I finally retired in October 2014. My sister, Kristi, had retired about a year before me. One day we met for coffee at an intimate cafe in Woodstock to celebrate.
Kristi’sMine
We bought these cups as a symbol of our promise to be companions as we aged, to take trips together and maybe even one day to live together. Little did we know that within just two weeks, she would die in a terrible car accident.
Two days ago I was drinking coffee out of my cup and I thought about these promises we made to one another. I wondered if Kristi’s kids had found her cup amongst her things.
I sent them a message and in a short time, I got a message back from Sharon, her oldest daughter, with a photo of the cup saying that she drinks out of it often.
I cried for loss but also for gladness. A girl could not have had a better sister. My memories of her span 64 years, so they are many.
When she was only 3 years old, and I was only 5, I contracted polio, and for the rest of our time together, she did for me what I could not do for myself. She was my confidant. She was my buddy. She was my heart.
I miss her so. When I drink from her promise cup, my heart fills to overflowing. I’m so happy to know that my promise cup to her still exists.
If loving and being loved leads to the point of a mental breakdown, then let the breakdown commence.
There is nothing more lovely and wonderful than to love and to be loved. Yes, when a loved thing dies, no matter what the form it takes, be it human or animal, tree or rock, a work of art in the form of something to touch, smell, see, taste or hear be it physical or ethereal, there is nothing more transcendent than to have loved or have been loved by that thing.
Life is not worth living if we have not reached those heights of ecstacy or have not descended into the abyss of loss. Those wounds to our hearts and minds, where we have been rent asunder, is where the light gets in. This is the fount of our creativity.
Tears of salt, of our joy and our pain, give flavor to life… makes it savory and rich. It’s why we have something to give to another. Do not fear to love unto madness.
Let the breakdown commence and be glad that your feelings run so deep.
Can I be frank with you? I want to be perfectly honest. I’m not sure how to begin to tell the story, but I’ll just begin and here it is.
1966 – senior photo – graduated with my class
Do you know what he said to me; what my high school counselor said to me when I went in to talk about my life, my future after graduation? It was our senior year, and we were all being called in. Not even looking at me, but shuffling papers around his desk, he said that it didn’t matter because I would be pregnant before graduation anyway. That’s what he said. Just like that. What is he, like some prognosticator, like some fortune teller, like some shell casting vodou man, like some tea leaf reader?
Was it written on my face? Does he read it in my young body? Was it my short skirt? My pointed-toed shoes? The way I walked? The way I talked? Something particularly nasty about me?
But hey! Maybe he saw something, in spite of the fact that I loved learning, or was he a fucking jackass? Literature, writing, calligraphy, painting; I excelled at many things. I loved music and played in the band and orchestra, but my future was already determined according to my high school counselor. I was just going to get pregnant, so “get out and don’t waste any more of my time”. Anyway, that’s what I heard him say. Get out and don’t waste any more of my time. So I got out. No college applications, no discussion of financial aid, no what do you want to become, do… nothing. Nothing. Thank you, man. Thank you, a hell of a lot.
So, I made him a prophet. Maybe he later patted himself on the back that he had me pegged. But I showed him. I finished school and I could have gone to college; I could have done a lot of things. He doesn’t know… this is what he doesn’t know.
January 1966… 17 years old… still in school – secretly pregnant
Aunt Wilma said. “You tell her or I will”, as she met me at the front door one day after school. Mom was in her bedroom. Aunt Wilma was important.
“Are all girls who get pregnant out of wedlock bad?” “YES!”, Mom said. She’s sorry now. She did the best that she could. She wants me to forgive her. I do. What I didn’t know then was that she had gotten pregnant while in or shortly after nurse’s training and given the baby, her baby, up for adoption.
Why couldn’t she have been more empathetic? Why couldn’t she admit that she could relate to me? Take me in her arms and cry with me. Why would she wait for another decade to tell me her story? I know why really I do. She was ashamed. Always, we are ashamed. We are shamed by language. Bastard. Illegitimate child. Unwed mother. What were the fathers called?
Instead, I was left alone with my heart, my heartbreak, my fear, my dilemma. I wasn’t ashamed. But Mom was ashamed to let anyone know. I was hidden away from the family, from the neighbors, the school, the church. Dad was silent but I know that I had disappointed him. That was papable. Mom knew how to deal with the dilemma.
June 1966 – no more secrets
Mom, Kristi, me and Grandma – and Gypsy
Kristi, Mom and me
I’d love to know what to say…
January 1967 – Out of sight, out of mind? She’s gone but I don’t know where.
Johannah? I named her Johannah. I left her when she was only 3 days old. Put her into the arms of strangers. Don’t cry. Have never cried. I don’t feel anything. In the White Shield Home for Unwed Mothers. Alone. Bursting waters. Dead from the waist down. Shaved, slit open.
Tiny feet just like Jack’s, his fingers too. Fuck him. No! don’t fuck him. Why should I hate him? He’s only a boy like I’m only a girl. And I am not too young to know that love is not enough to make a family. We could make a baby but I had no way of knowing how to make a family.
