An Unexpected Twist

As I have blogged about before, my birthdays of late have not been very happy occasions. I've been haunted by being off certain people's radar, and it hurts to feel that I am not remembered that day, of all days. I am not one of those types who always likes to be the center of attention--far from it. I hated having people's eyes on me at my own wedding, even. If I can fold into myself and escape notice, so much the better, except when I am hoping for the attention of people I love and whose love I crave.

This year looked to be shaping up much better than any birthdays of the last decade. My family had welcomed me back, and I'd told my brother that I hoped he'd remember. He said that he would. I was sure that C wouldn't forget, as she'd sent me a box of gifts weeks ago. I had plans to go to the Berkeley Rep to see Baryshnikov perform in a Russian play, adapted from a short story by Bunin, with two friends. Another friend said she'd take me to lunch. I figured it would be nearly foolproof, and it was unlikely I would spend all day crying in bed.

Mark told me that on Thursday night, he had an early birthday surprise for me. I was excited to see what it was, but figured that it was probably a vacuum cleaner, given that our Dyson is on its last legs and Mark is practical-minded. I spent Thursday afternoon in the city with Joy, walking and talking and shopping, and on the way home, called some people to say hello. C was busy; she said she would call me back in an hour and a half. I figured she was watching something on TV. I called my aparents, and they were entertaining. I knew this, and didn't want to disturb them, but hadn't heard back about my mother's checkup with her oncologist. When my mom picked up, she was strangely cheery. I guessed she was just happy to talk; she gave her update, made excuses, and then went back to her party.

Later on, after I had the kids ready for bed and we were watching a movie, Mark called to tell me not to come outside. He was wrapping my gift. He would let me know when to come out. "Whatever!" I thought. "I'm tired, and I just want to finish watching Frodo and Gollum have a slapdown." Finally, I received the all clear and went out to the garage.

There was a box, about vacuum-size. I tried to lift it, but it was heavy. Tobey helped me peel off the wrapping and...inside was C! She had traveled to spend my birthday with us.

Shockingly, I did not cry. It was such a unbelievably wonderful moment to have my mother want to fly across the country to be with me on the day she gave birth to me. Holy shit! Again, is this the same reality that I've inhabited for 43 years? Really? How does it come to pass that the pain is wiped away? How is it that all that stiff heaviness can be thrown aside? How is it that I am valued for who I am, which is all I ever wanted to be? I would never have dared imagined myself in this place a year ago.

I suppose it all happened one little step at a time. I have spent the past eight years doing a great deal of self-evaluation and trying to remove detritus from my life, in the form of people who are cruel, pursuits that don't bring me pleasure, and bullshit that weighs me down. It's been an achingly hard road; I've wanted to give up more than once. I do have a tendency to be addicted to sadness, although perhaps I need to allow myself more compassion on that count. I was learning who I was, at the very least!

Friday, on my birthday, more than ever I wished that I could go and speak to myself as I had been on April 27th in certain years, offering advice and encouragement. Being 43 and in a place of security really does have some things to recommend it, although the wrinkles perhaps aren't so welcome.

On Monday Joy and I and C met for lunch and talked about how debilitating shame can be. I know that I was wracked by shame for different things in my life, and certainly being adopted was no picnic, despite my wonderful afamily. As Joy has said quite sagely, we need to get rid of the barriers between ourselves and our OBCs to begin to throw off some of that shame that is so deadening, wearying, difficult, and dangerous. When we are treated like lesser than, as secrets that society wants to ever-so-discreetly sweep under the rug, it cannot help but affect how some of us see ourselves and our place in the world. Some are affected more profoundly than others: some are paralyzed completely, some of us become criminals, some of us battle depression worse than any dragon could ever be.

Now I watch C with pride, and see how happy and loving and fabulous she is, freed from her burden of shame. She has been shocked by the response of many people in her life, and how warm and open they've been to finding out about the story of my conception, birth, and relinquishment. I can only imagine that carrying that burden of shame for over 43 years must have been exhausting and painful and intense for her, even if she tried hard to put up barriers and pretend that it never happened. My uncle and aunt have told her that she is a different woman, so much, much happier than they remember her being for decades. I thrilled to have been able to help her over the hurdle, although I know at the time she didn't thank me much for it. (Now she does, and she's thankful that I didn't give up and stay in the closet. It's not my job!)

It's a gift to be able to build our relationship now, and to see myself in her, and to hear Mark say, "Oh, THAT'S where Kara and Tobey get it from." C and I are not alike in many ways, but in some ways we're amazingly similar. It's like bathing in warm sunlight to have these revelations and to love each other for everything we are. I love having a mother and a friend, unburdened by the pains and memories of adolescent power struggles. Yes, we lost a great deal in the past, but we have so much to gain as we move ahead.

Today, I went on strike with my fellow RNs at the hospital where I work. We are in a contract negotiation with management that is frankly insulting to us. I don't want to bore you with the details, but C spent the day with me on the picket line, met nearly all of my coworkers, and and had fun introducing herself to people, saying, "Hi, I am C, Kara's mother. Have you heard our story?" She's a gutsy one! As my uncle said, C and I were both stubborn, and neither she nor I was going to win. So we both won. I can live with that, quite contentedly.

Scapegoating

In blogland, and in life, I have been used as a scapegoat more times than I wish. I am different, as I wrote about earlier today. I celebrate my differences, but other people--not always so much. Depends on the environment.

It is easy for groups of people, rattled and nervous, to find an individual, or groups of individuals, to blame for their collective discomfort. To label them, mock them, and send them out into the wilderness. Especially when not sending them would mean shaking or rebuilding the entire foundation of one's belief systems.

