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.

Aftermath

I made it through yesterday. There were some lovely parts, as in having many friends and family members take the time to wish me well.

I went to Chris' beautiful apartment overlooking the Pacific, close to the old Sutro Baths at Seal Rock. He can boast spectacular views, fresh salty air, clear and warm breezes, and shaded paths through Land's End under a carpet of green leaves. We caught up on news, having not seen each other for several months, and then made our way to the Legion of Honor. The company was wonderful, as was the art. The scholarship of the exhibitions, by contrast, was execrable. Cases of Roman coins, identified by ruler, but grouped together only by the fact that they have animals on them? Animals signifying things that I as an expert understood, but that wouldn't be clear to someone wandering through the gallery. Mosaics of animals from Syria identified only as mosaics from Syria with animals. Roman glass jars in cases with no further explanation. The main mosaic from Lod described as being from a public room in a Roman villa in Lod. How about a floor plan of the villa, curator? How about contrasting different types of mosaics? Ugh. The low level of thinking was hugely annoying. Poor Chris got an earful as I shredded the wall labels and lamented the paucity of creative thoughts. I am lucky that Chris says I am quite entertaining when I am snobby.

The Pulp Fashion exhibition was interesting and quite lovely; I mooned over the paper version of a dress by Paul Poiret. I would love to have worn a dress in that style back in the early 1900's.

But again, the conflation of costume history (which can be complex, but often is treated superficially) and contemporary art ended up being pretty thoughtless. "Here are a bunch of copies of dresses of 16th century Medici women! Here is a dress inspired by a painting by Fragonard/David/Ingres!" And your point is...? For example, there were a few works devoted to 16th/17th century English costume, including a dress modeled after one worn by Queen Elizabeth I in a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, along with long discussion about whether the mythological features on dress in the painting were painted or embroidered in the original dress. My first thought was that there's no proof that the actual dress had anything painted or embroidered on it! Paintings aren't windows into reality, especially paintings of monarchs. Could not the mythological symbols have been added in the painting to add to the symbolic power of the queen? Argh. Why do art historians people have no common sense?

The day wore on, and we shared a delicious lunch at a tiny pizzeria close to the museum. In the late afternoon I returned home and waited. Still no word from A or C. The doubt started to eat at me. I could believe that C was still in Paris, but A? What was happening?

At seven I went to Callum's Tiger Cub meeting with Mark and Tobey, sitting and fidgeting while watching the boys perform skits and sing songs. I finally gave in to my anxiety and texted A. "I am little sad that you forgot my birthday." Shortly thereafter, I received a reply: "This is T. You will have to forgive him (again). He has been on call and it has been a horrible week. Be mad at me as I should have remembered."

The fact is, I am not mad. I am sad. Nothing can be done to fix it. I am not in their consciousness, as this proves. It doesn't mean that they don't like me, but I am not important enough to be remembered.

I wrote back: "Being on call sucks."

T responded: "Yes. We haven't seen him all week and W has been driving me crazy. I am sorry we forgot. Happy Birthday."

"Thanks," I texted.

Half an hour passed, and T texted again. "Please don't be mad. We will make it up to you, I promise."

Thing is, forgetting a birthday isn't something that can be made up. It will take a year to see if they remember next time, and by then they'll probably have forgotten again, with the horrid little waiting game starting fresh.

It has taken so much for me to try to trust them after last year; I *want* to trust them. I can tell myself that I don't care about their forgetting, that it doesn't matter. I have plenty of other friends who regularly forget my birthday, and I forgive them. But this is my FAMILY. At least *I* think of them as family and *want* them to be my family. From their point of view, though, not so much.

I thought carefully, and wrote back: "I am not mad, just sad. I wish it didn't matter to me. I know I am a stranger to you, but I really like you guys."

She jumped back in: "It's not like that...we want you in our lives."

We will see. C warned me that it's hard, horrifically hard, to make it onto A's radar. That's just who he is. But he doesn't forget other family members' birthdays, from what I understand. Again, I am not family, I suppose. It sucks.

I have since been plagued by a cloud of disappointment. It's not completely debilitating, and I haven't cried. But I feel like I am walking through treacle again and that my equilibrium is upset. I am grouchy and short tempered, probably because all this presses heavily on the part of me that feels lost and abandoned by my nfamily. They've left me more than once; they can do it again. Why does it all have to be so difficult?

Boxes

There are people who can compartmentalize their feelings and store them neatly away in little boxes. Some of the boxes seem to have labels, and some are put in dark corners without labels. In some ways I am envious of the people who can dissociate themselves from experiences and forget them. That is not one of my gifts.

