...What to do?.

I had to lie to myself for 25 years about who you are to me and who I am to you. Know that it was my way of coping. I signed the damn papers. Another mother wrote recently in her blog that she sobbed while signing. Me too. I remember saying outloud to the social worker that I couldn't even see the paperwork because I was crying so hard.

Celine Dion sings a piece on her "A New Day Has Come" album that says something like "ten days have come and gone...10 days and I'm all alone... and now all I can do is pray and pray.." After 10 days from surrender I believed you were gone forever. Legally this may not have been true, but it is what I believed.

Now in reunion, I am seeing how I have lied to myself for so many years.

And I also know more clearly how much surrender and the years of separation have distorted and twisted our natural relationship. And sometimes, I feel so lost in knowing what to do in this relationship. I try to keep focused on the fact that I am the mother and you are the adult child. I believe that I must keep that foremost in my mind. You are not to take care of me emotionally. You are definitely not to fix me. I must take the responsibility for that. I think I am the one who must take the lead in securing and maintaining trust between us. Sometimes, though, I just do not know how to be in this relationship. I do not know what to do. I am often lost inside our relationship which has been not dead, but rather in a state of dormancy for decades.

You belong in your family. As a member of your family, you grew up with them and have spent years together. You have secured bonds and have had much time for love to flourish between you and your mother and father and all of the rest of your family.

You are also, by nature, a member of my family. And in my family there is a place that only you can fill. It can only be claimed by you and claimed only if you choose. And even though we have our renewed relationship, I don't always know what you want from me or might need from me and I can easily lose my sense of knowing what to do.

I know that I want to step over my fears each day. I want to swim away from being in the middle of the losses. I want our interactions and relationship to draw not from a lake of losses, but instead from that spring of love that broke through on the day that I learned of your conception.

My gut says that you need to see a reflection of yourself in me. And that I simply need to love you and to accept you as the unique and wonderful adult human being that you are. And to love the man you continue to become. But, you see, I really always don't know how to do that very well. I would love to hear better from you what you want from me. And I wonder if you really don't know yourself yet what you might want or need from me; and if ever you do know, perhaps would not be able to tell me.

So, the most pressing question about you for me on a daily basis is this: What do I do with these bursts of energy that emerge from within me that are meant for you. Yes, I have other chidren still growing who do need me on a daily basis. I suppose that I could direct this energy into them; but it feels to me like this energy is really meant for just you. And you know what? I want that energy to be used solely for you.

Yet, you are grown and do not need a mother to quiz you on weekly spelling words; to prod you into asking your homecoming date the color of her dress and to make sure that her corsage is ordered. You do not need a parent to help you pack for your overnight school camping trip next week; nor to listen carefully as you ponder a declaration of college major/minors.

I suppose I will just continue to do what I am doing. We seem to be building up a good relationship between us in real time; the present time. It continues to feel more solid under my feet as more time passes. I continue to feel my way along the walls of this reunion maze. I think I read this very fitting analogy once...on some days, the maze is a fun house because when I walk face first into a glass wall I am able laugh at myself and laugh with you, too, because we are walking together. And we do laugh together,often. Sometimes it is more a house of horrors maze for me because either I choose to stay behind, or I sometimes get stuck, while you walk on ahead of me. I am trapped there staring and pondering for too long the distortions I see displayed in a magnifying mirror. I am simply stranded there until I regain movement and I am able to catch up with you, again. Only then, can we both keep moving along.

I will continue to travel to see you when I can. You don't seem to mind my visits and it seems that you may even prefer that I, for now, be the one to travel to see you. I will try to talk more frequently. Fear still takes me over and I don't make the effort to call. And the relationship does seem to have taken a hit or two after too much time passes without a telephone call.

Mothering energy can, of course, be used either to nurture or to smother any still growing or adult child. What to I do with it? How do I use it for good? What do I do with all of this energy that seems to exist just for you? I think I will have to bring another project out of storage. I have just the right fabrics stored along side the sketches you helped me draw for your next quilt. And I will get started on it. That would be a very good use of this swirling energy.

And as each new day comes, I will pray for you and I will send many good thoughts to you. And when I am working on your new quilt, many little prayers will be prayed for you as I stitch and piece. I can pray and pray...for you; this I can do. I think that you and each of my sons; the ones grown and not quite yet grown, whether they know it or not and whether they can ask it of me or not, really do need me to do that for them.

And I ask that you and each one of my sons might send a little prayer or good thought out for me when each new day has come.