we are everywhere

Phoebe; are you there?

2010-09-13T09:05:00.001-05:00

Looking for Phoebe. We have lost contact. Would love to hear from you...dbannie

u-tube link

2010-08-07T13:40:00.001-05:00

A job well done to the creators of this u-tube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZGwqHVnKs

All my best,

Dbannie

Birthdays

2010-02-21T09:35:00.002-06:00

My son's birthday is coming, soon. And today is my mother's birthday. My father's and brother's birthdays are coming up, soon. All fall within about a five week period. The season of birthdays.

I was invited yesterday to go along with my mother to meet the of her newest great grandbabies. I declined as I couldn't set myself up for the triggger of seeing my mother holding a new baby so close to my son's birthday. I know that it would take about three days for me to recover emotionally. It was a step in the right direction of self care.

I did accept the invitation to a party this weekend that was in part a birthday celebration for my mother. I decided that I could go for a couple hours with minimum recovery time later on for me.

It was great party with fun people and great food and hospitality. My mother and I even had the chance to talk for a while. My son and his adoption are topics we rarely about. Usually it is a just on the surface and in passing comment. I have learned not to let her in because she just wants me to be OK with it all. And I am not.

While we were sitting down, she pulled out some things she had saved for me; sweet things like baby cards and such. Then, someone came over to us and just started talking about the child that he has adopted. It was the kind of situation I am often in with people's cats. How do they know that I am allergic to them? The cats always gravitate towards me! And this new adoptive father found me, too.

I am not comparing this man to a cat. Please understand that.

This man seems like a kind person and he has adopted a child who really did need a new family. The child's mother had died and was in foster care.

In the middle of him telling his story, I wanted to bolt. I was afraid I could begin to cry and I did not want to be so vulnerable just then in from of my mother nor did I want to embarrass the hosts of the party.

Suddenly, I found my mother and myself having an indirect conversation embedded within this man's conversation about his own recent adoption.

I blurted out that his situation is the only time when adoption is good. ( Mom, the loss of my son to adoption was not adoption as it is meant to be. We shouldn't have let him go!)

The man talked more about his daughter and her loss and his struggle to help her with her feelings.

My mom said a couple of times, " Everything works out in the end." (Daughter, it all worked out alright. Don't you see, it all worked out?)

I wouldn't look her in the eye because I didn't want to even minimally validate her statements.

From the outside looking in, she might believe it all worked out because I do know my son, again.
I can't or perhaps won't tell her that it really didn't all work out so well. She needs to believe it did. And I need to keep my thoughts about adoption from her. I can't really explain clearly the reasons why other than that my relationship with my son is precious and I won't let any of my family interfere with it or damage it again.

Of course it all worked out. Everything works out with some end. Adoption works out to an end but for most of us with a lot of pain and confusion.

A Christmas Visit

2009-12-11T12:39:00.004-06:00

This year, my son's father is going to spend his first Christmas with our son. I am very excited for them. It is their first Christmas together. Ever. Unless you count the Christmas before our son was born. We were all together on that Christmas.

I am so happy for the both of them to finally have a Christmas together and for this chance for healing.

Last year, I was was the one who was able to spend some time over the holidays with our son. It was my first ever. Unless you count the Christmas he grew safely in my womb. There were little moments of healing; like sharing the best-cookies-ever made by his little brother and playing football with at least 3 of my boys. I experienced bits of heaven and moments of pure peace and joy over the last Christmas. However, as good as reunion might be, there is still for me, as the mother, the hovering specter of sorrow for all that was lost.

I just can't shake the loss side. And maybe it is not a personal or moral defect. Maybe it is there because I am his mother and so much WAS lost.

During this past year, my son's father and I have been able to talk to one another after decades of separation and estrangement. Finally!!

Let's just call my son's father "Charlie".

Charlie and I were able to stay together after our son's birth for, ironically, about 9 months...but mortally wounded, we went our separate ways after surrendering our child to the agency in closed adoption and sealed records. Charlie went his direction while grieving openly and I went off in my own direction while in a severe state of shock induced by pain and anger; all buried under my sedative of the adoption fog.

For the past year, when Charlie and I have been finally able to talk, we have compared our memories and are better able to understand what happened to the three of us. Talking with Charlie has helped me heal. We can be amicable. I better trust my gut these days and I do believe my gut when it says that there are healing benefits to our son, as well, when his father and I can be friends.

(I also have the fear that it is painful for our son that Charlie and I are friends still; you know, all the might have beens and even anger that he might feel.....)

During some our our discussions, Charlie and I have broached the subject of:

?What can our relationships "BE" with our son? And we try to put words to our relationships with our son.

Our son is an adult and does not need a daddy or a mommy at this time. Yet, I love my son as I do my others; those grown and not grown. In the best of adult children and parent relationships, I believe there is an element of true friendship and respect. And Charlie and I have been talking about this, together.

However, the other day, Charlie was talking about wanting to continue being open to our son, so that our son will better know him and better know about himself. And so that our son will learn things about himself that he didn't have the chance to learn while growing up because he was, of course, being raised by his adoptive parents.

I am relieved that Charlie has this wisdom. I believe that this self knowledge and validation is some of what our son really needs.

The greater realization that our son needs this kind of self knowledge at the age of his mid 30's!!!!! is a great dagger to the middle of my heart and soul. I didn't know that this would be a repercussion for my son as a result of his surrender and adoption. I really didn't know.

arrgggghhhh.....

Anyways. Here's to the holidays! A Merry Christmas to you, Charlie. When you travel to be with our son, give him the biggest hug from me, please.... My Christmas wishes are for healing for you and our son.

me

Grocery Cart Kisses

2009-06-30T12:49:00.007-05:00

I missed them. The Grocery Cart Kisses.... You know the scene you can see several times at the grocery store on any given afternoon. You stop in to the market on a crowded Saturday for apples, paper towels and hot dog buns; or a make a quick stop in after work for pasta, salad and french bread and you see it.

A mother finishes paying for her food and then scoops her child up from the front of the cart and delivers a kiss to her child's sweet, chubby cheek. I believe that those kisses are part of the daily dose of affection manifesting the love that helps to center a child in his or her sense of being and well being.

I missed giving all of those grocery shopping kisses. So many of them. I am still horrified and angry that I was not deemed worthy enough to raise my own child and that some social worker was allowed to choose who would raise my precious child.

Sometimes it just hits me like a freight train when I allow myself to really, really think about another woman raising my child. A woman about whom I really know very little. My adult child keeps us all very separate. I believe that is the coping mechanism which allows him keep all of his parents in his life.

A few years ago, I was standing in line behind a woman at the grocery store. The woman behind me was talking to her and I was caught in a cross fire of adoption conversation. The woman behind asked of the woman in front of me how her newly adopted child was adjusting.

She actually asked, " Is the child affectionate to you.? " Excuuuuse me, unenlightened woman!!!!???"....I felt like wringing her neck.

This poor baby had just been stripped of her country, heritage, language and family and had been brought across the ocean to her brand new and "better" life to live with complete strangers. And now she was expected to be "affectionate?"

So much wrong is with adoption.......

Having a bad adoption day.

Coming Further Out

2009-05-01T11:18:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, I went to my supervisor to ask about the possibility of my first born being added to the list of my children who receive some pretty nice perks.

My voice shook and wavered and I know that I sounded like I might cry. However, I did not cry.
Huge relief! I know that several years ago, I would not have even been able to get the words out of my mouth to a supervisor that I unwillingly surrendered my child to adoption due to lack of support from my family and the family of my child's father.

I asked if my supervisor would entertain my request and guide me to someone who could answer my question. She agreed to take my request to another supervisor.

I struggled beforehand, though. Will I loose my job over this? Is there some morals clause that I didn't notice when I accepted an offer of hire? Some of the old shame came back. My instinct to duck and cover and simply disappear returned.

I think that I have been able to heal, some. I am asking if my oldest child can be added to my list of family with this employer.

I needed to ask for myself and for him. Even if my question gets a "no", I did it for my self and for my son. I want my son to know that I finally stood up for him and claimed him as my son to an "authority".

Yet, if my employer does decline my request, will that be one more hurt for him? One more piece of evidence, a slap in the face that his was given away; that his mother let him go?

I am slightly morose, today with Mother's Day around the corner...another difficult day in adoptoland.

Adoptoland is not a term I coined. It fits though.

Once I was reunited and emerged from the completely dark, "TUNNEL OF if you LOVE your baby, you will surrender him" I was able to see finally see this amusement park of adoption where I live. Some of the rides here are exhilarating..such as finally getting to see the wonderful face of my son. Sometimes, however, I am pulled down by some kind of g force inertia onto a ride that will not stop spinning and makes me naseated... I literally want to throw up and for as long as I struggle, I cannot undo the buckle by myself. This park has a fence I cannot scale. Where is the damned exit??? Oh yeah, it disappeared for me with a timed out period of revocation ( which I believe I was lied to about) and 25 years of time.

Yeah..I am not a happy guest in adoptoland. Happy to be reunited; but not happy to be here in the first place.

Thoughts After a Break

2009-04-08T08:29:00.006-05:00

What a long break in time since I have posted. It is also my spring break from school so this week I got out of here for a very short trip to NYC. I got way from the suburbs and went to Manhattan. I cannot at all picture myself living in my 60's, 70's (and hopefully beyond that!) in the suburbs. When the children I had/have the great privilege of raising were babies, my neighborhood was a morgue and it is still with no humans seen on the street during the daytime. Only at night are humans spotted. So, as soon as my "baby" is out of the nest; I. Am. Outta here.

I feel absolutely trapped in the burbs. I need people around; a coffee shop on the corner, a church a couple of blocks away in which to take a short respite during the day, and lots of children, teenagers and many, many voices and lovely, lively chatter around me as I listen out my window or climb up onto a city bus.

And I have been preparing the husband by my not so subtle hints. He is slow to change and I think that he needs the idea spoon fed to him over the next 7 years or so. That is all assuming that we can afford to live anywhere else with our mortgage nearly paid off!

Yesterday, I focused on getting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I spent a few hours there wandering though rooms filled with Roman and Greek statues and medieval art; not particularly inspiring to me; at least not yesterday. However, the display of pieces from New Guinea were amazing. The ancestor totem poles were unlike anything I have ever seen; detailed human forms stacked two high; foot upon shoulders. And I saw musical gongs that were carved from tree trunks which were 12 to 15 feet high! Astounding. I took pictures with my dumb little phone to try to send to my oldest son, a musician. I wonder if he has ever seen anything like these giant percussion instruments with faces carved at the top. They certainly have personality.

And in that particular gallery, a placard described how among one of these peoples, all deaths were believed to be caused by an enemy and were to be avenged. Quite a thought. (However, this does fit in oddly with my own theology in that all death is caused by an enemy. And does fit into Holy Week. I will, however, spare any reader my further thoughts on this and an ensuing pseudo sermon.)

