over recently. Such messages hurt so much I want to close down even more to protect myself and the remaining shreds of my very sore soul.

I feel like I keep the remains of the me who used to be able to love generously in a tiny box, and the box gets smaller all the time as I encounter more people who proclaim proudly their lack of ability to love their children (or even specifically me) "enough," or say that they love them while obviously hurting them, or who take pleasure in being naysayers of the most silly, cussed sort.

Before the best part of me dies, I need to protect her by letting out that too long dormant inner bitch, who doesn't feel like me. Maybe it's time she did. I am too tattered to settle for crumbs. Enough.

OR

I am off to the hospital in a few minutes. It was funny yesterday to be on the patient end of all the admissions questions: any history of...; what medications do you take each day; how do you rate your pain on the scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no pain and 10 is the worst pain imaginable?

I do my own theatrical riff on these with my patients, but you'd have to be my patient to enjoy the fun of it ;-).  I am missing work, actually. I love my patients and the PM team. Eight weeks and I hope to be back with the babies. We'll see. I think I prefer to be the RN in the OR, although the meds are good. The pain afterwards sucks.

I got a text from A this morning, a week after the last, asking if everything is okay because he hadn't heard from me. Which is nice on the one hand, but on the other, why'd it have to be phrased as though it's my job to do all the reaching out, to be all cheeriness and sunshine and light? "Hi! How're you! Yeah, I broke my arm, but that must pale in consequence to anything in your busy, busy life. You can't hurt MY feelings! I am an adoptee! I was born to be a punching bag." I'll text him after and say I am okay.

I am looking forward to my propofol/versed cocktail. See you on the other side, with my new, metal-reinforced left arm.

Pieces of Reunion

Before I take my next dose of pain meds, relax into my pillows, and try to forget all that is annoying in this world, I want to announce that my essay about search, reunion, and rejection was accepted for publication in an edited volume of stories told by adoptees, first mothers, and adoptive mothers. It is forthcoming from EMK Press, edited by Claudia D'Arcy, Carrie Kitze, and LewEllen Singley, and titled Pieces of Reunion. My essay, "I'm Not Lost," seems darkly ironic at this moment, but perhaps I can keep that optimistic sentiment in mind. I wrote it at the nadir of things last fall, and I survived that. One never knows.

Check out the preliminary Table of Contents here.

I prefer "Ashes, ashes" myself

As an historian, I don't like prettification or erasures. I love that William Morris created the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, also known as "Anti-Scrape," to fight against people saying that there was one perfect state of a structure (e.g. the medieval in Victorian Britain). Buildings are interesting because they can be reused, added to, repurposed, etc. I loved living in a converted 1920's warehouse in downtown Oakland with my family.

There is truth to history, but there is also attendant pain. Some people are averse to pain and knowledge. They avoid looking back. They deal with their aversion by shoving the object of their discomfort under rugs, bowdlerizing texts or erasing certain racy bits ("Omit the reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks," Forster, Maurice), or covering up inconvenient births through adoption, refusing to let others feel something different than what you have experienced, or saying that another person's experience is pure madness. "You wouldn't suffer if you would just be practical and 'scientific.' Like ME!"

I am mad. I am fine with the label and all of its meanings. I would rather be mad than stupid and mediocre and self-righteous. If someone is jim dandy with the reunion they have and can joke about the awkwardness in communicating with nfamily, great! But I am not a child imagining problems where there are none, slights where there are none. Seven unreturned telephone calls in two months? I am not allowed to leave voicemail because her husband doesn't like it? Okay. And this is *my* problem in my childish primal woundie cave? No. It's a mess. As my husband and friends and even my sister-in-law have said, it's definitely not my doing or all in my head.