I read a very, very smart blog post on scapegoating today that resonated deeply with me, especially in the aftermath of the Circle of Moms disaster and the ensuing blaming and entitlement. Not that the wise critique and analysis couldn't apply equally well to other "discussions" I've had with people who like to tell me that my life, as I've experienced it, just couldn't have been experienced that way. There's no data! I made it up! I am hysterical! Newborn babies cannot tell who their mothers are! (Sorry, I had to throw that last one in there.) I appreciated the reminder, how in the end of the Biblical story, wandering in the wilderness, the goat was able to shake off all the burdens and walk free. It turned out well, after all the suffering. At least it didn't get its throat slit. Good on you, Goat.

I am linking to the smart post, over at What a Shrink Thinks. Have a read, and let me know what you think. Sheep need not apply. Just kidding! Sort of. I don't mean to hurt sheep feelings, but...

And in honor of Tim Clark's new appreciation of the Pre-Raphaelites, here's William Holman Hunt's odd and creepy 1854 painting, "The Scapegoat."It being a Pre-Raphaelite painting and all, an the way those men were obsessed with painting from life, I am certain that goat was spoiled!

Embrace the marginal

When I started my blog years ago, I had no idea how deeply the concept of living on the margins would weave itself through my life. I loved marginalia; I felt marginalized within the Midwestern community in which I grew up; I was an American living in England; I studied a field in art history that couldn't garner much respect on a good day; I was adopted. I was scrappy about all of it, and always felt that no matter what, the margins were beautiful--even when my existence was difficult. I don't feel uncomfortable where I am anymore, and I forget that others feel intensely uncomfortable when they are reminded that they are anywhere near my bad 'hood. They denigrate the margins so concertedly that they can't bear to think that they, or anyone they love (read: adoptees), have anything to do with such a place.

The other day I was reading a series of essays by Carlos Fuentes, The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World. I am enjoying exploring being half Spanish. I have felt an odd pull towards Catholicism since forever (must be the Inquisition in my blood). I have been to Santiago de Compostela on my pilgrimage and want to return, more than anything. I love the idea of Iberian history, the mix of Arabs and Celts and Greeks and Romans and indigenous cultures. Then languages and ideas. I want to know if, and how, I fit into all this. I don't have a real answer, and may never. But I felt a moment of recognition when I read this: "a constant of Spanish culture, as revealed in the artistic sensibility, is the capacity to make the invisible visible by embracing the marginal, the perverse, the excluded." 

Okay, you say. This platitude could be applied to Hogarth's paintings of street urchins, or medieval marginalia, or many other examples from European art. It's not dissimilar from Tim Clark's "Never...more..." goings on. But yet Fuentes's focus on the margins isn't without merit. Knowing Spain's geographical placement on the margins of Europe, and how Spain's contributions to larger European conversations about art and politics have, by and large, been denigrated for one reason or another since the 16th century, what he says makes sense, even if it is written too broadly. 

Why do you think, for God's sake, that Franco was such an asshole? LOL Fuentes's comment draws me to the brilliance of Del Toro's gorgeous film, Pan's Labyrinth. Yes, Del Toro is Mexican, but the film is all about Spain and its past and its odd sense of the perverse and the mythological and the marginal. It's a brutal story about a little girl lost, thrust to the margins, who negotiates a path around the dangerous shadow of her stepfather, who would rather have her dead. She must discover her own beauty in living her story. 

Which brings me to why I believe certain APs and first parents have problems with some of us. When we are told that there's an appropriate "time and place" to speak out, it's because they don't want to deal with our message, or it has to be on their terms, in the light of whatever narrative they have constructed for us. Problem is, our stories cannot be neatly boxed up. Adoption colors our lives. Why are our lives considered appropriate topics only for a certain place and time? When they say, "adoption isn't controversial," "adoptive families aren't a sensitive topic," well, perhaps, except that the APs make them that way through their protestations. Adoption becomes controversial when they deny that there are trajectories, voices, experiences other than the ones they like to hear: the light, bright, sunny ones that fit their idea of what is "appropriate." Suppression of those on the margins is terrible, unconscionable. 

When APs say, "I feel marginalized," and that such feelings makes them uncomfortable, but then they put me down at the same time, I don't have a lot of sympathy. 

As an AP, you wonder and moan, how are you bearing the put downs? You can brush them off; they aren't (usually) meant for you. Your children cannot do so quite as easily.

The margins can be dark, can be scary. Especially if you've never had to live there. Why would anyone want to live there, you think? Let's just say there are no margins, you decide, and be done with them! Let's say adoption is not controversial, and make it so! 

It doesn't work that way. I am not you. I don't have the privilege of being born and raised by the same family. Even if I had been, I might still live on the margins (remember, I am told by every second person how hard it was being raised by "biological" parents who didn't love them, whom they didn't resemble, whom they never felt at home with, ad nauseam). I don't know. I can't know about a path not taken. I still like to think that I'd be compassionate about the experiences of others instead of being against them, simply because listening to different viewpoints makes me uncomfortable.

People are mean. They will always parse words, judge, be less than supportive. You know what? Love what you do, who you are, and pick your cause. If your cause is adoptees, then don't tell adoptees that their voices aren't worth listening to because they're "negative" and "marginal"! There will always be a spectrum of opinions. 

Adoption, as an institution, is broken. It truly is. We can work together to look at it critically and reform it. But to deflect from the real issues, and try to say that the attitude problems lie with "adult adoptees," or "anti-adoption adult adoptees" is to throw out red herrings and direct attention away from where it belongs: reform! 