What was my mother thinking to put me away like this? Hide me. Give away my baby. Old enough to get pregnant but not old enough to take care of the tiny baby, take care of the tiny baby.
Kristi has hers. She started at 15. Steve has his. He started at 17. I don’t have mine. Should I die for this? Suffer for this? Be punished? Shamed? It was out of my hands but I understood that this was right. Better for the baby. Better for me and Jack.
Apple Jacks in the morning. Girls masturbating in the night. Sobs coming from the cots in the overcrowded dormitory. There were too many girls. Cots were lined up one next to the other. Sobbing. We were crowded, pregnant and each with a sad story.
Visitors. I had only Mom; she came on Saturday and bought me a banana popsicle. It was never enough. I wanted, I thought I needed, tuna fish. She couldn’t come in because of so many secrets and the shame. She was forbidden. We ate in the car.
Salvation Army officers with stern faces. Classes about what? I don’t remember. I think I quit thinking then. While I waited, nothing. Just empty days and empty nights.
I borrowed dresses and waited for Jack to come. He never called but when I called him, if he answered, he made promises at my pleading. Me, I was waiting all day.
My house, my world was across the river. I could see my neighborhood from the windows. I was put on hold. They tried to shame me by the words that they spoke: repeating the words, illegitimate, unwed. Like that. But it didn’t work.
Does my body echo my pain today? I know that parents do damage unknowingly. Mom and Dad tried but what about me? What kind of damage have I done? How did that tiny baby feel? She knew only my heartbeat, my smell, the sound of my voice. She didn’t know I was only 17. Then she was in the arms of strangers. New smells, new heartbeats, new voices. Did she miss me? Did she yearn for me? For how long did she cry for me?
Christmas 1967 – with Dad and Steve and Kristi ~ what baby? Where did the baby go?
I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t even know if she was dead or alive. A prostitute or a doctor, or if she was loved and had siblings. Was she addicted to drugs or have children of her own. There was no way of knowing. I signed a paper saying that I would never look for her. My files would be sealed. She came from me, but I gave up all rights and blocked all roads that would lead me to her or her to me. I was told only that she was going to a family who raised horses and had a son but could have no more children. That was good enough, I thought. But that was a lie. A big, fat lie, even.
I left the home without her and went on with my life. I worked, married Jack, had two more children, went to school, divorced after 27 years, traveled, had other relationships. But what was Johannah doing?
Oregon’s 1957 statute sealed the birth certificates of adoptees though it violated the State’s Bill of Rights. These were and are stored at the State Department of Vital Records. This act reflected the social mores of the time, the social stigma of the shameful act of giving birth to an illegitimate child. This act would keep the secret whether the mother wanted it or not. A separate birth certificate would be created with the new name, new mother’s name, and new address and the original birth certificate hidden from the eyes of the adoptee.
In 1984 Oregon created the State Adoption Registry. But I didn’t know that. Initiative 46. So, as soon as I could, I updated my files at the Boys and Girls Aid Society, so if she wanted to find me, she could.
Throughout the years, some people in the family and some friends wanted me to look for her. More shame. More shame. What have you done? they said. I didn’t know if I should look for her. What if her parents hadn’t told her she was adopted. What if, what if, what if… Other women shared that the same thing had happened to them. The same shame, the same sadness, the same wondering. I did tell Hannah and Jesse, my other children, her brother, and sister when they were 11 and 9 years old, that maybe there might be someone looking for us and I told them the story. Hannah was mad, “If you can give one baby away, maybe you can give another baby away too,” she said adamantly as she stomped out the door. I don’t blame her. I understand that for her it was not at all understandable. Here stood her loving mommy, telling her that she had given away a baby to someone else and she didn’t even know where she was.
Many years passed. Fifty to be exact when I received a message on FaceBook. I’m helping my wife look for her birth mother. We think you might be her, it read. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe more than a single beat. I could barely breathe. I called Jack and said I had received this message but I thought it might be a scam. Jack had always been in favor of looking for our long ago baby. “Answer”, was his simple response. So I did. My baby would be fifty years old now. The response came back, and her name was Johannah. There was no doubt, our child had found us.
No, I had no trepidation. I had no fear. I had no reservations. I wanted to know her. I wanted to see her. We emailed each other and we both had so many questions. She had been looking for me for a long time but she found Jack first through Ancestry.com. Then Facebook confirmed that I was her mother, attached to Jack, though we had been long divorced, and Hannah and Jesse were there too. She was anxious and ready to know us. She wasn’t about to wait. Within two weeks, she was on the doorstep with her wife, Raquel.
Our family is complete now. I only regret that Mom and Dad and my sister Kristi will never know her.
Here’s Tracy, Hannah, and Jesse. The family is now complete.
The family: (Back row) Raquel, (Tracy’s wife) Jack, me, Tracy, Jesse. (Front row) Yum Yum, Ancel, Hannah and Enora (missing is Jack’s wife Linda who is taking the photo.