It's about my feelings and MY take on what they mean to ME. I am sad. I am deeply sad that my nfamily are not more like me in temperament and more open to me. I see warm flickers of sameness, and then it's dark again--the light extinguished at the behest of the Matriarch or another player. I don't merit the same courtesies as others (although I have to wonder what those courtesies might truly be). Perhaps I would be a fish out of water in that milieu. I don't get to find out. But it is still my experience to mourn, and I am NOT childish or stunted for doing so, or for feeling a connection to my family. I am doing the work that's right for me. My education and madness and wonderful aparents have taught me not to presume to tell anyone else what their path should be or call them infantile by juxtaposing the primal wound AGAIN to a children's rhyme and the refrain "husha, husha." This was unintentional? Really? I'm not buying your cookies or that perfect adoptee potion that makes it all "just fine."

I'll stick with mad; madness gives me interesting, lovely, batty, fantastic friends.

Collateral Damage

I had all these wonderful ideas for posts this past week but I was derailed by a convergence of misfortune.

Last Friday I saw X-Men: First Class and despite its many cliches, I was galvanized by its charaterization of adoptees mutants and how easy it is for the powers-that-be to talk over them, dismiss them, or even order their destruction for the "good" of others. I found myself identifying closely with Magneto, who drew his strength from anger and pain. Although I didn't wear my anger and pain on my sleeve, those two emotions were always driving me towards success so that I could have power over the assholes making my life difficult. When at one point Professor X, the chirpy James McAvoy, warns that revenge doesn't bring peace, Magneto says, "Peace was never an option." I so understand that. There is no peace to be had, just living with the pieces we have. There's a difference. Those who want the high road can have it.

Then Saturday was the big family reunion in Indiana to which I wasn't invited. Again, I get it, but the rejected baby inside...not so much. Mark and the boys were on a mission to cheer me up and took me rollerblading. Which was great until I fell spectacularly, heard a sickening crunch, looked at my left arm, and knew immediately it was broken. I enjoyed an ambulance ride to the ER with two handsome firefighters who gave me some much needed morphine and zofran. I wish that the orthopedic surgeon had been as kind as the paramedics. I ended up with a splint and will have surgery this coming Wednesday (curiously, the same surgery I observed as a nursing student) to pin my radius back in place. Fun! It sucks having one hand to type with, especially for a grammar and spelling Nazi like myself. Luckily, oral Dilaudid makes me care rather less.

Then I was hurt that when I told A about all this, he seemed very superficial about it. "Oh, sorry to hear about that, get well soon!" Is that really what you say to someone who's more than an acquaintance? Barely two lines? That's what I say when I hardly know you or if I am really enforcing distant boundaries (read: I don't like you very much). I called him out on it, and also on his telling me that he went to Indiana to spend time with his wife--really?!? I know he was trying to protect my feelings, but the lies hurt so much more. I know he and I have very different coping mechanisms (stuffing vs. expressing) and that neither of us knows how to be a sibling. I do love him, but all of this is incredibly raw. I told him how C is ignoring me, and he told me to keep trying to reach out. I said that I cannot. He offered to intervene; I don't want that. I know that I am testing him and that I am ready to run at the drop of a text. I struggle between thinking I am better off with my fucked up life such as it is without family triggers and knowing that I would be miserable without A. It's a Hobson's Choice. Is this a wound I continue to reopen, or do I suture it and pretend it's sterile, knowing full well that it's contaminated with flesh-eating S. pyogenes?

I hate being collateral damage to my "family." Such "nice" people. No one in that small town would guess I exist; better keep this well educated woman hidden. Such an embarrassment to the family name! It must be my foreign husband, or my accent, or...NOTHING RATIONAL AT ALL.

I know I am not powerless in all this, but I wish I could erase my attachment, DNA or otherwise, to people who care so little for me (A excepted: he is at least trying). If only the adoption lies were true! How lovely it would be if nurture were all that mattered. I hate that as the adoptee I had no choice in that original clusterfuck of lies. I do have the choice to walk away from them now, but it's bone-achingly sad to contemplate doing so. I still hold that abortion would have been the kindest option in my situation, and I find it ridiculous that they hide behind "God" and religion while treating one of their own so abominably. A dash of hypocrisy with that drink? Best served cold? Like cheap beer?

Where the hell is my superpower, by the way? You'd think we'd at least be given something like that for what we endure.