Can you face your own fears? See that it's not about worrying about how you feel, but about how your children feel? Understand that maintaining the status quo of adoption reinforces terrible abuses of people and power?

Voices

There have been many uncomfortable happenings of late. While everything continues happily apace with my families, I have been struck by different bouts of oddness and misfortune that have left me strangely mute over the past month.

A few weeks back I wanted to write a post about my choice not to pursue my career in art history, having read a review of an exhibition by one of the aged luminaries who used to grace my department in graduate school. I felt, and read, in his words some of the malevolence that used to seep through and poison my professional life. He and I would disagree, vehemently, about British art being acknowledged as a field worth studying. He would dismiss it out of hand as "nothing of note, perhaps tolerable from Hogarth to Turner, and excepting Turner." I could psychoanalyze T.J. Clark's self-hatred to death, and have done, but it's not that interesting. He definitely wishes he were French, which he isn't, and loves being snide about Americans, which pisses me off no end. 

I remember a terrible dinner conversation he and I had, after a wonderful trip I took to India. I was fortunate enough to be in a department that had grant money to allow graduate students to study abroad, sometimes far abroad. One of my graduate advisers took eight students to do fieldwork amongst the "medieval" temples of Bhubaneswar, in Orissa. Professor W assigned us each a temple to research and write about, and then upon our return from India, we presented our work to the department and everyone went out to celebrate the tamasha at a fancy dinner. I cannot remember where, but I do remember I had the grave misfortune to be seated with Tim Clark and another professor whose name I will not speak for fear of conjuring the devil, she is so foul (she is one of his would-be clones, very bombastic, and much like a Rottweiler in behavior and appearance). 

In any case, I was young and naive in 1996. I was honestly puzzled about why Tim would be so anti-British art. I asked him why he told his students there was nothing worth looking at in the UK that wasn't by a Continental artist or imported from 1940's New York (mind you, I was writing my dissertation at the time on 19th century British design and Empire and intellectual history). I was also one of his Graduate Student Instructors for the survey course, Renaissance to Modern, that semester, and he was trying out a new way of teaching (i.e., he was bored with the teleology--Piero della Francesca to Michelangelo to Velasquez to Poussin to David to Delacroix to the Impressionists to Cezanne to Picasso to Pollock--but not really bored enough to reconsider it altogether) that involved starting with the Impressionists and looking at the history of art as a means of explaining *their* achievements. Again, I have nothing against French art, just against the way the department in Berkeley lionizes France to the exclusion of most other histories. (As in the person they hired to teach the Baroque specializes in a French painter living in Italy, fuck the Dutch and the Flemish and the Germans and the Italians, and who also happened to be married to another professor--the incestuous thing is another sordid conversation, entirely; the department at one time had about three involved couples. And don't EVEN ask about Latin American, African, or African-American art. Just forget it.) Anyway, Tim, the would-be-demigod, basically spent half an hour telling me why my work and my project was shit. How lovely and supportive! The answer, as I see it now, is that Tim Clark is a narcissist who loves art history--no, who loves the canon. He purses his lips for the canon's bright Boucher ass and always will. He is smart but can also be a very lazy thinker. Every lecture of his would have a "Never has X been more X like..." statement in it, which tend to be bland and often hilarious. One of my favorites, about Manet's Olympia: "Never has a cat looked more cat-like." Whatever that means. I learned to be on the lookout for Tim's "Never...more.." moments each Tuesday and Thursday, and I would invariably share them with Thomenon, my fellow outcast, so we could giggle about them in our otherwise painful existence.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that Tim retired (sans his wish to be feted and given the MacArthur Fellowship--boo hoo!) and moved back to England, where his wife (another retired professor) is now a curator at the Tate Modern. Tim occasionally writes reviews or florid self-referential things about Poussin for the London Review of Books, and I read them amusedly. In general. But in an issue from March, I found my ire resurrected by a review of an exhibition detailing Picasso's influence on English artists of the 20th century. 

I smiled to find the "Never...more..." sentence: "Never has a picture's literalness, its mere and proud materiality, been staged more eloquently." If you have no idea which painting he could possibly be referring, that's because it could be pretty much any fecking picture that Tim likes. Las Meninas? Sure. Olympia? Why not? Death of Marat? Definitely. 

But the shit that truly resurrected my blood pressure problems and PTSD involved shit about ludicrously stupid American students and how 19th-century English art is not great, but not all that bad. I refuse to believe that the old ass has changed his mind about ANYTHING. No, he just knows he cannot slam the Brits to an audience of British readers and get away with it. "I do not think, to go back a century, that anyone in Britain was capable of responding to the achievement of Turner [Wait! So now Turner's worthwhile? Since when?--Ms. M]. This no doubt set limits on the painting that followed (the fact that Monet and others in France were capable is one clue to their painting culture's strength), but it did not mean that the Pre-Raphaelites, to name his main inheritors, were in any sense an evasive or secondary movement."[WHAT?!? Are you on drugs, Tim Clark?--Ms. M] 

I suppose, in one sense, I get the last laugh. He's a sellout for money, silly old "Marxist." I considered sending him an e-mail to congratulate him on how much he's evolved, even deigning to write about things British. But he's not worth it. I wouldn't want him to think that I actually cared.

It took me a few days to sort out my tangled web of frustration, exaltation, anger, and disgust, resulting from this reopening of my youthful wounds, but a fabulous venting session with Thomenon helped. I had watched my career sink because Tim Clark refused to spend money or support people writing on such frivolous subjects as "non-art" in Britain. Oh well. I don't regret leaving art history, and his self-perjuring review just strikes home how much happier I am now.