Later on, I had a bowl of golden squash soup dotted with caraway seeds and prosciutto. Certainly, it was the most expensive bowl of soup I have ever had at $10; however the atmosphere was part of the bill. To hear the melodies of many languages all around me and to see a little patch of Central Park just out the glass wall was all worth the price of the soup.

Poor Jose the barristo; he just couldn't keep the cappuccinos flowing quickly enough. The waiters always to the counter, " Josito, Paco; dos cappuccinos y un platito." "Josito, tres cappuccinos." And he was serving all the counter customers, too. Pobrecito Jose. He needed more help at the counter, yesterday.

I think I went to Manhattan, in part, to take a break from the business and distractions I put into my life order to run away on a daily basis from the reality and the consequences of the surrender and the adoption of my son.

My trip worked for a while. Until I sat at the lunch counter and wondered what kind of day, my son, Paco, was having while working at his cafe 3000 miles away. Until, I waited on the street corner for a bus and thought that he grew up seeing NY license plates on the upstate roads and streets he traveled.

Central Park was domed yesterday by slate clouds and dotted by the sweet rows of white daffodils and glowing gold forsythia shrubs all swaying under cold, gray winds. Children played on soccer teams in little ravines and mothers pushed strollers along paths edged by bright spring green grass.

And again, I was stunned by the fact that it was another woman who pushed my son in stroller when he was little. And it was another mother who stopped to give him a snack and wipe his nose on chilly, windy spring days. And that it was another woman who had the enormous privilege of teaching him how to think about life and death and enemies and friends and most importantly about love. And another woman who had the privilege of teaching him how to view the beautiful being that he is and how to view the whole wondrous and stunningly beautiful world around him.

Three decades later and this shocks me. It is absurd that my family and my son's father's family thought it was acceptable that our son be handed over to complete strangers. And that my son's father and I were never to know what had become of him. Never to know if he were dead or alive.

Oh...that is right. I always forget. I never will make it be a rational sequence of events. Silly me.
I think it is human nature to try to make sense of it, though.

And it is human nature to want to run from that which gives us pain. It is sheer survival that a mother goes into denial when her child is gone and she is powerless to know or do anything about it.

I tried to take a break from surrender and adoption, yesterday. Well, sort of a break.

Today it is back to the suburbs for me. Back to the realities of adoption and reunion. Back to trying to love my son as best as I can with the real consequences of surrender and adoption in the mix. Back to living my life with the disabling consequences of surrender and adoption.

I would not wish being a surrendering mother on anyone; not upon even upon an enemy.

Mommas, I hope you do all you can to keep your babies with you. Fight now, while you can.

Dad

2008-11-21T09:52:00.017-06:00

Dad,

Thank you for the birthday card and the check. I used the money while on a short trip out to see my first born son. I needed the cash for travel and didn't have time to go to the bank. However, I am going to send the same amount to a young single mother who I know could use a bit of extra cash.

You must be settled into your winter home by now. Just before you left, we met for a supper and I asked you if you were going to arrive in time to practice for your choir's Christmas concert.
You said that the spring concert is the most important and that it didn't matter to you so much if you were in town for all of the Christmas concert rehearsals.

I am proud of you. You are in your seventies and still singing. You sing with a choir in your winter home and I am so proud that you still use your voice simply because it brings you joy. And I am proud that it is a part of you.

When I was a girl, one of the most beautiful memories I have is standing next to you in church and being able to hear your singing voice, especially at Easter time. There are some Easter hymns that can flash me right back into a pew of our church.

Mom sang, too. And she played piano. The music comes from you both, you know. All five of my sons sing. Some have more musical inclination than others; but all are artists. A couple of them bury it all down within themselves or only allow it to be channeled out in a way that they feel in control of "it."

That intangible "it". The "it" that is the music; the talent, the charisma. That performance gene.

Do you ever think of the son I lost? You never speak of him. I have some empathy for you. I can try to imagine how horrible it would be to be closer to the end of your life than to the beginning and realize that one of your grandchildren, the firstborn of your firstborn, was legally severed and physically torn apart from your family.

You lost horribly. My son lost horribly. He needed to be with you. You needed to be with him.

Do you know that his grandfather, whom he loves dearly, shares the same exact name as him? Yet, my son, the musician, told me that his grandfather does not much enjoy music.

Are you not at least a little bit horrified to hear that?

Yes, I am angry still with you for your part in the loss of my son to adoption. So very angry, at times. I try to forgive you and sometimes I think I have forgiven, until I come further out of the denial and realize another consequence of my son's surrender and adoption; only to be slapped back into the pain and anger.

I try to imagine what you were thinking when he was born. Just this morning, I was thinking that maybe the surrender happened, in part, because you and mom were born just after the depression and that you grew up with parents who were still reeling from it. And I know you lost your mom when you were only 16. I am so sorry. And I can only imagine how that affected you. You helped raise your baby brother and then enrolled in college for one year until you went into the service. And that was the end of your college career.

So, there I was a sophomore in college when my son was born; seeming to repeat your pattern.
And I was the first on both sides of the family to who might graduate from college. Raising my son did not fit into those plans, did they? Surrender and adoption were the plans that would get me back on the track that you had in mind for me.

Why wasn't raising my son and keeping him in our family acceptable to you? Did you not like yourself enough for me to be like you?

Why didn't you trust me to raise my son and eventually finish my degree? With your support and temporary financial help, I could have done both. You and mom were not struggling financially and even if you had been, money or lack of it should not be reason for life long loss of a child from any family.

I got the degree. Two in fact, Dad, but I would exchange them both in a heartbeat to have had the priviledge of raising my son.

Do you remember the fall after my son was born? He was 5 months old at the time and 4 months gone from our family. We had really no idea if he was dead or alive. Does that thought not horrify you?

You drove me back to college for the start of my junior year. I had rented an off campus apartment that fall which was located way out on a country road. You stopped at the store and bought me a bike for getting to and from campus.

I think now that the return trip to campus and the bicycle purchase must have made you feel "as if" your daughter had been transformed back to her premotherhood state. In your mind, was that drive back to Wisconsin a form of time travel? A "do over" for me? There are no "do overs", Dad. Only illusions of them.

I know that I can't travel back and get my baby. So many years have been lost. My son and I are reunited and his existence and knowing him are pure joy for me. I am able to separate the relationship that we have now from all the lost time. However, our relationship is mounted upon a longterm separation and at times the pain of that separation is horrendous.

I am sorry for you that you do not know him. When I was with him a few weeks ago, I saw so many of your mannerisms and heard the inflection of your voice in his. Why should I be surprised? He is your grandson.

November is both joyous and melancholy for me, Dad. In November of 2001, I saw my son's face, again, for the first time in over 25 years. That was the sweetest and most joyous day of my life. November also brings memories of that first fall without my son. I remember walking by the fields to and from campus. Only in those quiet moments alone, could I allow myself to really think of my son. Emotionally, I was was in a state of shock and physically was just going through the motions of being a student.

I do remember hearing the music while walking along the road. I couldn't bear to feel the vibrations of the grief inside my heart and body. The only sad vibrations I was able to feel were outside of me and all around me in the fields. I heard the wind strumming of the dry rows of corn stalks like guitar strings. And the only singing I heard was the despairing hum of the wind's voice weaving itself through the dark branches of the solitary oaks at the edge of the road.

When you sing in the spring, I hope you remember him. His birthday is in the spring and only couple of weeks before yours. Do you remember his birthday?

Me.

Makes me want to scream!

2008-11-09T08:41:00.006-06:00

Yesterday at the airport, I saw a couple with a little boy of about 2 years old. I did a triple take as I was so confused. However, not as confused as I think this little boy will be in about 10 years or so.

The woman was pushing the child in a stroller and the man was nearby. The boy had beautiful light brown skin; black hair and bright brown eyes. The woman clearly belongs to a religious group. She was wearing a long prairie style cotton dress and wore her hair up in a little white bonnet. She had very light skin as did the man.

I am so enraged for the young child. I do realize that I do not know the circumstances of these people. Maybe, they are just caring for him? I really don't know.

Here is my big "however". However, I can't help but surmise that they have adopted this little boy. And I can't help but feel for him and want to scream for what probably lies ahead for him. I think that for him there will be great confusion, massive oscillations of anger and oppressive periods of struggling to find his identity.

When I am not working at the airport, I work at an immersion school. One of my students is adopted from South America. He is the sweetest kid. I am not as enraged for him because at least he is learning Spanish and someday, if he chooses to find his mother, will be able to speak with her.

I have lived long enough to have learned that you really don't know about someone from appearances. I am guilty of ignoring that premise today and after having seen this little group of travelers, I simply want to scream.

Trigger at Work Yesterday

2008-09-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

I was starting to work my first flight of the morning when a man of about 55 or 60 came to my counter. He wanted to verify that the inbound flight he was expecting was arriving soon at my gate.

I verified for him that the plane was scheduled to arrive to that gate but the flight had been delayed.

He explained that he was meeting his grandchild who was just 5 days old.

I said that the mother was certainly traveling quite soon after having delivered a baby.

He paused, not seeming to quite to understand me. And then said that his son and daughter in law were adopting.

They were scheduled to arrive at my gate.

I remained professional and suggested to the man that he watch for any gate changes.

My own flight schedule changed, so I went off to a different gate.

However, I couldn't forget about what was happening a few gates down. Should it really be legal to take a child from his or her mother at only 3 or 4 days of age?

My heart is breaking for a new mother three states away from her child.

Oversold

2008-03-01T19:26:00.003-06:00

Last weekend, was tough at the airport. The storms on the east coast had a ripple effect here in Minneapolis. Flights were canceled. And some flights were overbooked for the next few days.

I work as a gate agent sending out the regional jets; 50 to 75 seaters. And I send the prop planes that have 34 seats. I send passengers to all parts of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and a a couple of cities in Canada. But also to Montana, Ohio, and some cities on the east coast.

I send flights to an east coast city that is the city in which my son spent most of his growing up years. I didn't know, of course, where he grew up until reunion.

For decades, I did not know if my son was dead or alive. And if he was alive, I had no idea of where in this great wide world he was growing up.

Occasionally at the airport, I am assigned to organize the flight to this city, board the passengers. and send the flight. And it is always triggering for me. The PSTD kind of triggering.

My anxiety shoots up and I can't work this flight without wondering if that middle age woman who looks like a teacher was his science teacher in high school. Or, if that one couple wainting so patiently, lives down the street from his old house. I wonder if the young man who's ID states he's a resident of the same city 'burb in which my son grew up, graduated from high school with him.

Working that flight really is difficult for me. However, when the flight is uncomplicated and easy, I have been able to desensitize myself enough so that I can successfully work it and send it out on time.

When last weekend was a huge mess at the airport, I was assigned the flight to city of my son's childhood. It was a bad situation. Oversold and no seats on any flights to send people on for 3 days. It is pretty hard to convince people to volunteer giving up their seats when there is no flight available for three days. It was all I could do to keep the triggers down and work the flight.