Crazytown

Having just returned from my 20-year college reunion, I feel rather marinated in my own past. I had a wonderful time, no complaints. I love my alma mater. The sourness I felt back then has been magically ameliorated by time. What did I know back then? I was pampered and spoiled. I had access to wonderful faculty, and I was surrounded by brilliant women. It wasn't always fabulous, but it was pretty good.

I spent an hour with my dear friend in the trenches Amanda: too short! too short! And during the weekend, I found myself (unsurprisingly) surrounded by many classmates who are adoptive parents and their children. I didn't talk much about my adoption, but when I did, as usual, conversations ended up being superficial. There's no need to burden people with my own Gordian Knot, and when I do try, it's usually misunderstood. As it stands right now, I am hovering on the razor's edge between thinking that I really benefitted from it, but there's always the loss, the dark, dark loss. I don't like it when people brush the loss away and say, "Oh, it all worked out for the best!" I may think that myself, although I feel guilty when I do because I love my natural family and I wish I were welcomed and that the situation weren't all that crazy. And that I didn't have the loss in the first place. It's not a zero sum equation. Moreover, it's not like my afamily isn't without its fair share of Midwestern crazy. It's just a different kind of crazy. Upper Midwestern crazy as opposed to Midwestern-Southern crazy. (Can you imagine a Southern version of me?)

It's also about coping mechanisms.

I saw a friend today, a wonderful artist friend who is very complicated himself. He does a thousand things brilliantly, and one of those thousand things happens to be cutting hair. I was sitting in his apartment having a cut and color, recounting the events of the past few months, while he was sharing some things in his own life (quite exciting things, like having his sculpture published in a scholarly journal article and becoming an uncle). He has watched me search for my family, enter into reunion, be welcomed, be rejected (I saw him the day I got the brutal e-mail from A), and struggle back to sanity. His own family is riddled with substance abuse, and he told me that he is trying to be cognizant of his role as caretaker, having been told from childhood that his job was to "bring sunshine." I told him about adoptees often feeling they have to shoulder their trouble and everyone else's, and he said he could identify with that. He recently started going to Al Anon and told me that he thought I could benefit from the three things Al Anon teaches family members of alcoholics: You didn't cause it. You can't cure it. You can't control it.

It does sound a hell of a lot like reunion and the havoc and capriciousness it seems to bring to our relationships with our natural families. There's no predicting what will happen, is there? Our families have their coping mechanisms in place, and then we turn up, as Emmett said, like shiny coins. We confound whatever rusty mechanisms they have, which might have been working very well if not touched or scrutinized closely. We upset the balance and can be neatly scapegoated for the chaos that ensues; why didn't we just stay gone? Before we know it, we're in crazytown with no directions.

We look for rational answers. It would be nice to get some, but often there aren't any because we have walked into something that is nowhere close to rational. We have no hope of understanding it unless given a great deal of time and some sympathetic individuals somewhere in the mix.

I know that some reunions are not at all like this, but more often that not, we're dropped into plays that are more than half over and we have no scripts. People frequently don't want to communicate with us, when they do sometimes they lie, and feelings get hurt more reliably than the sun rises in the morning. Many adoptees will walk for miles and live on crumbs for months. We will endure emotional cruelty for a few words of endearment.

I am no exception.

I live for those times when my natural family acknowledges who I am to them. It shouldn't be all that big a deal, but because I am insecure it has become huge. I am insecure because I do not trust that they will be in my life tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Past experience haunts me. It hurts to say that, but that's the truth.

So when A texted me last week at the end of a conversation and said, "Will do, big sis" I just about melted into the floor of the hotel. That's exactly who I am to him, and who I want to be. Who I always should have been.

This is why I hate the crazytown of my reunion and why I hate the crazytown of non-discussion among different parts of the "constellation."

This is why I hate that talk happens ABOUT adoptees, not with us. I don't like it when adoptees are exploited or pushed aside, especially when they're still children. I don't like it when some aparents and nparents see it as appropriate to "school" adult adoptees as though they're children. We are all adults. Where the hell is the respect? Can you put your feelings aside and be a parent? Can you think about how your child feels for a moment? Really? No? Okay, I should have known better than to ask that question.