My tender, sandpapered soul was further irritated in a drive-by Berkeley moment of aggressive misogyny. I was at lunch with a friend of mine from nursing school, who works in an intensive care unit. She and I see terrible things, including mistakes, and deal with asshole doctors, and generally have very high-pressure jobs. She and I understand each other's work milieux and can vent. It's great to have supportive friends. Apparently, however, a 60-something man eavesdropped on us and was disturbed by something (everything?) we said. As I mentioned above, we see some awful shit. And as in adoption, many people don't like to think that the medical field has a soft underbelly that can literally be rotten. Or that the doctors or nurses don't do their jobs properly, or don't necessarily have their loved ones' best interests at heart because they're having a bad day, are lazy, have low blood-sugar, or what-have-you. The man got up from his table, made to leave the restaurant, and then came to our table to spit at us: "You should stop gossiping and do something to change sub-optimal care." He then ran away, without giving us a chance to respond. 

What an odious person! First, we were talking about work, not gossiping. I suppose he never sits around with friends from work, or within his industry, and talks about how things could be better. He clearly said what he did because my friend and I are women, not because we were gossiping. Second, how does he know that K and I didn't file incident reports about some of the situations we described? He doesn't. (And I did.) He felt uncomfortable about something we'd said (our frustration with patient care, or doctors--I cannot venture to guess because he didn't stay to talk) and scapegoated us for his discomfort. If he were truly interested in bringing about change in the healthcare arena, he could have engaged in dialogue. But no, he was afraid and judgmental and ran away, like a little boy throwing a stone or calling a name. His behavior triggered the hell out of me because of the bullying I was at the butt-end of as a child, and because of his desire to trivialize me, but then I realized that he was unreasonable. His behavior speaks only about HIM, not me, especially because he was such a chicken shit and was going by only what he overheard, which was incomplete information. Third, why the hell would anyone consider it appropriate to offer editorial comment on a conversation to which he wasn't privy? Asshole. Wow, the world is full of assholes, isn't it?

Which brings me to the Circle of Moms debacle; see Linda's brilliant post, "Circle of Morons" that spells it out. I won't bother blogging about the fracas in detail, but suffice it to say that the dominant group once again sought to have adoptee voices and first mother voices shut out of conversation. What does it mean when a first mom is sent an e-mail disqualifying her from competition because her blog was deemed not "supportive" or "positive" enough? Who gets to define what those words mean, and to whom? Rhetorical question, of course. I think we know quite well who gets to define terms, and who are the scapegoats when the dominant powers are challenged, as Daniel wrote very eloquently, here, about the dominant voice co-opting the resistant voice and screaming, "I am the victim here!" Then the competition was shut down after more complaints and APs' false brayings of hardship related to those "anti-adoption" blogs that aren't anti-adoption so much as pro-reform (although reform is scary to some APs; it could mean fewer children available for adoption. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Discuss for 10 extra credit points--LOL). Maybe that's how we should cast ourselves--pro-reform--to avoid the negativity they attempt to cast upon us. I, for one, am sick of being labeled as "angry" and "bitter." Let's slip out from underneath their paper-cut-out portrayals of us! 

The great thing that came out of the COM debacle was that so many people stood behind Cassi, the mom who had been disqualified, and that when the contest was cancelled, my dear friend Amanda over at The Declassified Adoptee won! 

I am also saddened by APs who refuse to see/admit/understand that adoptees will be called "bastards" by some people, even if the APs don't like it. I was speaking with Joy today about our experiences related to having people tell us their unvarnished opinions of adoptees when they don't know we are adoptees (and even sometimes when they do), and it's not pretty. I have been told that people wouldn't adopt because it's like getting a mutt at a shelter with no history, and who would do that? Plus, you cannot just return a "bad" child. Or "I could never love a child I didn't bear as my own," or "Bastards need to be grateful for what they get; their parents are all trash." Yes, real quotes from people I have met at different places of employment, one from my MIL, and one from a classmate. Yikes! To pretend that everyone loves adoptees is naive, especially when you're not an adoptee, and you're not the one being hissed at when no adults (or other adults) are present. I am sure that some adoptees have never had experiences like these, and they are fortunate, if so. But to say it can't/won't happen is beyond irresponsible. 

It is also sad to read the ravings of willfully ignorant people who say that they've never heard of "anti-adoption" bloggers or activists before, or worse, THIS: "OK so I'm not the only one who didn't realize anti-adoption was a thing. I guess I'm glad most people don't know that! We have adoption stories on my and my husband's side of our family and I will cut a bitch who tries to say something bad about it. Or about any adoptive families." How very civil of you to threaten violence, Crazy Lady! If you haven't heard of something before, perhaps you ought not be congratulating yourself, but doing some soul-searching and thinking, instead. How about considering why pro-reform activists might hold those opinions, rather than blindly accepting the status quo? Oh yes, I know. No one wants to think or read or step outside their comfort zone. Oh, *eye roll* and being deleted from someone's blog roll is hardly the same as a contest being cancelled. The former is a personal choice--maybe not linking to you is because you don't agree about most things. I take it that you, poor Wounded One, wield the same power to cherry pick your blog roll? I am not crying a river that I am not on yours, although by your argument I could call that "censorship." No, it isn't. LAME. Blogs and businesses (COM, for instance) are different entities. The latter arena, COM, is supposed to be an open, free group, the contest with no predetermined outcome. It's pitiful that the whining of some bruised AP egos shut the whole thing down, just as it's terrible that they disqualified Cassi's blog without defining the terms "positive" and "supportive" in the contest rules before it all began. It stinks to high heaven of insecurity and bullshit on the part of APs who don't like the pro-reform message, as witnessed in the screen shots on Linda's blog.