And there was a young girl, traveling as an unaccompanied minor who had a very hard time saying good bye to her dad at the gate. Parents and kids saying good bye is sometimes hard to watch while doing my job.

The flight eventually went. I got it out and had to try to get two people who were stuck in Minneapolis to this city, somehow. After about almost another hour working on it, we did get them rebooked.

So, the next day, while riding the shuttle back to the airport for work, I decided that I needed to help myself avoid such a triggering night by never working that city when the flight is oversold. I know I can work it when it is not oversold or weight restricted. I can successfully manage to keep anxiety at bay when it is a smooth flight to work. And I decided that whenever I am assigned to work that particular east coast city and it is oversold, I will ask for a different city or ask for another person to work it with me.

It was a decision for self care/preservation. I don't need to subject my body and mind to that kind of PSTD related stress.

I clocked in, checked my concourse assignment and headed back up to the B concourse, where I had worked the previous night. I picked up my flight assignment schedule, and saw that once again, I was assigned to this same city. Knowing it was probably oversold again, I checked. Just As I expected... Oversold with nothing available for 2 days.

So when I saw the coordinator, I told her that I needed to talk to her about my schedule.
I told her that I couldn't do that city when it was oversold. I would take another oversold flight or even an extra flight that night, but that I couldn't work that flight.

She wanted to know why. And I told her why. And I told her about how things were different in the 70's. And that single mothers were not supported. She said she understood that things were different, then.

She is also a young single mother to be. I think she is several years younger than my oldest son.
And I asked her if she had a lot of support. She said that she does. I am so relieved to hear that.

She also had a lot of questions about my reconnection with my son. The questions she asked made me wonder if she was adopted.

I am thinking that it was perhaps, "meant to be" that this young woman was my flight cord last Saturday night. And it was good that she heard what it was like years ago. I got a chance to tell her that maternity homes are making a comeback and marketed as a resort for young mothers, rather than the prison like maternity homes of decades past. Sadly, the adoption is the same goal for even the modern day institution. And she heard me say that I would never wish any mother to be unnecessarily separated from her child by adoption.

32 years later, I am still sad that I was oversold on adoption for my son. I didn't willingly sign the surrender papers, but I unwittingly and willingly walked into the lion's den of a center for "unwed mothers" in 1975.

I'll tell you what I am grateful for. I am grateful that this young mother to be has alot of support.
I am grateful I had a chance to tell her my story. I am grateful that I am getting healthier in my post surrender recovery and can be proactive in reducing one big triggering situation that is adoption related.

If this young mom to be is an adoptee, I do hope that she feels comfortable enough to ask me more about reunion and searching.

And to my first born son, I send a cargo full of love on the next flight out to the city where you are now! Even if that flight is oversold and weight restricted, I know there is plenty of room for all my good thoughts and wishes to send to you.

Maternity

2007-12-31T17:09:00.001-06:00

2007-12-09T13:09:00.000-06:00

Since I've noticed that I still have the privilege of being linked to other bloggers, I decided I needed to write at least a short entry.

Am happy to say that I didn't go anywhere too far away from bloggerland. I have been content to read other bloggers and haven't had the strong urge to write over the past several months, even though the exponential consequences of the surrender of my son have not gone away. I wish that I could take a break from the insanity of it all. I know that some days, I work too long and too hard, just to try to keep the daily reality of it all catching up with me.

Many good things have happened in my life over the past half a year. I have had some really good employment opportunities. We really need the money. Nearly 2 decades of college tuition bills loom ahead...

aaaannnd, I am fortunate enough to find a boss who is very open to flexibility in my working days. This is extremely important to me.

Employment issues seem to be all falling together for me, just now. And that is a huge relief.

Other good things not employment related: My son was recently able to travel to see us for a visit. It was so wonderful to have him here. And, I saw his father again for the first time in nearly 3 decades. We finally spoke to one another and it was good and healing, I believe, for the three of us.

There is so much to sort through in having seen and spoken to my son's father, again. He has "lived" in my house for 30 years and has been a "presence" in my life, despite the insanity of having avoided facing him at all costs. The heaviest cost has probably been to me. However, I know I must be cautious about any further communications with him. I need to be respectful and act out of the highest forms of love for each of the people in my life and in my son's life.

So there is my short post. I am still here.

And if you are first time visitor to my blog, I will reintroduce myself. I am a natural mother who unwillingly surrendered her first born son to adoption over 30 years ago. I am not an unusual person. You will see me in many places. In fact, just about everywhere.

I am a teacher in the public school system. I am a gate agent at the airport. I am the mother to the classmates of your children. Mom to your son's college roommate. My kids play on your son's sports teams. I sit next to you in the pew on Sunday and am sometimes right in line behind you at the checkout. I am in many places. In fact, just about everywhere most people go.

And mothers like me are everywhere around you, too.

Wasting Time

2007-04-13T09:47:00.002-05:00

9:40 a.m. Have been at this computer for over an hour. My morning is almost gone. I have the whole day off and a huge list of stuff to do, but I know that I will spend too much time reading a new book.

The title is "Without a Map" by Meredith Hall. I trooped over to my local bookstore to order it immediately after reading only one review because I want desperately to know how this mother of adoption loss came to forgiveness of her parents and society.

My efforts toward forgiveness have evolved to being willing to forgive on a daily basis and forgiving through a source of greater love than I am humanly capable. I am still looking for more answers on how to forgive my parents, the agency and society.

I went last night about 8:00 to get it. Along for the ride was my 9 year old, who of course told me at 7:00 pm that he needed at least one autobiographical book of Michael Jordan by_________.

(and the answer to this fill in the blank is....tomorrow or today. Either is correct; depending on your time reference.)

"Of course, dear. Why would I expect you to tell about something that's due tomorrow before the last hour?"

So, after dinner and kitchen clean up we drove to the bookstore. I made my son go up to the clerk in the young readers' section to ask for help in locating books for his project. She is a 30ish woman who has helped me in the store before. Actually, she assisted me about a year ago when I ordered a different book. For some reason, I told her that I was reunited with my son. And, guess what? Of course!!...She has a sister with whom she has been reunited. She was quite encouraging to me that given time, it can get better and my sons may just be able to develop their own relationships despite the separations.

Last night, I was tempted to ask if she remembered our conversation. I was curious for a little update on her family, but I didn't ask. The store was too busy and the timing just didn't feel right.

My son found a paperback biography on Michael Jordan appropriate to his reading level that cost only $4.99. Yeah! Mission accomplished and in a very timely manner.

After paying for our books, we wandered into the mall. I wanted to go into my favorite local gallery for just a few minutes. I love the fiber art they have and some of the blown glass work. I know I could never afford to buy any of it. But...maybe if I work at it I might be able to approximate the effect that one artist gets with his silks. Someday maybe with effort and time.

So, my son and I spent a just a little time in the gallery after I admonished him to not touch anything. He didn't. Unless you count touching a ceramic sculpture with your nose as touching.
I do of course and don't think I will take him inside that gallery again for a long while.

We also talked and laughed. An errand my youngest and I had to do yesterday, under the pressure of time, turned into delightful evening.

One of the most painful things for me to accept is all the lost time with my first born son.
I missed all those everyday running errands times. The simply wasting time; just being together times.

Since being reunited, my oldest son and I have accumulated a few days just doing simple errands. Some days have carried the pressure of time to meet obilgations and to get to places on time. Others we have spent with no time pressures and could simply be. Sometimes it seems that we have never been separated and the decades don't matter; but more in the spiritual and less tangible realms of our relationship.

Until something happens or is said to remind me that it really did happen in the physical realm. A painful slap that spins me back down into the crazy making of adoption until we slide back onto the upside of the oscillation which returns the sense of never having been apart. Insanity, yes. The insanity of adoption is my reality.

One reunited mom friend of mine has encouraged me to just do the normal everyday things with my oldest son; like running errands, going to a ball game, making chili or having a cookout. This is some of the most excellent reunion advice that I have ever received. And we have done these things and other very ordinary activities like banking and grocery shopping. And sometimes not much of anything in between an errand or two.

I think the days I've spent with my son in doing the ordinary and everyday activites with the just the right smidgen of wasted of time in between all those activities have been most healing for me.

Can't wait to get back to that book today. I am only on page 16. I do want to find out about her reunion but mostly how Hall gets to the forgiveness part. Her writing, so far, is some of the most poetic prose I have read. I am going to really take my time in reading this book.

I think I will have to force myself to read it very slowly. I may even have to read it twice;
and don't even think for a moment that it would be a waste of my time.

Lurking at My Own Blog

2007-04-10T06:25:00.000-05:00

I stop by and there are no new entries. I log into my own blog and say hello once in a while, but there have been no new posts. I think I must be a lurker at my own blog, then.

I did, however, write a letter yesterday to someone I know who might be able to get some media exposure for open records here in this state. Making that effort yesterday really seemed to blow away the swirling cloud of energy that hovers over me around adoption. I know that I do need to do more with all this energy.. If I try to lasso it in just to keep it in check when it gets too big, it all comes crashing down on me and keeps me weighted down.

Also waiting for the winter skies to change over. We may get snow today..blech. But at least we have been drenched in sunshine. I don't care too much as long as the sun shines.

March Madness

2007-03-13T23:05:00.000-05:00

My head sometimes hurts. Gonna explode hurts. Not because of my work.
And not because I have four kids I am raising... and one I did not...

It is because that during the last five years since I have been reunited with my son, I have been trying to make sense of his adoption. And make sense of what happened to me since his surrender. It is difficult to absorb where he was and what happened to him for 25 years and to make sense of why he was not with me for 25 years. And to know why I was not deemed worthy enough of the dignity to know what had become of my son. And why my son was not deemed worthy of the human dignity and right to know what had become of me or his father.

In only the past 5 years I have begun to see how my whole family; my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, my grandmother, and mostly how my other children have been affected by the surrender and legal amputation of my son from our family.

I have been sometimes exhausted. Simply exhausted; mostly mentally and emotionally. I have dear friends who have said to me, "You keep trying to make sense of it, but adoption is crazy. It will never make sense."

But I really, really want to have things make sense. Or at least be logical in a convoluted way. The surrender and adoption of my son will never make sense. It will never make sense to me that other mothers were and continue to be coerced and separated from their children. It is simply madness to me.

I hope to come to greater acceptance of what happened by my son's adoption and to greater acceptance of what "is" in our lives. However, I do believe that I will always be simply horrified that it ever happened in the first place.

My oldest son's birthday falls right in the middle of March. I was talking to my 9 year old son this afternoon while we were outside on one of the first mild spring days of the month. It was of those sensory confusing days in Minnesota when you can close your eyes to rest in radiant sunlight and suck in sweet warm air which smells of the earth. But then you open up your eyes to see neighhood kids wearing their summer shorts and standing in the three foot high snow mounds near the curb. They are lobbing crusty, crunchy snowballs at some friends who are whizzing by on bikes that have just been reclaimed from the garage.