Several different people have posted recently that there are more important things in life than adoption. Three or four of them were natural mothers, and one was an adoptee. All of them were privileged. How fortunate for them to have better things to worry about. As a privileged person, I suppose that I can worry about better things, as well, although I believe that there is still a long way to go before adoption reform can be declared a done deal. Aren't we still lacking our OBCs?

In the spirit of thinking about things that are more important to me than whiny, self-righteous people in the blogosphere, here is a happy Tobey. How fortunate he is that he will never have to wonder who his parents are, although his life will always be torched touched by adoption. He inherited a clotting disorder from an unknown grandfather, lucky him!

Glue

What is holding me together right now? I have no idea, really. I wonder if May will be the annual "Natural Family Dumps Kara Month." If so, I will have to remember to boycott May in the future.

As my dad's digitizing project continues, he sends me daily updates. Yesterday's included this one of me on my adoption day. Note the annotation on the border of the Polaroid, obviously written with joy on the day.

I think it's lovely that my father felt (and feels) nothing but complete happiness surrounding my adoption. That makes at least one of us. Why shouldn't he feel unadulterated happiness? But I don't want to burden him with the shadows of my own sadness.

I've been thinking a great deal about several adoption-related conversations that are going on right now.  One is about the relative insignificance of adoption trauma in light of other worldly tragedies (e.g., the Holocaust), and the second is about how adoptees, even when adult, are often brushed off as infants--rapped on the knuckles, if you will--when we say things that others don't like or want to hear.

Starting with the second: adoptees are often chastised for overstepping boundaries that aren't even evident, or worse, we're mocked for questioning things that people say about us. I think it's a ploy for some people to avoid dealing with their feelings about the things we bring up, especially when we're talking about how adoptees are being treated. Not many people like to admit that they're complicit in hurting people (I for sure know that I don't), but I believe that integrity means admitting when we have hurt someone, owning it, or even just listening to others when they tell us that we may have said something hurtful. This goes for EVERYONE (I have been taken to task for using the word "choice" related to surrendering and learned from the criticism), but I have seen nastiness in spades lately directed toward adoptees who speak up to say that they feel hurt or are worried about the feelings of other adoptees. Usually we're told that we need to stop and think about how our natural mothers feel. While this is important, we are ALSO allowed to have our own feelings, and these feelings may be in conflict with those of our natural mothers.

Being in one of those spots right now where I have been rejected in silence again, hot lukewarm to cold, without a word, I am ANGRY. I don't want to hear excuses about her trauma, her problems, her sadness, her wounds. You know what? She is a big girl and needs to take care of herself. I am a big girl and have  right to be angry about being treated like a used paper towel. I do feel for her, but my patience was pretty much used up in the past 12 years of silence. So if you're a natural mom who wants to support my silent mom, go for it. I would like to support her, too, except she won't let me. Please don't burden me by telling me it's my job to acknowledge her trauma. Because my PRIMARY job to take care of ME. Which includes feeling what I feel, a mixture of extreme sadness and anger and betrayal and confusion.

And no, this isn't the Holocaust, or genocide, or the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, or a tsunami. I am not making my story about anyone but me. But you know what? My BFF, who lived through the Khmer Rouge genocide and saw horrors I cannot even imagine, doesn't play the "I had it worse than you ever did" game. Because he's my FRIEND. He listens and loves me and supports me fiercely, no matter what. If it sucks for me, it sucks for him. He said that he's watched me these past couple of years and hoped that I'd at last be able to be angry about all that's happened, because anger sometimes helps propel you up and out of the mire. He especially felt this when I was suicidal last year. It's not good to get stuck in anger, but a good dose of it is often necessary to bring about change.