I have been reading lots of short stories recently, and the best short stories, in my opinion, are those that open up windows into the ambiguities of life. As I have mentioned before, I love India and history, and one of my favorite colonial writers is Kipling. Yes, he was a racist, yes, his politics were suspect, and yet his perceptiveness about human nature is powerful. I recently bought a compilation of his stories of the supernatural--he wrote fabulous ghost stories--and was struck by something Neil Gaiman said in the introduction about "The Gardener": "It was a tour de force. It's a story about loss, and lies, and what it means to be human and to have secrets, and it can and does and should break your heart." Yep, it's about adoption and a natural mother keeping her secret until after her son's death. Of course it is. Only adoption can pack the punch of all those secrets and lies and heartbreak. It was published in 1925. Plus ça change.

On this day before my birthday anniversary of the day I made my debut in the world (borrowing from my friend Krista), I am wondering what tomorrow will bring. Will C and A remember? Will they not? How will I feel? I am glad to have made plans with my friend Chris to go to a museum to see exhibitions that will take my mind off things: one with a beautiful Roman mosaic excavated in Israel, and one of elaborate clothes made of paper, called "Pulp Fashion." One of the dresses that Isabelle de Borchgrave, the artist, has recreated is that of Eleonora of Toledo, from Bronzino's portrait of her with her son.

I am a sucker for 16th century portraits, and particularly for those by Bronzino. The smooth surfaces and veneer of artificiality and exquisite masks speak directly to the adoptee in me who is so adept at wearing them and seeing behind those of others. At the very least I think tomorrow should be about having fun and escaping into the art historian side of myself, where I am at my most cool and collected. A stiff drink might also help.

It really is sad that my birthdays were, or could be, happy occasions for me until last year. Being confronted with the realities of my role as the problematic infant makes it difficult to return to those days of sunny ignorance. Again, not that I'd trade knowing for not knowing, but knowledge sometimes brings pain, and pain can be a rather annoying companion at times.

Memory

I spoke with C again today, to wish her fun on her trip to Paris. We had another one of those enjoyable, easy conversations, and she asked me about my religious upbringing, about the kids, and...

"What day is your birthday?"

Ouch.

I understand that she put incredible amounts of energy into forgetting what happened. I understand that for her, my birth was not a happy event. She did not agonize about placing me. She didn't have a choice, but her coping mechanism was to block it all off and bury it. Deep. She was excellent at that, although she would admit that it came a very high price.

So when I read about natural moms remembering, crying, celebrating with cake on their placed children's birthdays, marking all those lost years, it stings. There was no remembering in my case. She still didn't remember, and had to ask me! I am not angry or upset; I am a little sad, certainly, but I have to take the uncomfortable with the good. What happened before won't change, but what comes ahead is within my control (at least in part).

A while ago, I asked C about my birth story, whether she saw and held me, etc. She said that she couldn't remember. Any of it. At first that didn't make sense, but I told some of the senior nurses at work about this, and they said that C probably received conscious sedation while in labor.

The pieces fell into place. She was anesthetized and given a drug to prevent her from forming memories, something from the benzodiazepine family.

The RNs at work told me that in the 50s and 60s and even the early 70s, some women would get this "twilight sleep" cocktail and be strapped to gurneys (imagine being in terrible pain, out of your mind, and unable to fully understand what was happening and where you were--AWFUL). The mothers would follow the RNs' and MDs' directions for pushing, and then would wake up from the sedation with a clean, wrapped infant in their arms. The experience of birth was not in their control. It doesn't sound pleasant at all. I am glad that the L&D unit where I work bears no resemblance to such a place of fear and forgetting.

When C woke up late in the morning on April 27, 1969, her ordeal of secrecy was over (or just beginning, in reality), she was clean and resting, and I was GONE. It was as though I had never existed, and she had her "clean slate," as far as my grandparents were concerned. Since she wasn't supposed to remember me, why would she remember my birthday each year, or at all?

I get it. But my birthday--and my connection to C--has always loomed large in my mind. It was the last day that I was with her, and until now, the only time. Each birthday, I would ask myself, and friends, and family, "Do you think she is thinking about me today?" Apparently not. For C, it was the day that she was told to forget, and the dutiful daughter she is, she says she managed very well.

She will remember my birthday now, I have little doubt. She is slowly investing in our relationship. Reunion complicates things, to be sure. I had always been able to approach my birthday with relative positivity, but last year, having my nfamily forget (or ignore it entirely) was brutal. It was as though half of me was quite literally in the dark. I am hoping this year will be different, but I also remember that it's best to have low expectations and be surprised.

A friend of mine is going to take me to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco that day, to celebrate both his birthday (the 29th) and mine. I won't be alone and in bed, crying and worried that my nfamily would throw me to the winds. They might. But I am stronger now, and I have a will to live that I didn't have a year ago.

Memories are odd things, how deeply an event will touch one person and leave the other cold.

Nerves

I must have hit another nerve!