During our short conversation, my youngest helped clear away some of this confusing March madness for me. I suggested to the 9 year old that we could call him to say "happy birthday". As my youngest continued to ride his red bike beside me, I also said that he (my oldest) says he thinks of us as family.

My youngest then said that he doesn't have to "think" of his brother as family. He said that he just "is" family.

How simple is that? Makes sense.

Energy

2007-01-18T14:24:00.000-06:00

Am just at home today, and as one of my sons says, "Taking care of business."
I have the laundry machines running while I have been completing online
applications for substitute teaching positions. I got all of my continuing ed credits completed, and passed my class! So now I am again eligible to teach in this state. Yeah! Seems like the day has simply slipped by me.

The house is quiet for exactly 27 more minutes. And then my 13 year old bouncing "baby boy" will bust through the door with his overload of energy. Mega watts of it! I usually want to send him out to run around the house about a dozen times. (My mother in law said that she used to send one of her boys out to run around the house after school just to burn off some energy....I love that woman!)

I think any middle school teacher should automatically be a candidate for canonization. To be creative enough to get past all those hormonally induced
energy surges and actually teach their students is truly heroic.

Joy has been talking about the inexplicable and mysterious occurances that we live with each day. And I want to latch on to that thought a little bit today.

To me, the energy that flows from one person to another is a mystery. The energy that radiates from my middle school son can reenergize me but it can also tighten my neck muscles in just a few seconds. Sure, some people might attribute it to a learned physiological response or simply to a reflex response to loud noises and sudden movements....but...
I believe that it is much more that and cannot yet fully be explained. We have not the tools to perceive and measure such energy. And I agree with Joy that we do not have the language to describe some of the mysteries of ourselves and others.

Though I cannot prove it, I believe whole heartedly that the energy that flows between me and each of my sons is a unique dynamic force and is an extenstion of our beings. I might go so far as to say it is of the spirit....Well, I don't have a solid enough background in theology to stay with this line of thought despite 12 years of Catholic education, so I will stop right now.

Recently, I came across a book that has really been around for years. It is new to me, though. Julia Cameron's the "Artist's Way."

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing my morning pages. Three pages full.
And something seems to be happening. All this energy; (yes, I think I will call it energy) that builds in my head and maybe even in my body around the irrationality of adoption and what happened to me and my first born son seems to dissipate or be neutralized for at least 12 hours. And I am having really good days! Concidental...perhaps...

Except that I do think that when I write my morning pages I negate what is almost like static electicity or some form of psychic and kinesthetic "white noise" that clogs me mentally and physically. Some days I have simply been venting in my morning pages. Some mornings it is much more like a prayer in that I write directly to God in my 3 pages.

This week I am into Chapter 3 of Cameron's book. In this chapter she defines and discusses anger and how to use it in a manner and depth I have never read before.
And what she says appears, at least at first read for me, highly relavant to adoption loss. She also talks about grief, shame and even synchronicity.

I am wondering if anyone else has had any experiences with "the Artist's Way";
especially a similar experience that might be in relation to writing the morning pages.

I am in no way trying to promote Cameron's book. Just am very excited about how writing the morning pages seems to help diffuse or negate the "crazy making" kind energy that regenerates around my son's adopiton.

Your Voices

2006-12-08T11:10:00.000-06:00

I have been quiet on my own blog. Work and school assignments have especially kept me from writing, here. I still am reading the adoption blogs. Daily, I hear your voices.

Thank you for your voices. Thank you for your cries in the desert.
I am out here in the desert,too. Wandering on some days. Working on some days. And on others, I am able to add my single voice to yours when I gather the strength to write about my own truth of adoption loss. I don't yet have the endurance to use and sustain my voice for long.

I am able to sometimes put my words in writing. While in public,I sputter, stammer
and cannot speak. I think that by reading your words over and over, I might begin to
be able to speak up in public with clarity and calm. I still choke back emotions and tears when I speak in front of people about adoption loss. I'm afraid that people will write me off as one of the "few who happened to have a bad experience with adoption." Out of that fear,I do not speak.

Please know that I am listening to you. Thank you for your words. I let them pour into me as I read. I hope that this saturation of all your words will help me to aquire new oral adoption language. In language learning theory, aquisition of a new language happens partially through this kind of input. I need new language when it comes to speaking about adoption.

Thank you for risking your voices and exposing yourselves to ridicule, chastisement, and the board(er) wars. Thank you for exposing yourselves to dismissal, minimization and apathy.

Maybe, I will wander away from these desert dunes and stake us out a wonderful beach site near the ocean.

I could set up a big red and white striped party tent for us all. I would hang 1000 white paper lanterns from the ceiling so we ccould stay all night.

We could swim, dance, make music, BBQ and eat lots of dessert. After, when we're filled with food and filled with stories and tired from laughing, we could all have rest. A little rest for body, soul and voice is good once in a while, I think.

Past Noon on Monday

2006-11-13T13:00:00.000-06:00

I spent part of the weekend at work. I watched a fun kind of scary mummy movie with some of the kids on Friday night and clocked alot of drive time bringing them to different places. I did some laundry, bought groceries and cooked chicken soup for Sunday supper before I went into work.

After everyone went to work or school this morning, I just had to take a nap. Last night, after I got home I was so wide awake that I couldn't fall asleep until about 2 am. But did spend some time studying this morning while I had the house all to myself.

I think I will enjoy my student status; at least for a while. I am easily slipping into to my old habits of thirty years ago. This morning, I was reading my texts, marking up the pages with yellow and red pens while still wearing my flannel p.j.s. And I was craving mac and cheese which I allowed myself to eat for "brunch". And I am reverting to my old homework avoidance behaviors of thirty years ago. I can report to you that I am successfully avoiding my homework at this very moment.

I have missed not writing on a more regular basis, but I read daily on the adoption blogs.

And even though I haven't been writing about adoption lately, all the effects that the surrrender of my first born son has had on me, and continues to have on me and my entire family, are on my mind each day. I am still thinking and processing. And learning. I know I will have more thoughts and feelings about my son's adoption, surrender and on our reunion that I will have to write about. But later. At least not today. And I have to focus more on work and school.

As for school, I feel like that kid in the candy store.

I feel so energized in getting my license renewed and being able to focus on a new area of teaching. It is a natural extention of my original education that I completed, I am sad to say, without any passion, after my son was born and lost to me. At the time, I needed a focus. School served as that focus for me. I grabbed on to my wooden yellow pencils as splintered wooden planks in the ocean after a shipwreck.

I feel like I was the wreck.

My new area of study will allow me to put my energies and knowledge and alot of hard work into family preservation. If I can really do this, even to the smallest extent, and make a difference to just one family, I will be so happy.

I get to go to school!

2006-11-06T09:49:00.000-06:00

I am enrolled in school and am so exicted to start a class on Thursday! I am taking a two semester credit class on a beautiful college campus which I have driven by hundreds and hundreds of times. I remember being there for a field trip with my high school spanish teacher and think that I have wanted to be a part of that campus for years.

As a kid I loved school. I was fortunate to have a few teachers, generous of spirit and heart, who encouraged and nurtured me during my K-12 years.

Dang. I just reminded myself that I need to stop procrastinating and send a letter to my fourth grade teacher. I would very much like to let her know how she sparked and encouraged me. Teachers need affirmations, too, I believe. She is retired and I have had her address for over a year. Now, if I could just learn to stop putting things off .....

I have heard that procrastination is the flip side of perfectionism. Hmmm..so very true for me. And perfectionism can immobilize me. Maybe I need to go back and look at that...again....(sigh) These natural inclinations of mine don't seem to be maturing out of me with this last BIG birthday.

If I were able to find a class on perfecionism and procrastination in which I could also enroll this week, I just bet the teacher would stand up and say to me, "Dbannie, ...part of the
antidote to perfectionism/procrastination is humility. True humility. Not the false and insincere kind. And true humility is not necessarily what you currently think it to be. Now go home and bring back your thoughts for next time." And hopefully, that teacher would be well...not really quite perfect, but an encouraging instructor and also say to me, "Dbannie, I want to hear what you think."

A View from the Other Side of 49

2006-10-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

I am over the edge. Or, rather, over the hill. In many ways, decades spent in exile from my child left me hanging by my fingernails and living life from the periphery. It is hard to play center from the bleachers. This is my only life and I should at least be a starting player. Ya' know?

Time has also nudged me over to the other side of 49. Why, only a few days ago, the clock spun to midnight and it was again my birthday. It was unstoppable. I had a couple days of midlife crisis meltdown last week; tears and all. Most of it was a reiteration of my growing awareness of all the effects of surrender on my life and on all of those in my life; a reassesment of where I have been and a questioning of where I want to go from here. Yada, yada, yada... Midlife crisis with very intense surrender/adoption themes.

Time's relentless pressure can build enough force to flip the day to night. And with constant pull, spins warm summer breezes around to expose underbellies of icy winter blasts. And powerful enough, with silent perseverence, to flip the numerals of one's age from 15 to 51.

My view from the other side of 49 is that it is not really so bad here. There really is a little spring of wisdom from which to drink on this side of the hill that I didn't see on the other side.. It could be there too, and I just didn't see it.

And I think that if I continue to try to write about time passing and attempt to create any seemingly original metaphors, anyone reading this post will close out this window within the next 2 seconds flat. So, enough time imagery.

I do, however, have one image that has been persistently popping into my head for several weeks that I have been wanting to write about. I have a very strong image of a thick glass lens embedded within me. It is powerful and unpolished around the edges. Movement or repositioning of this lense causes pain. And most of what I perceive is filtered throught it. One side of the lens allows me to focus internally. I can focus on my feelings, thoughts and my internal life and through it I see my grief.

I think that when the lens is turned to focus on my grief; pressure begins to build. Tears, both physical and spiritual build up enough to flip that lens so that my focus becomes external. With an external focus I find I am better able to see others in the world around me and see myself as a part of that world. And I become more aware of others' pain. I begin to know that my own pain has a reverse side. Perhaps it is called compassion. If the other side of pain is compassion for others and my own self, it might not be too bad of a place to be.

Picking Up More Pieces

2006-10-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

No, I am not going to draw another analogy to reunion and quiltmaking. Not this morning, anways. And I did not just accidently knock the stacks of fabric pieces, pins and paper sketches, measurements and calculations off of the dining table top and on to the floor.

A year ago, I took over the whole dining room as my sewing and work area. And I have plans for one of the walls to be a work wall, or a place to plan out quilts in progress. I decided that I need my own space in this house. So, the dining room is my work area. My space. Mine, all mine; even though I do enjoy it when the "men" come into my work area and sit to talk, watch, or want to try the rotary cutter; machine or even sketch. Most often, they are just using my work room as a short cut to the back yard.

The pieces I need to begin picking up are many of the details of my life since reunion. It has been about 5 years since the beginning of my reunion and given this very short period of hindsight to reflect, I believe that reunion with my son has had the same kinds of effects on me and my life that the days, months and years of caring for my other children as newborns, toddlers and preschool children had.