I'd say that people's use of metaphor is most profitably considered in terms of its authenticity. If you're making a spectacle of yourself for attention but it's clear that you want the attention more than you are experiencing pain (and yes, it's pretty clear when people are faking their dramatic outbursts), it's distasteful. But who are we to judge someone else's depth of pain? I find it hubristic to issue blanket statements about what others should and shouldn't do, or what they do or don't feel. Some of us HAVE lost our entire histories and families.

There are some adoption bloggers who have moved past the more difficult parts of their own experiences and don't feel the nagging pain so acutely anymore. They have integrated adoption into their lives such that it's not so central to their daily narratives. They go around saying, "This isn't a big deal. Ignore it. Move on." I am happy for them, but I would also hope that in their peace they would find compassion to allow those of us still working through our pain to cry and rant and think through our problems. Healing doesn't happen overnight, and I have been in this reunion game for less than two years! I hardly think that I can snap my fingers and be done with it. I tried the antidepressants, tried the therapy, and it's just taking TIME. Have some compassion, and pass the glue.

Legacies

I was reading the "Modern Love" column in the Times this past weekend and my heart stopped when I read this passage: "We looked at old family pictures in Matt's basement and reminisced about the good old days that we hadn't lived through. I felt that the yellowing photographs could tell me something about the boy sitting next to me, that through the eyes of his ancestors I would somehow come to know him."

That's exactly what I don't have. My connection to my history has been severed. There is no pile of photographs of ancestors to which I belong by blood that belongs to ME. I have seen some such photographs at A's house, but I was denied copies of them. I can only guess that my claim on them is suspect. I know it makes C uncomfortable to think of me as family. I can respect that, but artificial distance gouges into old wounds, and it hurts to know that my history is lost to me and to my children, grandchildren, and so on. What we have starts with me. I guess I am like Eve.

Meanwhile, my adad is merrily digitizing boxes and boxes of old photographs of his family and of my amom's. I love seeing them both as children; looking at their siblings, their cousins, and my grandparents. I see my aparents reflected over and over in the larger picture of their family. All of those photographs belong to me, although my father is sending the digital copies to my acousins. In truth, I feel I should give the hard copies to my cousins because it is THEIR heritage. The photographs are mine legally, of course, but my cousins' children and grandchildren will find meaning in the eyes and smiles and cheekbones of ancestors that Callum and Tobey won't. What belongs to me by legal right is given with open heart but doesn't fill the emptiness and desire for knowledge about these people whose blood runs in my veins. The people whom we do resemble. At least Callum takes after Mark's family and has that in his favor. Like Callum, like Mark, like Ludwig in 1915...

Perhaps more knowledge and photographs of my nfamily may come with time. But they may not, and my sons and I may have to come to terms with perhaps never knowing what my great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, etc., looked like. Because of my being that inconvenient child, meant to be erased and forgotten. Purged from the family tree. Never mentioned again.

It hurts, really hurts, when they say, "You have another family." Yes, I do. I am not disputing it. But having another family doesn't mean that adoption had no repercussions for me. That I simply traded one existence for another and morphed into another human being. Not possible.

A few months back I bought a book of narratives about family, some fictional some not. The editor chose to introduce it with a quotation from George Eliot's Adam Bede that is like another punch to the stomach today:

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings that jar us at every moment.


My legacy is living with two families: one that I was born to and one that was made by adoption. The family that I was born to has a difficult time accepting me, for many reasons. That is a difficult burden for me to bear. I know it is difficult for them, as well, but I had hoped I'd find people as excited to get to know me as I am to know them. My expectations were shattered. My afamily loves me with all they have, but the one thing they cannot give is the thing I want the most. It is a cruel truth.

Yearning and repulsion? Yep. Jarred? Definitely.

Here's my adad's senior picture from high school. When I get lost in all of this crap, I remember how much I love him and my mom. They would go to the ends of the earth to help me if they could make a difference. You know what? My aparents are the only ones who have been there for me through it all. They're not perfect, but they put me first. ALWAYS. They don't whine about their shit. They don't make me take care of THEM. They act like PARENTS. And while I hate the pain of adoption, I am happy that the fucked up universe dropped me into their laps. I think about my dad telling me about their going to visit me that first day, and me being brought into the room, screaming my head off. They gave me a bottle, looked me over, and were asked, "Do you want to take her home?" My dad always cries at this point and says, "There was no way in hell they were taking you away from me!"

