Hi everybody. Tonight’s WYFP is brought to you by something I’ve been dealing with all of my life. I wrote about it in a diary here and there was a follow up here. I left a comment in a WYFP recently about it. Now, the saga continues. Long made short: I’m adopted and I’ve found my birth family. I’ll tell you a bit about it after you have the following tattooed on your ankle:
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As an adoptee, I’ve always wondered about the family that was left behind. Recently, over the course of about a month's worth of internet research, I found them, including the address for one of them. So I wrote to her. And now, I’m going to meet my older sister on Tuesday. I mean, the older sister that I’ve never met. I already have an older sister. The one I grew up with. Anyway, my newly found sister (one of three) and I will talk about our mom, who passed away in 2005. Well, her mom, really. I already have a mom. The one that raised me. And we’ll talk about the life she’s lived – the one I left behind. And the life I’ve lived – the one offered to the baby they never knew. It’s all very strange. My subconscious thinks so, too. In recent days, I’ve had memories swarming around me like moths. Memories that haven't surfaced in years, if ever. (...The garter snake that sunned itself on the bush at the bottom of the front walk. Singing songs with my sister in the back seat of the car. Picking huckleberries with my dad. Facing my grandfather across a checkerboard. Holding my arms up crying as my mom left me in an unfamiliar church nursery. The soft, powdery smell of my grandmother’s hugs. Warm shortbread and a sunlit kitchen. Cradling a dying kitten in my hands. Too sleepy to walk to the tent after the campfire had died down. So sleepy...) These memories veer at me out of nowhere. While I’m driving. Doing laundry. In the grocery checkout. Apropos of absolutely nothing. And I almost want to cry. These are mine. These memories. These people. This is my family. Who are these other people that I have found? What do I want from them? What do I have to offer them in return? If you’re not adopted, reading al of this may frustrate you. “You’ve wished for this all your life! You’re finally going to meet the ones who lived the life you left! You don’t have to marry them, for crying out loud!” I guess it sounds wierd even if you are adopted. I've done what most adoptees dream of. I found them. So WMFP? To that I can only say that I have no answer. I don’t know what part of me feels such a sense of loss. Or why. I try to remember that this is all as strange from their side. Meeting the one who was given away. The one they looked for, thinking she was a boy. Finding only dead ends. Finally giving up. How did it feel for them? What did they go through? I know that now I can find out. But at what price? ********************************************************************
From where I sit here at my desk, I can see the 86-year-old pocket watch that was given to my grandfather by the congregation of his church in Sligo, Ireland when he left there to come to this country with my grandmother, 5 months pregnant at the time. From under its protective dome of glass, the names and dates engraved in the polished, gold patina whisper of the tears shed leaving loved ones far behind in a country much beloved - the tight hugs and softly spoken words of encouragement as my great-grandmother smoothed her daughter's hair and looked into her eyes, neither of them knowing whether they would ever see one another again. The quiet hopes and dreams whispered between the young couple on the long shipboard journey to their new land and to their new life. That watch, that journey, those people are a bone-deep, forever part of me, blood or no. The baby born so soon after their arrival in this new land eventually took me in her arms and called me her own. And though I look forward to learning about the family that I left behind so long ago, I am fiercely protective of those whose stories have, from before my birth, defined the path which I have traveled these many years. I've had a remarkable life. This, I know.