A psychologist who is not truly open to dialogue, and who will not allow me to comment on her blog, has linked to my earlier post about lost subtleties. I am not going to get into another non-discussion with her about what infants go through when they are separated from their mothers. She believes that the evidence we have today is all the evidence we need that infants do not miss their mothers if they are separated from them before six months of age. I can see intellectually how this argument is fortified, but I think, as I said in my post, that it can be valid (attachment to a caregiver is not scientifically observable on the infant's side before six months of age) without negating infants having a emotional life and experiencing stress at separation from their mothers.

There is ongoing research to understand how infant development is shaped during the six months before attachment and stranger anxiety is observable through reproducible infant behaviors. It is disingenuous to say that scientists fully understand neonatal infants and their relationships to stress (e.g., separating infants from their natural mothers before six months of age is a non-issue), and it's also unkind to label adoptees who talk about this separation as unthinking, Gnostic, mystical witchdoctors (and I am not even arguing for the existence of "the primal wound" here). To shred and critique research is admirable and thoughtful; research must stand up to close scrutiny. But to say that adopted people's experiences and questions about early infant development should be written off (when clearly there is much research going on, by scientists, including medical doctors at major research institutions such as Johns Hopkins) is misguided at best, and clearly as ideologically driven as this woman claims my own interests to be. You can wear a scientist's hat and say that you are objective and above all the fray, but no one, absolutely no one, is a machine. We are driven to study and think what we do by our interests. There is no such thing as pure human objectivity. Some self-reflection is warranted.

And yes, scientists have long conducted research on rodents and non-human primates to extrapolate, where possible to human physiology. To say, "Oh, research conducted on rats means nothing to humans" is truly disingenuous. Are we ready to stress out human infants and then decapitate them to study their brain structures and chemistries after the stressful event? No. So no, we don't have research on human infants, but we do the best we can to figure out ways to study things that might give us insight. Note that much of this research is carried out on mammals, and specific types of mammals. If the research done was only applicable to rats/monkeys/etc., then it would only be of interest to veterinarians and ethologists. This is not the case.

I have plenty of non-adopted friends who readily admit that there are other possible variables at work in an infant's life before six months of age when they demonstrate attachment to a primary caregiver. I know that something other than correcting misguided adoptees drives people to be so adamant about the status quo of infant development. Someone who was not invested would not feel the need to be so condescending, handing dictates down from on high. And no, protecting potentially poor, beleaguered APs who might be depressed by their infant's stress is not a good answer or reason to tell adult adoptees to shut up about their experiences for fear of "scaring" APs. Nor is it "scientific" to say that the lack of evidence for harm to practice babies means that there was no harm. All it means is that there is no evidence, either way.

I am not going to waste more of my personal time or emotional energy on this. I know who I am, I know my credentials and my brain, and I feel secure about my beliefs and my ability to critique research, as well. I have been called hysterical. I don't believe any of this language, or my arguments, are hysterical. And there it rests.

What does "family" mean?

In theory, "family" would mean an extended group of people, open and welcoming and loving to the adoptee that includes both the natural and adoptive families.

My maternal nfamily, now that we've turned a corner, is proving itself pretty wonderful. At least as far as C, A, and T go. We're still in a space where we sometimes dance around each other, sizing each other up, making occasional attempts at sharing information that we keep close to our chests. Only time can make things more comfortable, I think.

I am not dissatisfied, exactly, but on the phone today T told me that the entire extended family is getting together to celebrate C's mother's (Mimi's) 90th birthday. I am, of course, not invited to this event for a plethora of reasons, the top two of which are Mimi's not knowing that I've "returned" and C's husband not being happy about me being in the picture. It's not a direct insult to be left out, and rationally I understand why I cannot be there. It's not about me, it's about Mimi. And yet it hurts. I am glad to know about the party, and I am certainly relieved that it's not been kept a secret from me.

It's a razor's edge, this negotiation within myself about what I feel. It requires careful balance and relying strongly knowing this is just the way it has to be, for now. The cries of the child who deserves to be known and the adult that knows it's a long road ahead to that goal. For now, the adult is winning.

It's sad that I probably will never meet or know Mimi. She was the one who was so adamant about my having to go, 42 years ago. It's sad that it will probably take her death, and J's, before I can be part of C's family in a more real way. I keep telling myself that what matters is that C is expressing interest in a relationship with me; that is definitely important on many levels. And yet it is more than a little knock to know that I will be the ghost at that party in June, even though I am no longer a secret among most people who will be there. It's sad that I cannot wish my grandmother "Happy Birthday" in person. Or by card. I just cannot entertain going head to head with Mimi, especially since C has asked me not to.

I wish I could be welcomed completely into the family I lost so long ago. Then again, they don't consider me family at all. Sigh.