If I hear, moreover, one more time that "most adoptees are happy," I will scream. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. There's no study that gives us precise numbers or is able to quantify happiness. Yes, yes, I know all about the Likert Scale, and yet many of the studies out there are designed in ways that reinforce the status quo; the questions are all about certain views of happiness; and the adoptee samples are small and suspect. I would have to hear from at least a million adoptees and have more than a simple majority tell me that they're happy before I would buy the "MOST" adoptees are happy propaganda being reamed down my throat by the Rainbow Police.

Yes, we all have unique experiences. Yes, some people are happy. I am quite sure of it. But to say that only the "happy" voices should be valued or counted? That's bias. And no more speaking for cousins, brothers, sisters, in-laws, hairdressers, or other acquaintances. I don't care what *you* say adoptees say. I care what adoptees say. 

To add to the blistering frustrations, my cat died. She had disappeared for two weeks, and I thought she'd passed away. It turned out, however, that a neighbor had decided that my home wasn't the right home for an 18-year-old cat, and she was being kept hostage an indoor cat. By them. They just took her. WTF? Sounds like certain APs, to me, with savior complexes. My family was mourning and doing our best to cope, and my husband told our German neighbor about our loss. He said, "Selkie? No, she's very much alive and at number 105." So Mark went over there and asked them to bring her to us when she came by their house. Because we didn't think they'd just keep her. Two days passed, then on Easter evening, the woman brought her over and lectured me on geriatric cat care and how my house, with two small boys and a dog, wasn't as good for my cat as *her* house. Huh? I asked why she hadn't called me when there was a number on my cat's ID tag, if she was so concerned, and, as she said, if she had "no idea" to whom Selkie belonged. [I don't buy her "innocence" for a moment: we moved into our home five years ago, and I know for a FACT that our neighbor knew she was ours. She used to watch me carry Selkie into my house as I would get ready to leave for work in the afternoons.] The neighbor looked down her nose at me, in my own home, and said, "I couldn't read it." I was perplexed, as the tag was newish, but figured that it could have been made dull by Selkie's outdoor exploits (it wasn't). The neighbor asked if I still wanted my cat. Again, WTF? I answered that of course I did, but that my indoor-outdoor cat had a mind of her own and it was her choice to roam where she liked. I knew I couldn't keep her away from the neighbors' home, so if Selkie liked it there, okay. It was just the blatant judgment, lying, and intense ownership ideas that drove me crazy. 

I took my cat from her, she left with a hard glint in her eye, and I cried. Selkie and I spent three glorious days together, and she came and went as usual. Then Selkie disappeared for three more days, and I worried that I'd have to go ask this couple for her back again. I was anxious and sick about the confrontation. What made them think they could just keep her? How was I going to (could I?) keep my cat inside for the rest of her life? She was miserable and howled and scratched if confined longer than 12 hours. She was a free spirit.

Mark and I strategized, and then I saw the couple outside before I went to work on the fourth day. I explained that I hadn't seen her and asked if they had. They said that they had, the day before. I asked them to call me if they saw her, and the said that they would. I wondered. Then another neighbor, someone I trust and in whose garden Selkie loved to play, called and said that she had found Selkie's body. She had apparently laid down to sleep and passed away, under her favorite rose bush, surrounded by violets. I was heartbroken, but I knew that day would come. Now confronted with her actual death, we are coping well, but I cannot help but wonder why these neighbors felt it appropriate to take my cat and then lecture me and question me about my ownership and even LOVING her, after 16 years. They may well love her, but their love of a month or two doesn't trump my lifetime of devotion to her. Entitlement, much?

What is up with crazy people who feel that it's okay to insert themselves into situations, take things, mock, and be assholes? Why do they give such weight to their voices and desires and needs that they allow no one else the room to speak? Why must they win every battle? Why do they put their own comfort ahead of their children (as in APs who tell their adopted children that they came from the cabbage patch, to avoid talking about sex and childbirth)? 

One little word: insecurity. It will ruin your life and drive you mad and cause you to do harmful things to others until you can put it aside. 

Sometimes life is uncomfortable. Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes we don't get what we want. That's okay, and part of learning to be a grownup. It's how we handle ourselves that speaks for who we are, most deep in our souls. I try every day to live ethically. Some days I am better at this than others, but it is terrible, painfully terrible, to have the anxious sandpaper of these insecure people rubbing me (and people I love) raw in interactions. 

Yes, we all have voices, but please stop denigrating the voices of others and saying, "I understand you, and you are nothing." You really don't understand if you say anything of the sort. 

In my recent time of great change and sadness, I contacted two of the people whom I have loved most fiercely to give them news. One after three years, one after twelve years to say that Selkie had died. I put myself out there, trying hard not to expect much in return, and feeling that even if I got no reply, I would be all right. I have many people who do love me, and that's okay. I was surprised and felt very warm inside to have both of these people express happiness and concern, and respond right away. I think I always felt that once I am gone from someone's everyday life, I am gone from his heart and memories, as well. This isn't true, of course, but that's the legacy of erasure I deal with. It felt lovely to have someone tell me, apropros of reuniting with my family, "Best news I have heard in a long time. Glad you have found happiness." And from the man with whom I was so good on paper, and with whom I had adopted Selkie all those years ago: "Thanks for this. You must have taken incredibly good care of Selkie. She must have been about 18, right? She was a magnificent cat. If you have any pictures you'd be willing to share, I'd love to see them." 