The Undead

I have a huge soft spot for movies and television shows and books about the supernatural, as I've mentioned before. I remember seeing Pet Sematary when it came out back in 1989. Although back then I wasn't equipped to think about it in the critical terms I am today, I remember thinking about some of its moral quandaries: what does it mean to bring something/someone back from the dead? What is lost at the threshold of death? What forces are involved that change things?

I especially remember thinking about the great sadness of the couple who lost their son and thinking that the father's attempt to bring him back as the child he had been was doomed to failure; the undead Gage was going to be the impossible replacement child for himself. He might as well have been adopted. And in his homidical rebirth, he fits the adoptee stereotype to a T. Sad, but true.

A brilliant friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning on the topic of reunion. She wrote, very aptly: "I feel that adoptee reunions are straight out of Stephen King's book, Pet Sematary--you can bring them back, but they will never be the same again." We lose what we lose, and it's gone. Forever. We will never be the kept child. We will never have the place in the photographs or at the family table for holidays past. We might be in photos now, or at holiday feasts, but we will be haunted by our ghost selves, and we are ghosts for the family that didn't include us then. We can build relationships with our mothers, fathers, and extended families as adults, but our natural parents will not be the people who nurtured us.

I think many of us come to grief in reunion when we want what we lost and what we can never have. It's tantalizing to think about the "what ifs." I wish, for example, that C were a person on whom I could call for comfort (as one might do with a close friend, if not a mother). At least for now, I wish she were someone who would return my telephone calls. My adoptee hypervigilance is in overdrive, as I fear she is backing away just as surely as she took tentative steps forward. She might have good reasons; I just don't know, and if she won't tell me, I still won't know. I am excellent at inventing possibilities, such as wondering if she told her husband more about our contact on her trip to Paris, and he put the kibosh on what we have. Truth is, I just don't know and need to stop guessing.

I am trying to get better at living with uncertainty and realizing, as Joy told me so sagely, I will be okay either way. She's left me before. She can/might/will leave me again, although I hope she won't. I can't control what she does, only what I do in all of this. Perhaps I am finally mature enough to take in those difficult lessons of mindfulness and breathe, letting the worst of the doubts slide over me while acknowledging the ghosts and not allowing them encase my heart and soul in chill.

I have plans to visit A at his home for a weekend in June. His wife and son are going to be staying with C for a month while A is busy with work and fellowship applications. He invited me down, saying that he'd welcome the company. He has been a little distant and uncharacteristically quiet of late. I catch myself wondering if there is something he's not telling me about Newman family politics. Probably. But he'd tell me if he wanted to, and in the absence of that, I need to look forward and take his offer of a weekend away at face value. I treasure opportunities to spend time with him and get to know him better. Frankly, I adore the man, and I do wish I'd known him from the time he was born. We missed out on so many years.

Then I stop myself, and remember that we cannot resurrect the dead, or we will likely come to grief if we try. I will enjoy the man he is now and let the ghost little girl of me find and play with the ghost of the boy he once was.

And in honor of the Mother's Day just past, I want to share a picture of that ghost little girl with my amom, taken when I was probably about three years old, on Easter Sunday. I love her dearly, as she loves me, warts and all.

I have been enjoying our discussions about family in the wake of my uncle's death, and some interesting tidbits of family history have emerged, such as my father apparently becoming drunk and disorderly as my uncle's best man! Dad, you are very naughty.

The Duck Among the Chickens

When I was in graduate school, I felt horribly at sea. I was rejected by my adviser, I was studying a topic far from the mainstream of both art history in general and the Berkeley department in specific, and I didn't have many like-minded friends around me. I found a steadfast ally in the brilliant Boreth, who has gone on to great things (mostly outside of art history: both of us see ourselves more as cultural studies/visual culture/literary types). He studied South and Southeast Asian art, and for many years I ended up by his side, hanging out with the Asian art crowd. At one point, the Chinese art professor called me the "duck following the chickens." I was the misfit, as usual: the person with, but not of, the family. I was welcomed, and I loved what I learned; I smile to remember the summer that Boreth gave tour after tour of the mandala exhibition to his rapt, ancient, blue-haired groupies, waxing eloquently on yab-yum at the Berkeley Art Museum and rocking his collection of silk scarves.