My nights since reunion have often been sleepless. I have worried and ruminated. Much of my productive daytime energies have been channeled into learning about my son, reunion and in trying to build a relationship with him. I have wanted to really better know him. I want to know his likes, dislikes, his talents, and all the quirks. A mother to a newborn child does this. She wants to know about this wonderous being who has entered her life. Since reunion, I have read more on adoption/reunion than I ever did about baby/child care.

I try to balance on that delicate tightrope between knowing as much as I can about my son and respecting him as an adult who gets to decide how much to tell me about himself and his life; who requires his own space. I know I must try to honor his own feelings and responses to reunion. I am so thankful for the times he does let me into his space. Often, he invites me into his life to talk about himself or his days; his recreation and his work. Sometimes, he welcomes me into his work studio and there I can sit to talk with him or simply watch and listen.

And in like having a newborn, toddler, or preschooler in the house, many tasks have been left half done or undone in my house since my reunion. I have closets that need cleaning, outgrown clothes to be sort, washed and passed along. Gardens in the front and the back need lots of thinning and cultivating.

Ok, I will fess up and say that I not a very good housekeeper to start. And I procrastinate. Often. So, not all of the clean up and organizational projects needing to be done in my life are because of the energy I have put into reunion.

When my other boys were little, I did put my energies into them. Dishes could wait and they did. Children do not wait. Clean towels, a wise person once said, are just as absorbent when pulled from a basket of unfolded laundry as from a neatly folded stack.

Friends taught me to be gentle with myself after each of my other children were born. They taught me to look upon the time following the arrival of a child into my life as an opportunity to enjoy and get to know him. And to consider post arrival as stretch of time to live simply by focusing on the basic necessities of life. I learned to make sure that during such an exciting and emotional time that I am focused on healthy eating. And enough sleep for all. Self care is imperative. Oh.. and to keep that laundry going. Eat, sleep and laundry; the basics

And these first few reunion years have been like that for me. On some, or rather most days, I have to focus on the basics. I get food on the table for everyone. Get myself to work. Try to get enough sleep. Help to meet the needs of the people with whom I live. Oh, and keep the laundry going.

Reunion has been so much an act of picking up the pieces. I think that reunion has helped my son to identify parts of himself and to better fit them all together. I believe I see him as more comfortable in his world now than five years ago. And I think I see him fitting more easily in the life and the space that he is creating for himself as an adult.

Over the past five years, I been searching for and collecting pieces of myself that were lost at surrender. I have been working at fitting them into me; a reconstruction of sorts. I think I am beginning to fit more comfortably into my own space. However, I am still picking up some pieces and finding better patterns for them. This has been a huge and exhausting process for me.

It is a gentle, early fall day here. And I am going to cut through my work space and go out into the overgrown back yard and get a small start on that garden work. I know I have closets holding overflow of outgrown clothes that I can begin to wash, fold and bring to a local support program for mothers and their children.

Do I regret that I have let these household tasks and chores go for so long and that I have put so much of my energy into the reunion process? Not at all. It seems only to have been a strange parallel in development to what happens normally in the early years between child and mother.

I don't know how I will reflect on reunion when even more time passes in having my son back in my life. It has only been five years and is really a relatively short time; but these are some of my thoughts after five years.

...What to do?.

2006-09-29T09:54:00.000-05:00

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.

Untitled

2006-09-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

The anniversary of 9/11 is tomorrow. Five years. Everyone has their memories of what they were doing when they learned of the horrific terror that poured into the center of Manhattan and spread throughout our country.

With all respect to the victims and their families who live daily with loss of their beloved, I do not know their loss. I do not live each day in their skins, bearing the scars of that day.

I am also thinking about tomorrow in the context of my own life and my loss of a child to adoption. I would like to reach out to each of my children to again tell them how precious and wonderful they are to me and how grateful I am that they are present in my life.

It requires some stepping over fear for me as it is not an official day to express love and gratitude, complete with traditional giving of cards and presents. I am afraid that they might think me silly, overly sentimental and too emotional.

Isn't fear, by most people's definitions, at the heart of terrorism? And to me it follows that if I operate out of fear; I only lose.

Putting Together Pieces, Again

2006-09-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

I just came back from two days visiting with my son and it is time for me to do some more piecing. It is time put my head and my heart back together. Again.

We have been reunited for five years and this has been the recurring pattern for me after I have been able to spend some time with him. I suppose most people would call it "processing." It is that, definitely. I have to go through the process of putting myself back together. And I will do it.

However, I have to say that the edges of these pieces of me are fraying from the continuous mind and heart erosion that is the aftermath of surrender and adoption. For me, much of the work that goes along with reunion with my son is tedious, frustrating and headache inducing. It is a little like when I am trying to do some work with my old sewing machine and the thread tension keeps shifting. This results in the pull and tug of the upper and lower stitches; chaos and breakage. To fix this, I must do alot of ripping out of threads and then some repiecing. Sometimes, when using my old machine, the needle veers off to the side; breaking as metal hits metal. Then, the fabric gets caught up in the feeder feet and pulled down into the machine where it is torn apart. Needle and fabric; both ruined.

Not all is lost. Hope reigns because I can trash the torn fabric pieces and begin again with new pieces. I can rewind the bobbin and start over. Or I can choose to take my new machine out of the shipping box, read the directions, and learn to use it so I move on to tension free piecing and creativity.

I see that with the surrender and adoption of my son there is no starting over; no rewind of the thread bobbin. The tension dial will often shift in our relationship. I have sometimes pulled back. When I have pulled back, I believe it has been out of fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of feeling more discomfort and pain. And my thinking gets caught in the grinding feeder feet of my head and I have to work at yanking out the negative thoughts.

When my son is sometimes silent for weeks and weeks, my head overwinds faster than my sewing machine. I wonder, "Is he processing, too? Or just simply busy with his life? Or both?" I cannot start over in reunion with new materials. I cannot rewind 30 years. Oh, yes, I can change myself some; my focus and attitudes; but I am me. And most certainly am not perfect. And there is my wonderful, irreplaceable son.

I really don't know though how much more ripping and reworking of the seams of our relationship I can do. There is no new sewing machine programmed with a stitching pattern that can fix for me the consequences of the surrender and adoption of my son. You know that standard line in most parenting books that says new babies don't come with a directions manual; but read this book to help you prepare anyways? Well, our adult children don't arrive back in our lives with a reunion manual attached, either. Reunion preparation can help tremendously, and preparation for meeting my son face to face helped me alot.

Most importantly, I am learning to trust my instincts in building a relationship with my son. Trusting my gut has been good and positive in building our relationship. However, reunion relationships are complex and I do get sidetracked and confused and have to look again for a point of reference or focus.

There is one premise of which I am certain to which I always find my way back when I am caught up in trying to have the loss of my son make sense. I believe that here is an indestructable bond between a mother and the child she bears. It is physical, emotional and spiritual. I think that this bond can be stretched to capacity, frayed, damaged and distorted to the point of unrecognizability. It can be stretched to a thread so thin that neither mother nor child may sense its presence; but I believe that it cannot be ever broken. Man-made law cannot void natural law. Time is relative, I believe, and decades of separation cannot totally obliterate the mother and child bond.

I am so grateful that my son is able to let me into his life at this point. On the other hand, getting to know him now as an adult is bittersweet. For all the first time joys I experience with him; a first time to the beach, a first time playing a board game; a first time hearing him sing; there is a slap in the face of the reality of all the times lost. For me as a mother who in an obtuse relationship with a son which is called reunion, I have joy and pain. I do have both joy and pain in my relationships with my other children, of course. However the pain caused by surrender seems to be more contorted and unnatural; the oscillations more erratic.

I must state emphatically that my son does not cause me pain. His existence, his being brings to me the same great joy that I have in the existence of my other sons. It is surrender and the decades of separation and the numerous consequences of that separation that causes pain.

So, I am back from traveling to see my son. It was joyous time spent together. Good, funfilled memories are being made. However, I am back to my house and it is time to put my head and heart back together. I need to do some good self care. Eat well and sleep more. Play more. Take more time for quiet meditation. I need to take really good care of myself while I take what time I need in order to put my head and heart back together. Again.

Always, there is hope. After I catch up on some sleep and do all those just back from being away from the house chores, I will be able to think through the events of these good days spent together. I will be able to process my thoughts and feelings; piece my head and heart back together.

This time, as I sort through these pieces of my head and heart, I am going to be watchful for any I clutch tightly that look to be woven from fear. Those pieces that smell a even a little like fear, I will need to trash.

Most importantly, I will search through these messy piles I've carried back with me and find the pieces of my head and heart that look most like they will fit together. Many appear to be woven of hope, respect and trust. That is a good start. And the largest pieces, the ones that seem to fit best in the middle of my head and heart, if I look closely, are most definitely cut from love.

Overheard at the Gate

2006-08-22T10:36:00.000-05:00

Recently, I was offered and accepted a new job at the airport. I work at the gates and sometimes I am assigned a flight that is going to the city in which my first born lived from about the time he was five years old.

I cannot tell you how hard it is to stay focused on the job while I assist 50 passengers to board an airplane departing to the city where my son grew up. Absolutely crazy making for me. The pleasant, middle aged woman handing me her boarding pass may have been his next door neighbor. Her children may have played with him. She may have served him lunch at her kitchen table and been lucky enough to see my 7 year old son with mac and cheese smooshed on his chin. If she did, I hope she was kind to him. And if she was, I hope many blessings for her.

That older, refined gentleman wearing the grey vest may have been his 8th grade teacher and had the opportunity to encourage my son during a particularily rough school year. If he did, I hope he was kind to him. And if he was, I hope many blessings for him.

Any young man or woman handing me a boarding pass may have graduated from high school with my son.

One time, a young man boarding the plane to my son's hometown stopped dead in his tracks beside me as he handed over his boarding pass. He gaped at me with that "just seen a ghost" expression. I wondered especially if he might be a friend to my son and recognized me in away. My son and I look much alike. And of all my sons, my first born looks the most like me.

Sometimes, I am at the gate for a flight to another city and someone will rush to the counter in a panic to ask where is the gate to XXX city; the town where my son's
adoptive family still lives. I remain in professional mode and look up the gate number for the passenger.

Inside, I am screaming, "Do you know my son? Do you know the **** family?"
I quell that internal voice and do not allow myself to speak.

I do not wish to breech any trust that I have been able to build with my son. Anything that I learn of his parents needs to come directly from him. The world is really very small and it is likely that one of the passengers I encounter traveling to XXX does know my son or his adoptive parents. And my son and I are
forming our own relationship. As his mother, I feel that I have the primary responsibilty in building a foundation of trust and must do everything within my power to create and sustain an atmosphere of trust and safety within our relationship.

So as desperately hungry, as voracious as I am on some days to learn details of my son as a child or a teenager, I have to be patient and wait for the details that come from him; or any details that someday, I may learn from his adoptive family.