I matter--my voice matters--the little things and the people make all the difference. I remember when W, the long-ago boyfriend, held me as I wept, trying to digest those 12 pages of non-identifying information about my first family. W and I had broken up, but I had no one else to whom I was willing to bare my soul in such a gut-wrenching way. He didn't fail me then, and didn't now. 

It is humbling to be loved. I am fortunate to have so many people who are worthy of my trust and love, as well, and everyone else--pffft. I will always stand up for adoptees, though! Adoptees and our families are strong together, if we are respectful of one another's messages and voices. 

Adjustments

After having spent the majority of the past 30 years trying to be happy without being able to trust happiness, it's a difficult adjustment to make. I didn't like myself, and I didn't trust that people would be there for me. I wasn't wrong; by and large, the people around me, even if they did love me, were reliable in being unreliable (my aparents and a few friends being notable exceptions).

Looking back, it's no wonder that I always felt slightly (or more profoundly) off-balance. No wonder that I sought refuge in my head, in books, in museums, in music, in film: anywhere that people couldn't really get to me. I see now that I consciously--and unconsciously, to some extent--surrounded myself by people who would continue to treat me in the way to which I had become accustomed. Then I would hang on for dear life, because I am not the kind of person to let go. Dysfunctional was all I knew!

Ruminating on my mistrust of happiness, I was struck by two quotations this week.

W.B. Yeats on J.M. Synge: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through many periods of joy."

Jeanette Winterson: "Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all as being happy--which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine."

Like Synge, I believe I spent most of my life up to this point more comfortable being a tragic figure. It's what I lived. My experiences reinforced this, although it wasn't what I would have chosen for myself, and it wasn't what I wanted, to be sure. It was the palimpsest of rejection. I would have given anything to rewrite it, but somehow I consistently ended up with the same message of not belonging, of not being enough. I don't think it was self-fulfilling prophecy, although I cannot fully say there wasn't a component of that. Still, the ache was intense, and every time I thought I had found my place, I was wrong.

I would also, like Winterson, see people who were perpetually happy, or at least claimed perpetual happiness, as rather cow-like, unable to admit that there are other experiences, other views, other ways to think about things. Defensive, even: "Someday, you'll be as happy as I AMMMMMMM!" Without critical perspective, without passage, the moment of happiness doesn't mean much to me. As Winterson goes on to say:

What you are pursuing is meaning--a meaningful life. There's the hap--the fate, the draw that is yours, and it isn't fixed, but changing the course of the stream, or dealing new cards, whatever metaphor you want to use--that's going to take a lot of energy. There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms. 

Winterson writes from the point of view of an adoptee, in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? An adoptee friend IRL pointed me to this brilliant book in the past week, and Winterson's words have meant the world to me. They provide clarity and strength; they validate what I have been trying to come to terms with since my reunion. 

When my family told me that I was brave, I wasn't brave so much as living by my own terms, as I've always done. It was better to follow my heart, and to barely be alive at times, than to live in a haze and pretend to be what I wasn't. I stink at pretending. E, my amom, has had to coach me more times in my life than I can recall for not wearing appropriate masks with Powers That Be. I used to be unable to hide contempt. I lacked a poker face. I either liked you, or I didn't, and you would know. I can play a great game now, of course, but I always hated doing so as a child. Of course, I could always read game-playing a thousand miles away in others. If you try to play games with me, I know it. Don't try to pretty it up with words. Don't tell me you love me. Show me. I could overlook transgressions in boyfriends and friends and other loved ones, but I knew, I always knew when they were pulling away. 

Now that I am in a solid place with my first family, and I have greater, and perhaps calmer, perspective on my life, I feel as though a missing part of myself has been replaced. I am rooted. I am loved. It's not work just to live. 

My brother and his family spent the past weekend with me, and it was long overdue. I love him with all my heart, and I am so relieved to have all that went before put away. I will lose no more to the demon of adoption. A and I are learning about each other, and each new shared thing is precious to me. I love taking care of him, I love finding out about his childhood, his friends, his passions.  We are so much alike. We will be together in San Diego in May, in Hawaii in July, and in Indiana for Thanksgiving. Every time he calls me "Sister," my heart melts.

Every new day on this path brings fresh knowledge; this is the meaning of life that Winterson describes, I believe. I don't have to fight to be seen anymore. I am loved just for being me. How glad I am that I persevered. 

Being home is worth all the pain that went before.

Critical Thinking

I had a good laugh over the weekend, as my family was driving home from a lovely weekend skiing at Lake Tahoe. I was catching up on blog reading on my nifty iPhone, finally able to devote an hour or two to things other than chasing after my children, thinking about reunion, cleaning out the garage to house Mark's new prize possession, and other humble pursuits.

The whole Dr. Kimberly Leighton exchange still bothers me; I find it vaguely irritating that an academic should be 1. an adoptee but so little devoted to thinking critically about what adoptees have or don't have, in terms of rights and 2. so thoughtless in terms of her contribution to a national discussion about DNA and searching. ("Wow, adoptees should be careful not to rock the boat. People could get hurt, and adoptees must be made aware of this." DUHHHHH.)

I wrote a post about why I felt annoyed by Leighton a while ago, and another blogger wrote a post in support of Dr. Leighton. Fine. But then another person commented as Anon on that person's blog, and apparently one pack of dogs thought it was *I* who had written the comment and tried to go to take their pound of flesh, only it wasn't *I*. I had to chuckle in the car and share with my husband and my two mothers, who all found it very humorous, as well.