Nice digression, but back to the duck.

I was thinking today about how being an adoptee has meant that I am a duck raised by chickens. The chickens love me very much and are very supportive, but I no matter what happens, I am still a duck. They can pretend I am a chicken and call me a chicken, but it's insulting to my duck-ness.

A guest blogger wrote courageously and honestly on my friend Amanda's blog about how she felt there were differences in how she and her aparents' bio kids were treated. I can see how that might be, whether intended or not. Adoptees often don't look like their aparents or share the same talents or interests. This doesn't have to be a negative thing, and there are obviously many differences between people who share biological ties. Adoptees, however, don't share the benefit of knowing that they were born where they belong and where they can, more likely than not, see themselves mirrored in someone, if not their parents. I can imagine that having siblings who do share blood ties with the family could make things very complicated. Then you truly are a duck surrounded by chickens. Maybe the chickens are nice. Maybe not. But you are not one of them, even if your amended BC says McCluck.

It was interesting to read comments from adoptees who had grown up to become adoptive parents themselves, and there were, of course, the requisite references to being grateful that their "birthmothers" had given them up so that they could dodge horrible bullets of abuse/drug addiction/homelessness/what-have-you. I know that some people truly feel that they are better off for having been adopted. I must take them at their word. It depends hugely on the individual situation, although society in general loves to play up the idea that adoption is about providing a "happily-ever-after" ending for everyone involved. I flinch a little when people tell this particular story, even if it's true for them, because of its being the foundation of so much unpalatable rainbow-farting propaganda.

There is no way to determine that my experience with my adoptive family was better or worse than my life would have been if C had kept me. Only different. I do know that I didn't dodge a bullet so much as trade one middle-class existence for another one. My natural grandparents were better educated and more affluent than my adoptive ones. In both my natural and adoptive families, it is a given that children will grow up to go to college. C graduated from college with a double major in French and Spanish immediately after my birth and took a teaching job several months later. She was 22 and not a teen-ager. If any bullet was dodged, it was by my natural family who avoided having a bastard around to sully its "good" name in the small town where my grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and many other family members lived.

I have never considered being an adoptive parent. At one point my mother-in-law asked what I would do if Mark and I couldn't conceive, and said that she hoped we wouldn't adopt because you never know what kind of horrible child you might get; yes, she really loved me. I worried about infertility, which makes no sense, but that's another one of the gifts of adoption: taking on anxiety about things that don't truly relate to you.

Infertility proved not to be an issue, and I gave birth to my two boys. I found that I love them with a feeling of connection completely new to me. I am glad that they will never have to worry about who they look like and where they come from. They are secure in a way that I will never be; that's probably the best gift I can give them. They don't have to struggle with the feeling of disequilibrium that I live with every day, as I try to build my identity on a foundation of liquid rather than solid. I have been rather more successful at this of late, but it's not a battle that's over by any means.

After having thought seriously about adoption and what it has meant for me, I know I couldn't have adopted a child. I couldn't have taken a child from his or her family and watched him or her struggling with the losses I did. There is the off chance that she or he might have been just fine to be given up and never have looked back, but raising a child with no interest in his or her roots would have been triggering for me. I cannot pretend that one family can be substituted for the other. They're not the same. Adoption comes with loss. And when I hear about open adoptions in which natural families treat adoptees carelessly or ambivalently, I am sent over the edge. I would take on the child's adopted baggage as my own, and I have quite enough baggage for myself.