And what really matters the most to me is to know my son in the present and the opportunity to know and share in his life right now. My son is very kind to me.
And each day I hope and pray for many blessings on him.

About two weeks ago, I was working at the gate and I overheard a conversation between two men. One of them lives here in Minneapolis and was flying to his hometown of XXX city; my son's childhood home. This passenger said that if you plunked yourself down in a suburb of Minneapolis and then punked yourself down in a suburb of XXX city, you would not be able to tell the difference. Each location has rolling hills, lots of trees and lakes and rivers.

I learned this tidbit of my son's life without stepping over a trust breeching boundary. In a way, I was thrilled to have this morsel of information. And I listened and committed it to memory. As always it is bittersweet to hear and to take in.

Shredding Fabric

2006-08-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

Happiness for me is walking into a fabric store. Bins and racks of beautiful, luscious, inspiring fabrics contain glorious spectrums of color for my eyes; also bolts of sensations for my fingertips. There are solidly woven cottons in matte and polished finishes; silks as soft as I remember my newborn sons' golden red hair. Rich, thick warm wools in crayon colors dare me to wash them in hot water/hot dryer just to see what they look like all fluffy and "fulled". Hunting along the narrow aisles of my favorite fabric stores gives me ideas for even more quilts to make than my 9 already in process. There are simply too many quilts to make in one lifetime. Sometimes, I find a yard of fabric on the 1/2 price shelf that I just know will add the right accent of color or texture to a quilt project patiently awaiting my attention at home.

So I decide to by one or two yards of a new perfect fabric. The sales person carefully measures and cuts the finely woven cloth that so many people have together produced. A cotton farmer has grown the seasons crops with great care and knowledge, harvested and sent the cotton to the factory where workers comb, clean and process the fibers. Other people artfully work to have the threads woven and dyed into a textile designer's patterns. Wholesalers, marketers, and transportation workers get my fabric to the shop shelves so I am able to continue my rather expensive habit.

Then, I go home and begin the destruction of the collaboration of all these people's careful and creative efforts. I destroy the piece of fabric that have I so excitedly chosen. I measure my fabric and I begin shredding! Yes, I clip the fabric at the salvage and rip it apart along the entire width of the fabric. And I do this again and again until I have shredded the entire piece into carefully calculated stips. Then, I cut these strips into smaller pieces before they are assembled into new configurations. And then I pierce my lovely little scraps of shredded and repieced fabrics numerous times with the sharp sewing machine needle; about six perforations per running inch in order to "quilt" my piece and give the fabric dimension. I have even had thoughts of applying paints and inks to some of my quilts; which would only further transforming the original purchased piece of fabric.

Sometimes, I find a shirt at the thrift shop or buy a brand new skirt off the rack because I know that it will fit right into a particular quilt.

These pieces of fabric which I cut from the bolt or away from a clothing item; fabric pieces that were once whole and beautiful or at least whole and functional, I must destroy in order make something else. Something new; something functional and maybe even beautiful too. On most quilts,I try for "beautiful". Some express sadness or a my mood or a certain message.

Am I trying to draw a parallel to adoption here? Yeah, it is pretty obvious that this is where I am heading.

Adoption, by law, creates a family. And in the best of situations, to the benefit of the child being adopted, the adoptive parents will love and nurture the child and create a healthy, functioning family. I would go so far as to say that an adoptive family can be beautiful and a "living work of art". (Note: I did not use "in the best interest of the child" here; rather I wrote, "to the benefit of the child.")

Now, on the flip side of the creation of the adoptive family, there is the destruction of the natural family which must first occur in order for the adoptive family to be created. War, natural disaster, failure of government leaders, illness and death are all things that can happen to shred the fabric of the natural family and separate its members. Horrible, evil things happen. Calculated separation through coercion and unethical adoption practices happen, too. All of these can result in families being ripped apart. Mothers, fathers and children lose one another. Grandparents lose their grandchildren. Siblings lose one another. Through any of these separations, the fabric of the original family will never be the same. The family will never be again that whole piece of cloth woven so very tightly according to natural law. Never again will all the threads of the family be in place and the original pattern be clear. Never again will it be a strong, whole piece of cloth.

The family that loses a child to adoption is shredded and torn. The part of a mother that is her child; certain fibers of her heart, fibers of her soul are pulled from her being and interwoven into the fabric of another family.

Can the adoptive family, this new creation, be a beautiful entity? Yes, I believe it can. Can the child love and belong in his adoptive family? Yes, I believe so.

Does the creation of this new "living work of art" balance out the horrendous and unspeakable loss of the first family? No, I believe it absolutely cannot negate for the child the loss of his/her natural family. The gain of the adopting family does not ever balance out the loss of the natural family. I heard someone else put it this way once; the books will never balance out to zero when it comes to adoption. The gains and losses can never be balanced out because they are simply not recorded within the same bookkeeping systems.

Adoption has happened. Adoption happens. And I believe that it should only happen when a child truly needs another family. All mothers, fathers and children should be given the support needed to stay together. And there are people who would disagree with me and say that adoption is never necessary; that legal guardianship is an alternative to adoption. That can be a discussion for another place and time.

What I presently feel the most strongly against is the continued promotion of adoption by entities of society which have the awareness of the destruction done to natural family members through the processes of surrender and adoption. For people and agencies to continue to promote and facilitate infant adoption with full or even partial awareness of the damage done to infants and their mothers and fathers; and to assert that grief counseling for the surrending parents and attachment therapy for adoptive families can "fix" or lessen the damage, is unconscionable.

In adoption, the end doesn't justify the means.

To create something new of potential good or beauty with the knowledge that you must first destroy something else, and to choose to proceed anyways...Well, it is best to dabble at this only at the art table; not the family table.

Gathering My Thoughts

2006-08-08T08:53:00.000-05:00

I get to be home today. Yeah!!! Although I am on jury duty this week, I have been instructed by a judge not to report to the courthouse today.

I got called to be on a jury panel yesterday and some of the potential jurors are being interviewed today. I am to phone in later today to see when and where I report next. I am speculating that I either will be instructed to go back to the courtroom to interview as a juror for this particular case; or that if enough jurors are chosen from today's interviews, I will then be thrown back into the jury pool for a different case.

So, I get to be home and am trying to gather my thoughts, blog for the discipline of writing, do some laundry, and spend some time outside on this absolutely perfect summer day. Summer's end is just in sight and I will miss it's last days if I stay in my current summer hibernation mode. I have been inside most of this past month because of the extreme heat that has lambasted most of the country. Summer's fever has broken here, and the day is glorious!

I started a new job a few months ago. It is part time and the pay is really ...ummm....poor! However, there are travel benefits. Hubby, sons and I are able to go places that we could never afford on his public servant salary. My monetary contributions to this little domestic unit have been minimal at best over the past decades, but the good news is that I think I have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. This is so exciting for me, particularly as my 50th birthday is crouched outside summer of '06's exit door. My best laid current plan is to have two part time jobs; one for benefits and the other for better pay. So, I am working really hard at the airlines job and trying to succeed in that position. And I am volunteering and putting in some classroom time to renew my old, dusty state teaching license. I am pursuing relicensure but hoping to work in a related but entirely different area of education than I did before. I am very excited about it!

Reunion with my son has caused me to see how all of my life since his birth has been affected by his surrender. Reunion is helping me to decide what is really important in my life right now and helping me to make conscious decisions about how I want to spend my time and energy now and in the future. I believe that reunion has not only helped my first born son find out to a greater degree who he really is; but that it has helped me find out better who I really am. Not only through reunion does he have the opportunity to see himself reflected in me and his father; I have the chance to see reflections of myself in him.

In a way, I see the reflections of myself more clearly in him that I do in my other children. I think maybe that the interactions that I have with my first born do not have the same kind energies and "baggage" so to speak, that my interactions do with my other boys. Granted, all the years of separation create unique excruciating struggles and chaos, but I think that what I am trying to say is that my interactions with my first born contain certain qualities of a mother/infant bond. Reunion has allowed our first interactions since my son was three weeks old. Reunion has allowed us to communicate and interact. All is fresh and new; first smiles, first words...But here my son is a mature adult and I am not a new mother who gets to sees her infants smile, eyes or face mature and morph back and forth over the years from looking like hers or the father's or grandpa's and back again to her own...My son is a grown man and all the genetic coding has had decades come to fruition. I have missed it all. Decades after his birth, my first glimpses of my "baby's" smiles, facial expressions, thought processes are really mirror images of my own.

Today my thoughts are pretty much all over the place, but I will try to gather them together a little bit. One of the things I like about my job at the airline is that I work at a large international airport. I love to people watch. Sometimes, I wonder if any of the women I pass or even board on one of my flights is going to see her grown child, "again, for the first time." Is her heart exploding like mine did the first times I flew to see my son. Can she breathe? I couldn't.

Over the past few months at my new job, I have run into people I haven't seen in years. Two weeks ago, a woman came to my gate and asked me arrival information about a flight. I knew that I knew her. I was certain. I told her the gate for the flight she was meeting. Then I asked her if she had attended a particular high school. No, she hadn't. A certain grade school? No, she hadn't. I was still absolutely positive that I knew her. I'm one of those people who have trouble remembering names, but never forget a face. I was quite bold and asked her name. When she said her name, I remembered from where I knew her.

Less than two months after my oldest son was born I went to work in a department store for the summer. I worked in hosiery and this woman, A, floated between departments. She and I were about the same age and we sometimes took our breaks together. She was an outgoing, energetic, open and loving woman then and it was clear that time had not changed her. She said she remembered me, too.

I decided to ask her if she had any memories of me during those few summer months we knew each other through work. I explained that I had only surrendered my son a month before taking that job and I wondered if she had any memories of my affect at that time. Her response was that she remembers me as "sad."

A and I talked at the airport gate for a short while about adoption. She shared some of her life with me. She has been married for 28 years and she and her husband have been unable to have children. She asked me what I have learned from my experience.

You know....I was dumbfounded; absolutely speechless. I have learned so much, yet couldn't form a single thought in response to her. Granted, it was the end of my work day and there had been some pretty crazy flights to get out and I was tired. Still... I couldn't believe that I was speechless on I topic about which I have so many impassioned thoughts and convictions.

So, on another day, I will take on as a personal challenge, A's question to me. Another day, I will gather together my present thoughts about what I have learned from the birth, surrender, adoption of my son. I need to do this for myself. Thought gathering summer days are good.

Holding a Soul

2006-07-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, it is difficult for me to reach out to my first born child. My fears of rejection and the 30 year old misbeliefs so deeply engrained in my head resound with the words that I am not good enough for my own son. And there is that thing called guilt. All these things so often impede my ability to simply phone him when I would like to just say, "hello and how are ya doing?" So often weeks and weeks pass before I can step over my fears and make that phone call. So, I am really my own jailer and hold myself in exile from the opportunities to communicate more frequently with him and from more steady progress in building our relationship. And then, I wonder if my failure to reach out more often is perceived by my son as rejection. And so there is another layer of guilt for me! More added crazy making to this whole thing...