Apparently whoever commented sounded like me and agreed with me, so I toast that person. But the people who then tried to shred that argument, and mine, were rather pitiful. I had brought up, in my post, a whole thread of discussion, saying that Leighton should have been taking the industry to task for promulgating lies, rather than adoptees (naughty Pandoras!) who want to search. Someone said that Leighton had never mentioned CIs. Wow! Bully for you for noticing that! That was in *my* argument, and you took one teeny part of it out of context without looking at the whole of it, rather like Leighton's misunderstanding the entire tone of the reference of Pandora's Box.

Both of my mothers, when I mentioned the myth of Pandora's Box, immediately said, "Wow, that's a rather harsh judgment to make of an adoptee." Because they understand the myth and what it means. It's not about oopsies and unintended consequences. It's about a woman willfully disobeying a command, carried away by curiosity (the issue of Hope is a nice add-on, but isn't the main thrust of the problem here). Pandora's Box a very, very misogynistic myth. It's about how a woman didn't *think* at all, who went against what Zeus said to fulfill her own desires and unleashed havoc and strife on humankind--evil is actually the wrong word, carrying medieval, Christian overtones. If Dr. Leighton didn't intend to make this connection, or carry across this meaning, then she was careless, and it doesn't say much about her intellectual grooming. We all make mistakes, and perhaps given another chance, she would choose another metaphor. I will send her an e-mail and ask her to clarify what she meant.

But back to intellectual grooming and silver spoons. The reference to an "Ivy League" school, and getting in on merit, rather than being a legacy was also funny. I am an adoptee. What kind of legacy would I be? Do you really think that my aparents went to the Ivy League? I went to a Seven Sisters college, and I earned my way there by merit. I studied and worked my intellectual ass off, from preschool on. If I'd been a legacy, I would have gone to Mankato State University! In my first family, I would have had more chance of being a legacy. My grandfather and mother went to the same prestigious private college, but I wasn't raised in that family. How you all crack me up.

My brother and I are both smart because we use our brains and have good critical thinking skills. He is well respected in his field of medicine because he reads widely, is a perfectionist, and doesn't tolerate half-thought-through bullshit (at least at work, can't resist that one, ha). As part of my academic training, I have been trained and whipped and scolded and taught not to be a lazy thinker, a la some of you and Dr. Leighton, and when I see people with letters behind their name, I am not necessarily impressed. The institution matters, as does how a person presents himself or herself. Some institutions hand out Ph.D.'s like candy, which is not something to be proud of. As Joy has said, degrees are not proof of anything, but academics like Leighton trade on their degrees, so her credentials are definitely fair game. If Leighton doesn't know her Greek mythology, she shouldn't reference it. Why argue about what she must have meant? You don't know.

And the silver spoon in my mouth? I was raised in a lower middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest. You make me laugh. I did live in Europe and have a horse and other fun things, and yes, I now move in different social circles where I am more comfortable, but that's thanks to my aparents who taught me to have great manners, and my first family, who blessed me with a fantastic temperament and great intellectual capacity. I have earned everything.

Although both of my mothers advised me not to bother to write this post, that it was a waste of my time, I had to write about being considered a spoiled "legacy" when I am adopted! It's too hilarious. I am damned either way. I couldn't have achieved what I did because I am smart and deserved it. No. Not possible. I can't be who I am because of myself.

My aunt, when I was visiting a few weeks back, made a great comment: "C gave you life, and your parents gave you the life you have." I am fortunate to have two such wonderful families, both of whom love me. That's what counts, and I am thankful, also, for my critical thinking abilities, which I honed on my own.

I would rather see all the world, in its horrifying darkness, than be limited and scared to see anything at all. Why bother?

I don't even consider myself to be all that smart. If you want to read a blog by someone truly brilliant, try this. Don't fuck with her.

Not for the faint of heart

It's been a bloody couple of weeks in adoptoland, but so what else is new? There's always someone attacking someone about something, engendering hurt feelings. More than two blogs I read have now gone dark, mostly because of rudeness heaped on by people who just want to flog a person rather than have dialogue. Repulsive. Another blog switched venues to shake off idiots, and the rest of us soldier on.

In one case, a first mother friend was accused of bullying (again, that nonsensical "bullying" bullshit when people don't agree!) and then had harpies send private e-mail and stalk her placed daughter, among other things, "wanting to do the right thing." Ugh. I have now lost another one of the few people who actually stands up for adoptees because the troops of zombie non-thinkers attacked her. I actually had a good laugh when one of the brigade started writing about cyber-bullying and cyber-harrassment but posted links to Utah (surprise!) statutes that don't govern interstate commerce and the Internet. Get it straight, people: Utah doesn't run the country. At least not yet. I hate that my friend felt pounded to a pulp for standing up for herself. APs and beemommies in Utah need to do some real soul-searching before they start labeling others. THINK.

As it turned out, the woman my friend had wanted to engage in discussion ended up listening to what adult adoptees had to say, which I suppose we can see as a victory. Again, we were told that a private e-mail would have been sufficient to help her change her mind. I rather doubt it, however. It's easy to brush off one little e-mail as one person's opinion. Guerilla tactics may be dirty, but they certainly get a lot farther for the cause than politeness. I am fucking finished with politeness, especially after that episode. My friend was badly hurt, and I don't forgive that stuff.

Then another first mother was shredded to bits by APs who didn't know thing one about her story. It was complete bullshit. She had asked APs, honestly, if they felt jealous about the relationships their adoptees have with their first families. I don't think it was a bad question, even if it wasn't perhaps worded in the floweriest of ways. Who gives a shit, really? This was one woman's question, one woman's story. She was lambasted within an inch of her life, psychoanalyzed in the cruelest of ways, and measured up as unworthy of her son. It made me SICK.