If my sons ever become fathers at a time when they are unmarried, young, or that is otherwise "inconvenient," I hope that the child will either be aborted or kept. I cannot stand the thought of a grandchild of mine being separated from my family by adoption, even by open adoption, with its rosy promises of e-mail, pictures, visits, and "all that love." My grandchild is my grandchild. I will fight to keep my grandchild, no matter what. I don't want to think of another family member lost out there. It hurts too much even to contemplate. I know that as the paternal grandmother I probably won't have a hell of a lot of say, but I have very frank discussions with my sons, even now, so that I hope later on they will choose partners who think critically about adoption in the way my family does.

Family and Loss

My aparents are visiting this week, having just returned to California from a trip to the Midwest to see two of my mom's sibs. My mom's eldest brother passed away last week after a 30+ year valiant battle with Parkinson's. Sadly, we have discovered that his "caretaker" took advantage of my aunt, his wife, who appears to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's and tried to scam my aunt out of her money and her home.

It's possible that the "caretaker" hastened the death of my uncle. We know that my uncle was taken from his deathbed, against his wishes, to witness my aunt (who was likely drugged) give power of attorney and her assets to a man she had known fewer than two weeks.

I have seen stories like this on television and read about them, and they sickened me. It's absolutely horrific when violations of trust and crimes happen to people you love.

My aunt and uncle do not have children. I am sure that the "caretaker" who quit her job at the rehab center to follow my uncle home and "direct" hospice care took note of this. She also took note of my aunt's strained relationship with her brother, and worked hard to alienate my aunt from other family members, like my parents, and old friends who might be suspicious or could contradict the fabricated tales these lowlifes were spinning.

My aunt is fortunate that the police in her community and family have rallied to separate her from these new "friends" of hers who have stolen money from her; as the days go by, her mind is clearing and she and we believe that she probably was drugged to make her more docile and agreeable to their nefarious plans. She is a feisty Connecticut woman, and even the cloudiness of early Alzheimer's and her loss could not account for the dreamy laziness of her thinking. None of it made sense.

We hope that we can make a case to go after these assholes criminally. They are the lowest of the low, preying on the vulnerable in their time of greatest need, and it is becoming more clear by the hour that they laid their plans quickly to manipulate my aunt and leave her penniless and alone.

Their criminal ways remind me a great deal of those in the adoption industry who prey on pregnant women who are without financial means or family support to keep their children. "I'll be your friend! Let me help you! I can provide a better home for your child, and then your problems will be solved." Ugh.

Adoption is also inescapably and openly involved in the discussions we've been having with and about family. One of my aunt's nephews, J, recently married, and almost equally recently his wife was diagnosed with Stage III uterine cancer. She had to undergo a hysterectomy and is now getting chemotherapy to fight the cancer. She and J have no children. Apparently my aunt told him (as usual, without great tact or timing, given the cancer and loss of fertility), in the presence of my parents, that adoption is a wonderful, loving option and look how wonderfully it turned out for Kara and her parents.

In some ways what she says is true. I do not have an adoption horror story. I love my parents dearly and cannot at this point imagine a life without them. We understand each other and they support me unconditionally. Since this is the only life I've ever known, it is heartbreaking to imagine the loss of the pleasure of growing up with them and sharing the love of their families. As I have said elsewhere, all I know is that adoption guaranteed me a different life, not one better or worse. It did guarantee me the loss of my identity, and that has been hard.

Reunion is very new to me, and I don't think I've been in the same room with my aunt since my wedding day in 1999, when my adoption issues were very much on the back burner. She has no idea about my long-term feelings of loss. Those feelings don't negate the love I feel for my aparents, but they certainly complicate my lived experience as an adoptee. I am very careful about what and to whom I express about adoption because I don't need to be lectured about loyalties, gratitude, etc.

I may go visit my aunt in June to help arrange for long-term care, and when I do, I wonder if I will be able to open up to her about what's happened to me in the past couple of years related to reunion. Or if she will tacitly or explicitly declare loyalty to my aparents and turn a deaf ear. You never know.

I do know that I love her, and she has been one of the family members who has always accepted me, nerdy quirks and all. I want her to be safe, and we will all miss my uncle, who was one of the kindest, most wonderful people I have ever had the honor to know.