However, every single day without fail, even on the days I garner the courage to make that phone call, I hold him in my thoughts and keep him spiritually close. Holding a Soul is about some of my thoughts on my spiritual connection to him; or to any one of my children, for that matter.

Holding a Soul

Would you set this child's soul before me?
Show me the hurt; Nudge me closer so that my breath
blows across his shapeless pain?

Would you help me to draw this soul closer?
So that your life flows to fill the fissures and
and binds his being?

Would you help me to extend my arms?
To hold this child's soul; to encircle his soul for the length
of its dark night?

Restless

2006-07-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Cabin fever can set in during the middle of July. It's way too hot to go for a jog around the neighborhood; all I could manage this morning was a slow saunter around the block before a blaze of sun rose to 9 o'clock in the sky. I work over the weekends right now, so Monday is my Saturday and there chores to be done; a multitude of groceries to buy for feeding pre, post and adolescent male beings. There is a perfectly stacked pyramid of unscraped dirty dishes obscuring every inch of countertop. Most teenagers are primarily night feeders I have discovered. And of course my howling creature in the mud room from which I daily run and hide...the laundry monster.

So, I am avoiding my chores for the moment to work out some of this edgy energy I am feeling. Reading and writing sometimes does it for me. Thoughts about adoption run through my head constantly. I spend a lot of in- my -head time trying to put words to my experience of having lost my child to adoption. I think I am beginning to find some of the words. Reading the words of other mothers of adoption loss helps. The other mothers I have found since the beginning of my reunion five years ago have been my life line. I also cannot find the words to describe how much they have helped me. The dates, locations and details of our experiences differ, but the core of our experience is the same.

An old childhood friend called me up last week. We were best of friends in grade school and junior high and throughout our young adulthood. Away from our separate "social groups" in high school we shopped, never stopped talking; and I could just relax and simply be myself when we were together. I didn't have to put all that energy out there with her in trying to be something other than, or so much more than, what I was.

She was in town last week and called to say hello. A mother of two; one born to her and one adopted, she told me that is considering adopting again. I said very little in response to her. I cannot jump up and down with joy when I hear of a pending adoption. I cannot do it anymore.

After an embarrassing long moment of my own silence, I began to speak honestly to her and explained, that for me, adoption is not a joyous event. She then spoke to me a little bit of her adoption related experiences.

I also have missed my friend over the past years. I know that I have pulled away from our relationship because of my pain around loss of my son. I have missed her and sometimes I wish I could go back to the time in our relationship before either of us had any children. She was one of my very best girlhood friends. You know, we spent lazy summer days, much like this July day, riding our bikes to the pond for picnic lunches and hours reading and talking and then riding back to our homes just in time for supper.

I am glad to have my friend back, again. Adoption may very well be a topic about which she and I will have to agree to disagree. I believe I will be able to talk to her more about my adoption experience sometime. I will need to, I think, in order to bring a more honest foundation to our renewed friendship. Though, I have to understand as we renew our friendship, that she may not ever see adoption from my perspective. Another "dance step" of adoption I will have to learn. I am just happy to have my friend back. I have missed her.

So words keep swishing around in my head; thoughts agitating like my washing machine should be right now. I will get to those dirty towels in just a few minutes.

The words I presently have which express my most intelligible, coherent thoughts around adoption are these:

Please, Lord, please. No more mothers and children; no more fathers and children unnecessarily separated from one another; especially by adoption.

So, I went....

2006-07-13T08:57:00.000-05:00

I finally did it this week. On Sunday, I went to the cemetery where the natural grandparents of my son are buried. The place I have to drive by each day to and from work. I entered the gates without seeming to make a conscious decision; probably because I have avoided following through on the decision to go which I really had made weeks ago.

It is a huge national military cemetery comprised of acres of white grave markers. I was surprised at how easy it was to find their graves. There is a central building with a touch screen computer for locating the graves of the deceased. I used the locator map to find the right cemetery section. The section in which they are buried is about an acre in size and I circled around in my van to find some numeric marker or an indicator to show that I was even close. When I decided that I might be close, I parked and started searching on foot. Amazingly, I had stopped my vehicle within feet of his grandparents' graves.

What did I do there? Though, I am not sure I know exactly why I went or if I even clearly can say now of what benefit it was to me that I did, I do know that I sat beside their graves in the hot sun and some of the tension baked out of my shoulders. And I felt the praire wind across my arms and body. And I sat for about 20 minutes next to their headstones and looked across the expansive plain of holy, sacred ground and at the multitude of white grave stones.

To the east, the direction I faced, was life and great noise; an international airport with the explosion of ascending and descending jets, prop planes and military planes. To my west, and my back, another smaller airport blending with the sounds of a light rail train. I think the most beautiful cemeteries are the ones that are next to the musical, discordant sounds and movements of the living. Perhaps this is a morbid sequence of thought, but maybe it is genetic in some way as I am the grandaughter of a mortician.

I sat in the noontime sun and heat of a mid July day. At first, I busied and distracted myself with pulling some invading clumps of crab grass around their headstones and brushed away the dried grass cuttings covering their names. I studied their middle intials and memorized their birthdates; curious for what middle names the intials stood. I traced my finger in the carving of their surname.

And then I cried. I allowed myself to open up a certain reservoir of pain. Can't describe well where inside of me it originates or exactly define the pain....Of course it is about loss. Huge loss.

I do think that I will go back. It feels like a safe place to simply be and cry if I need or to think and pray. I pray and wish to continue to pray for my son's natural parents. And I wish to continue pray for their son who is the father of my son; and all of the family. And I hope that these souls, to whom I have a connection through the existence of my first born, will also pray for me.

I think I left the cemetery with some of what it was I may have been searching. Although, as I was driving into that place I wouldn't have been able to articulate to another living soul nor my even to myself why I was going there. I just was going.

I left feeling a little more peaceful; and very happy to have discovered another place to go for quiet contemplation. And I think I left with greater gratitude for my life that day. Feeling grateful that I was alive and I had that day to go to the grocery store to buy food. That I could cook a meal which would nourish the bodies of some of those I love. And a few days farther into this week with the time I have had to think about my stop at the cemetery, I am feeling thankful that I have this day, this particular Thursday, to be alive and to love the people in my life to the best of my ability.

Firework Duds and Clearing the Smoke

2006-07-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

Post holiday letdown for me. I am so glad that the 4th is over. I like the "ordinary" time the best. The month of May is a deluge of Mother's Day and birthdays and then comes July with the 4th and two more birthdays. Holidays and birthdays are always a sharp combination of joy and sorrow for me. It doesn't mean that I am not grateful for each of my children. I am grateful for the simple fact that each exists as a unique soul; an irreplaceable being with their own strengths and weaknesses. I am grateful to hear the resonance of their voices, the opportunities to be with them and to see the light in their eyes which reflect back to me the light of the Creator.

However, that rendering of my being at relinquishiment and the distortion of my own nature by adoption loss; the severing slashes at the warp of my family's foundation and the continuous fraying of the weave of my family by the "forever" realities of adoption are most apparent to me at holidays and birthdays.

Yup. I have my hand up again. This time as a NOT happy "b****" mom. Definitely am not one. As a happy b**** mom, I have become a failure. For years I was a pretty darn good one; Silently behaving "as if my child was NOT born to me".

Now, I just hate the whole stinking sulphurous mess. It's like a whole bunch of duddy firecrackers that cracked open with a slow hissing and have raised up banks of billous puke green clouds and darkened the sky. Makes it really hard to see the festive sparklers and chandlier fireworks ( my favorite) shimmering beside the stars.

And as each holiday and birthday rolls through and it becomes so painfully apparent that my first born is not present at the festivities, I have to remind myself it is the relationship that he and I create that is fundamental to our reunion. Most certainly on the spiritual plane he is of us; and if ever he is able to or wishes to claim his own place within our family on the physical plane, it will be to me like having a fantasitc fireworks display as part of an already wonderous celebration. If ever he and my other children begin to form real friendships, those sibling relationships will be simply bonuses to the reunion and to our family.

For now, post holiday, I need to again, firmly focus on the incredulous opportunity that my oldest child and I have to know one another. We ARE getting the chance to simply be alive together; to spend time together in seeing and listening to one another; even though most often these are not at traditionally celebratory times as noted by the calendar. Our "ordinary" time together is always cause for celebration for me. We are beginning to strengthen and reinforce with time, patience and perseverence our distorted and frayed, but never completely destroyed relationship.

The weaving of our relationship has hundreds of holes in it. Years and decades spent apart have left so many open spaces. Reunion is allowing us to tie together some of the threads and begin our own new weaving. We will never be able to fill in the first part of the weaving; and this new section of our weaving will also have open spaces as he is now an adult; but it can be beautiful still with lacey spaces for light to shine through and infuse our relationship.

Sometimes, I ask myself, given the reality of his adoption and the fact that he does have two mothers, would I rather be the mother who adopted him? Would I rather have seen all of his birthdays, Christmases, 4th of Julys, his tears and early smiles; been to all the doctors visits, school conferences, done all that laundry; had all of these very great privileges of motherhood? Would I rather be the the mother to whose home he travels as an adult for holidays and family reunions?

....Or would I rather be who I am to him; the mother to whom he was born?

And whenever I ask myself which mother I would rather be, I have the same answer. Given the presently unchangeable circumstances created by his adoption decades ago, given that there is no going back; I always decide that I would rather be the mother I am to him. I am the mother who is no longer any good at pretending as if my son was not born to me.

The Look

2006-06-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

Five years ago, I received a first letter from my son. And he enclosed a picture of himself; the first picture I had seen of him in over 25 year years. I had access to only a few photos of him as a newborn that were taken of him just before surrender.

Probably, I went into shock looking at that picture. Surreal doesn't begin to describe how it is for a mother to merge the image of her newborn with the image of a grown child without any images to bridge the in between period. How was I even to begin filling in 25 years of black out?

I had always tried to imagine what he looked like. I thought of him physically as a composite of his father and I. And that turned out to be true. Sometimes he is a "spittin' image" of me and sometimes that of his father.

My son and I have reunited in person, also, and reunion has made me understand that muscle movements, facial expressions, gait, body stance, vocal pitch and inflection all experienced in the third dimension are so much of what comprises and projects a person's appearance. I have realized how flat and incomplete is a two dimensional photo image of a person. The first photo my son sent me is only one version, so to speak, of what he really looks like.

I must have looked at that first photo about 20 times a day. It makes me smile when I place this photo next to his newborn hospital photo. The pose is strikingly similar. In each photo, his head tilts to the right and the my eyes can follow the the same lines of his forehead, cheek, and chin. His baby fist and wrist and the pose of his hand in the adult picture is the same. I simply cherish both photos. About two months after he sent me the picture of himself at 25, I wasn't so afraid that I would loose it anymore, so I began to carry it around with me in my purse. It was incredible, simply unbelievable to me that I finally knew what my son looked like!!!