In yet another delightful episide, an AP provided commentary on a story published in the Modern Love column of the NYT, documenting one adoptee's journey to reunion and her ambivalent feelings about it. While I believe every word this adoptee wrote, as did the AP, the commentary was directed toward the adoptee's APs, who may or may not have made good decisions regarding communicating with their daughter about her first family (or so the narrative seemed to say). I agreed with the commenter. Even if I hadn't, it was her blog, her opinion. But of course, the uptight upright AP brigade, who has done so much good this week all around, had to throw tomatoes at the AP blogger and adult adoptees who shared stories that reinforced AP ambivalence about reunion.

There have been times with my own beloved aparents that I've known they're not really comfortable talking about my first family, and I know that. Do I wish it were different? YES. Am I allowed to say so? YES. This stuff stems back to childhood for me. I can read every word, every tone, every arch of the eyebrow, every silence of my amom's. I know what my aparents are thinking or doing from their presence and absence from discussions. I used to feel it was my duty want to take care of them emotionally, but now that I am 42 and really doing reunion, I know it's not my job. I know they love me and want what's best for me, and I love them, but I am going to take care of my own adoptee feelings for a change. I am sure they can respect that.

So when the writer mentioned her amother's "wobbly voice," asking how reunion went, I could hear it. I know it extremely well. When the adoptee's aparents handed over a thick file of information about her first family, without a word, without offering to discuss it with her, if she wanted--well, that's a parenting choice, but a loaded one. Adoptees know the avoidance tactic. It's okay, but it's not value-free. To say that it is: that's wishful thinking on the part of APs who don't want to look hard at themselves.

Anyway, adopto-blogland is full of packs of bloodthirsty hunting dogs (not like my own adorable lurcher, to be certain) who derive pleasure from tearing flesh from people, preferably first mothers and adult adoptees.

Their behavior is execrable (how I love that word); supposedly they are human, not beast. Yet they tear others down for fun, or to avoid challenging their own beliefs. Probably a little of both. Mostly they think they are mighty superior, but their insecurity is readily apparent to anyone who can truly see.

To those who hide, give up, or seek shelter: I can understand your desire to retreat. But we adoptees cannot. Just cannot. We must fight for ourselves and those who come after us, because we are still the ones who are treated like invisible ghosts, at best, or rubbish to be trod on, at worst. People still insist on speaking for us, saying that their children won't be like us, that it's okay to close adoptions, that it's fine to take children from orphanages filled with "stock" by corrupt practices. It's insanity, and I won't stop pointing it out to the naysayers. It's an uphill battle, and a weary one, but nonetheless important.

My brother, and mother, and uncle, and my cousin all said to me last week: you are so brave to come meet family, all by yourself. To fly to another state and not know what will happen, with strangers. To that I say: it was nothing! Nothing compared to being rejected, over and over; nothing compared to hating myself; nothing compared to most of the things I've done in my life.

Adoptees have the hearts of lions. The rest? Look deep inside yourself, and try to have compassion.

Belonging

I have been back over a week, and I've been slow to write because things are, well, just great and comfortable. I can find a thousand words, a million metaphors for depression, longing, sadness, and feeling broken. Happiness and peace are harder to construct poetically. It seems so Disney and unfamiliar to me.

I could sum up the weekend I spent with my family with three marvelous sentences uttered by my uncle, as we were all waiting to be seated in a busy restaurant. Apparently we had missed a spot at our six-person table and had to squeeze into a booth. The host apologized, and my uncle said, "Don't worry; it's okay. We're family." I looked around at everyone, and it was true. I looked like everyone present, I was one of them, I was welcome, and I belonged. I sat between my two cousins and chatted away, enjoying stories about my grandparents and my mother and uncle. It was normal. I wasn't made to feel awkward, and I didn't feel awkward.

I didn't cry at all, except when I was with my friend Lori, at lunch, and she told the story of giving up her son (that always makes me cry). If you know me IRL, this absence of lachrymose behavior will seem unbelievable. I cry at the drop of a hat, even on my medications, so I must have felt protected. I am usually ill-at-ease in new environments and try to melt unremarked into the background, but that didn't happen.

C and I spent Sunday night at my uncle's house. We enjoyed a delicious dinner prepared by my aunt (she is a spectacular cook), and then looked at treasures and booty my grandfather had brought back from Germany after WWII. Our conversation flowed over the evening; I was able to ask questions, and I enjoyed gathering layers of information that told me about different family members: great-grandparents, grandparents, etc. I really wish I could have met my grandfather. Everyone says he would have loved me, and it sounds like his temperament was very similar to mine. Maybe in some small way, I form part of his legacy, and I can feel good about that. I certainly look like him.

Leaving to return to California was very difficult, but we all have plans to meet up again this summer. My family has pledged to get to know Mark and the kids, and not to let me go again. I trust them, and they are showing in all kinds of ways that they mean what they say. As you know, trust and loyalty are important concerns of mine, so this is huge.

As my uncle and aunt and mother said, our weekend together marks a beginning, not an end. The hard part is finished, at last. Certainly, there will be bumps and bruises and hurt feelings, but we are committed to pursuing our relationships and making time for one another. I have more people to love, and who love me. I never thought belonging would happen like this, or feel so good.

As Joy said, it's not all that surprising. I am a warm, loving, kind, generous person. What kind of family did I think I came from?

Finally, finally, I am at peace inside myself. That is the most amazing gift of all.