Though I am sorry for any pain I caused my beautiful Tracy by handing her over to strangers. I could not have known the love and joy that she would bring to this family that missed her forever. Thank you, Tracy and Kelly, for not giving up.
…where I toss and turn. But there are nights in this very bed where I fall into dreamless sleep or more possibly they are not nights without dreams; I just can’t listen to them, I cannot, or choose not to remember them. I mustn’t, they are too real; they are too painful. They speak too clearly and they hurt. When I wake, they are a new slap in the face, a new home run, a new right on the head.
I don’t want to wake up to the truth every morning. I don’t want to wake at 2:00AM and know, really know I am on a very scary planet; looking right out my window, I can look at another ball spinning in space somehow kept in its orbit; and there are so many others all in a semi-orderly fashion. If an earthquake hit, I would be shook out of my loft nest.
I don’t care if I die; then why should these dreams, these sleepless nights, hurt? That is not my fear. In fact dying would be a release from the constant feelings… memories. Why shouldn’t they hurt? Aren’t I living simply a physical existence? Isn’t this a dream from which I will wake from one day?
Didn’t he and I know before we came here that this would happen? Didn’t we carefully plan this? Didn’t we know as he and I squeezed into this world and entered into these bodies that we had little control over growing old, that we would meet again? Didn’t he reassure me that though I was going first, he would soon follow and we would know and not forget that I had to have the pain of lost love to understand the mind of god? Didn’t he say that I would act in ways that were illogical; that I would sometimes be crazed and the outcome would be my own doing and that I would have to do what I must, to go where I would arrive, to learn what I need to know?
Why then, with this knowledge, does listening to the damn radio make a tear glisten in the bottom of my eye and then fill the socket until it falls out onto my face and enters my mouth through my open lips mouthing question after question? I taste the salt and the memories cause a flood to fall from my eyes. I am how much water? I am apparently all water. I am all ocean. I am drowning because I can’t hear him anymore.
Didn’t he say it would be like this? Didn’t I live forty-seven milliseconds before I met him. I count them, forty-seven flashes of light, forty-seven lifetimes I lived before we met here. Then it was only five years, five grains of sand, five winks of an eye, five less than that… but it was wise, static, and eternal and now that I have seen him in the flesh and I cannot talk to him, nothing else seems to matter anymore except what I think might be beyond here because I have forgotten.
Home, nothing. Outside, nothing. What I wear, what I eat… nothing. I slept a few hours last night and woke up old. I read an entire book and then I cried alligator tears. I created a pond, a swamp in my bed. I only know what I know, I have no experience beyond me. But I do know what I know. I do know what I feel. I live in “elected wretchedness”. I knew that I was coming here. I made it happen while all around me the doors opened to take me to this place and I stepped in on my own. Alone; I have to be alone. I have to feel like this. I have to hurt. I have to have this pain.
What is he doing today? He wakes with his baby on his chest, laughing… behold! He’s speaking Spanish! Little Spanish baby-talk. He will get up and make coffee and yell at his lover that it is ready and he has already released his love deep into her recesses. He has a car to buy, to fix, to wash, to sell. The phone is ringing and he has a dozen friends waiting outside, cracking open beers and drinking at this early hour. The sun is shining and he is up and out the door. I know this; this was once my life.
I think at times that he remembers me. I push myself at him through the air, through my thoughts, to remind him of what we knew before. I am sure he remembers but it is way back behind diapers, the sex, the dinners, friends, music, dance. I can’t let go of that. He is everywhere, in the radio, in the cat he left behind, in the love letters, the poems, the music and those things that I find to help me forget.
The bones never forget, nor the soul. I am sure that he is mine and I am his forever. Maybe I will kiss him again and we will make love again. I don’t know. But I do know that in this life I ran into someone I recognized from some other time, some other place… we knew we had come here together.
He was dark, I was light. I liked it that way. He was energy, I was repose. I liked it that way.
It’s OK, I tell myself. You’re confused, I say. You have always been confused, I say. You have never known where you belong. You have never recognized your own house; not even as a girl. You have never fit. Why do expect to now, I ask myself. Nothing has changed. You are meant to be alone, I tell myself. You are meant to walk alone. You are meant to push the safety net away and walk on the tight rope and skim along the cliff and regret every move, like it mattered. You are meant to be painfully aware that your existence is nothing in the big, vast sky of things. Who is here to help you? Who is here to answer your why questions? No one.
Don’t expect relief. Don’t be so foolish to think that there is a person on earth that will help you cease and desist. You have to keep walking alone, like always. Now go… walk alone. Don’t be afraid. It’s OK to be sad. This is not your world. But the world is a lovelier place seen through the prism of tears. Only a few have the privilege to know that and you are one of them. Be glad that the world doesn’t seem like a stable place, that each time you put your foot down the earth gives a little and threatens to suck you under. This is the reality. This is not your dream. This is how you will live. It’s OK. There is nothing to fear. Your choices will never seem right. You will never be complete or completely happy. It is not meant to be.
eyeamdust 