And even a couple months after finally knowing, I realized that I was doing the still doing the strangest thing. I became strongly aware of myself studying the faces of all young men in their early 20's who crossed my path each day. I was "still searching" each face for my son; looking for the composite image of his father and myself. I was stunned to be still operating out of such deeply ingrained habit. I had to stop myself when I began surfing the crowds for faces and mentally say, "That is not your son. You now know what he looks like. You have the picture, remember?"

And I became aware of something else at the very same time.

I became aware of women staring at me with "The Look". I would catch women about the age of my own mother passing me in the grocery or at Target who appeared to be ardently studying my face. They seemed to be examining my face, my eyes, my mouth with precision 5 second timing and efficiency; just as I had become a master of doing as each five year old boy at the playground, each seven year old in the schools I taught; or each 16 year old making my change from the register at the Super America.

As I became more aware of women giving me "The Look", I began to have to fight the impulse to rush to these women and blurt out; "I am not your daughter. But I understand. I really do because I have lived this, too. Listen to me! You are not alone. There are so many of us mothers and we are finding and again seeing the faces of our beloved children! I know the face of my son!"

"Do you know about search and reunion? Do you know about the Soundex reunion registry at www.isrr.net? Do you know about CUB?"

" Do you know that it is OK to search? I know that we were told we have no right to search and that at best, we are bad for our dear children. Do you know that those are lies? Those are huge lies! Believe them no longer!"

I still do catch women who might be the age of my own mother scrupulously studying my face in the grocery lines. And about a month ago, I was strongly aware of man wearing a nice suit, who was about the age of own my father, giving me "the Look".

What about all the mothers and fathers still searching the crowds and the grocery store aisles for the faces of their grown children? How can they know that it is really OK to look for their children? How can they be better be given that message and the vehicles and support for searching?

Father's Day

2006-06-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

So yesterday, in the soft, humid 6 a.m. sunlight, I drove to work. As I turned into the parking ramp, I passed thousands of white grave markers. Every work day I drive past the same cemetery and I usually think of my son's grandparents. The parents of his natural father are buried there. I think fondly of them; and I am sad they they lost their grandson in this life and that he lost them.

I thought about driving into the cemetery yesterday. As it was Father's Day there might have been people available to give maps and directions to gravesites. I would have liked to stop by and leave some flowers or a picture of their grandson.

I think that they would be proud of him. My son lights up and consumes a room like his grandfather did, and like I remember that his father does; but in his own way. A quieter way. He has a confident swagger in his step like them; but most definitely possesses his own gait. I am so overjoyed when I see my first born son filling up the room; interacting with the people around him.

When I say that they would be so proud of my son, their grandson, I am not any longer the young woman who seeks the approval of my boyfriend's parents. However, I still feel greatly connected to them through my son; and often think of them.
I have real spritiual connection to them and a solid flesh and blood connection to them each time I touch the face or arm of my son.

I ran out of time yesterday to stop by the cemetery. I had to get myself to church after work and then home for the dinner my other sons were BBQ-ing for their dad.
Ran out of time. Also, not sure that I had the emotional energy to expend in visiting their graves, yesterday. I know that there is a whole pocket of pain and tears just centered around them and my son that will break when I do get to the graves. It takes energy, you know? Yet it also takes energy to hold together all those cracks in my heart; pressuring my being. It's just that I have to figure out when it is safe for me expend the tears and energy. I have to discern how much I can afford to expend in tears and how much energy to keep in reserve for my day to day living.

I am relieved, ecstatic really, that my son and his father finally have the chance to know one another, to build a relationship and to have the opporunity to connect today on Father's day. Been a long time in coming for them.

Grandma's 100th Birthday

2006-06-01T08:26:00.000-05:00

Today is my grandmother's birthday. If still on this side of the veil of tears, she would be 100 years old. I was trying to tell my youngest this morning who she was.
He has no memory of his greatgrandmother as she died when he was only 9 months old. And one of the saddest things to me is that at the very end of her life, although I think she always knew who I was, she didn't always appear to recognise my youngest when we visited.

I didn't expect the tears to fall this morning when speaking of her to my youngest child. They surprised me after 8 years of her being gone. Grief does creep up and bite you when you least expect it.

My children born in the middle all have memories of their greatgrandmother; but my first born, like my last born, has no memory of her. Since my reunion with my son, I have begun to have the opportunity to relay to him who she was. My first born was the child that I and my whole family lost to adoption. And when I have had the opportunity to explain to him what my gradmother was like, I have always made the point very clear to him that my grandmother never forgot him. My grandmother always kept his newborn hospital picture on her bedroom dresser. I found in still sitting her on her dresser while taking care of her things after her death. She was the only one of my family members who was not afraid to keep a picture of him in her home; to keep him present among us. And for that, I love her even more dearly.

My grandmother was a seamstress who made and altered her own clothes. And she was a breast cancer survivor and out of necessity altered each of her dress and blouse sleeves. The mastectomies left her arms always terribly swollen. The fabrics she chose to wear were bright and very busy. She always let me know that she thought my conservative, subdued color choices were less than appealing. As for my grandmother's fashion statements, think 60's paisleys in lime greens and cotton candy pinks!

So today, on Grandma's 100th birthday, I will begin a new quilt in her memory. I have found the most perfect fabrics for this quilt; patterns I might have found hanging in her extensive walk in closet. And I will sew them into an Irish chain quilt in honor of my "I'm 100% Irish and proud of it!" grandmother.

Piecing Memories

2006-05-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

I was extremely excited to have the chance to meet, M., the woman at the other end of the phone line that June morning. She invited me to a picnic where I would get to meet her in person. To meet another mom; such relief!!! I would also have the opportunity to meet another reunited mother who was going to be there with her two daughters and grandchildren.

As is within my nature, I packed alot into that one day's agenda; sometimes I pack in way too much. I planned a trip for the morning to go to the hospital where I had delived my son. It was a pilgrimage for me. I had a strong drive at the very beginng of my reunion that I can describe as purely visceral. I needed to begin to put together the events of the time around my son's birth and the surrender. The carefully glued together picture of my life had scattered to the winds.

The memories of my son's birth and surrender were fragmented. Some were extremely vivid to me and over the years a certain spring scent, sunlight or breeze on my cheek would trigger a strong memory of that time. Juxtaposing these crystal clear memories were huge gaping holes of memory and and long months of fuzzy, fast forward, crackling, gray memories. I decided to return to the hospital of his birth and read my medical records. I also decided to obtain my records from the adoption agency.

So, on a hot July morning, I entered the hospital where I had given birth to my son. It was not the first time I had returned. I had walked the corridors when my son's father was a patient the summer after our son's birth. My grandmother and my mother had been patients there several times.

Still, it was surreal to be there 25 years after my son's birth and for the purpose that I was there. I entered the records room and was allowed to view my records. Of course, I was not able to see my child's records. However, just seeing the reports of my baby's birth helped me to piece together things that I had forgotten or never knew.

I would suggest to other mothers who decide to view their own records to make all efforts be really gentle with themselves. It would be good to spend time with a dear friend later on that day. Take good physical care; the basics. Eat well. Sleep enough. Exercise. It is necessary to do what nourishes oneself; physically, spiritually and emotionally.

I left the hospital in kind of a numb and shocked state, I think, so it was very good that I had immediate plans for the picnic. I knew that over at the park there were two women, other mothers, who understood how I was feeling. I knew that I was not alone in this.

The park where the picnic was planned is the prettiest city park/zoo/golf course and all set at the edge of a lake. Not only is the park grounds fairly spread out, but I have a terrible sense of direction. And I could not find M and her friend.

I did spot two young mothers with their children having a meal in the shade of a tree; a reprieve from the sticky humidity. I approached them on the chance that they were in the picnicing group. They were the daughters of the other reunited mother and they were also not able to find their mother and M.

Very kindly, they invited me into their little circle and shared their lunch. I meet their beautiful children and heard some of their own reunion story. In a nutshell, these sisters were reunited in their adulthood. Their mother lost one of them to adoption and raised the other.

It was evident to me that these two lovely women cared very deeply for one another. Their words and interactions with one another simply radiated love.

We never found their mother and M, who were lunching at the other side of the park that day. However, I was thrilled to have happened across the daughters' picnic site. They listened to some of my story and heard about my pilgrimage to the hospital for records. They offered support and encouragement to me in my very early reunion with my son. I know that they heard me with the understanding and empathy that not even my immediate family could not understand.

And I had not missed my only chance to meet with M. She invited me to meet in a few weeks with some other reunited mothers for a small gathering.

Discovery

2006-02-25T08:11:00.000-06:00

I have discovered since my reunion with my son, that I am not the only one. I thought that I was the only mother like me. It has been life saving to find that I am not the only mother who has lost a child to adoption.

I think I would describe myself before my "awakening" as a mother who had the ability to alter my appearance to the environment to ensure my survival. I became, "not really a mother". Legally, I was not a mother. My family, friends, and society viewed me as not a mother. I submerged into deep denial of what had happened to me and to my son and his father. I remained in that frozen state for almost two decades.

However, when my child became of legal age, I contacted the agency. A few years later he also wrote to the agency. Eventually, we began to correspond by letter and phone. Then, I got to "again", meet my adult child. That was one of the best days of my life. Presently, I am about 5 years into reunion with my son.

After I received my first letter from my son which was forwarded to me through the agency, I began to experience extreme emotions. Overwhelming emotions. The social worker who was acting as liaison between my son and me during the letter correspondence phase asked me if I would like to speak to another mother who had been reunited. I don't think she knew how to help me with all my emotions. To her credit, got me in touch with M. who is another mother of adoption loss.

M. and I spoke mid June. I was amazed and grateful that she gave me two whole hours of her time. Not only precious time out of her day, but very deep compassion, love and the understanding possessed only by another mother who has lost a child to adoption. M. was also in reunion with her daughter and from her own reunion I gleaned hope for a chance to see my son.

M. also asked me if I would like to meet with her and another mother in reunion for a lunch in a few weeks. Of course, I said yes.

The strength, hope and experience that M. held out to me on that summer morning through my telephone line illuminated my own little dark closet. I began to discover that I was not the only one.

Got my hand up

2006-01-25T09:19:00.000-06:00

My hand is up in the air. I used to be sitting on it. Sat on my hands for decades because I was told be be quiet. Don't dare to be seen. About once each year, I mustered the courage to raise my cold, numb hand up to about shoulder level; but shame, my vigilant bodyguard, slapped me hard and quickly I was back on both hands without a word; not even a whimper.

My hand is up now. High. So count me into the numbers of mothers who have lost a child to adoption. I am such a mother. My hand is raised and I am ready to speak of my own experience. I am ready to begin to share strength on the days I might have some. And to share the intangible thing which we all need that is named hope.

Count my hand in this number of mothers.
We are everywhere.