Murky Waters

© Photographer: Joelblit | Agency: Dreamstime.com
My heart and spirit are still swimming in the murky waters of reunion wake up. So many thoughts pour through, with the feelings coming slower, or at least the recognition of feelings. Instead of just "auto pilot".

Yesterday when my Mom made her surprise visit, it really touched me. It was truly for me, and it felt good. She came specificially to wish me a Happy Birthday, even though we had not made plans as usual. She didn't push herself in to find out my plans, which has been common in the past. She didn't put a guilt trip on me about it. Her face looked freer and more touched with pain, though, simply because we have plowed through a lot of apron strings and obligation and barriers to keep us in our pen of "good 'ole adoption roles". It cost a lot to break free, and I had to be the instigator, the bitch, the painful one (for all), but it was worth it. Sometimes I'm surprised we both lived through it. The more healthy boundaries - etc. Still not perfect, by far. But closer.

And yesterday proved a little of that to me - and helped me feel loved more for who I am, than who I could play the role of. And it felt good. She didn't pout and shy away because my plans were not revealed and did not include her, as usual. She came over, didn't intrude, but just wished me a Happy Birthday. My post-reunion, awakened self received it, and it felt good. Thank you, Mom.

But so many interesting little things I could overanalyze. As she was leaving she said something like "Yes, I sure remember 38 years ago today". It hit me - 38 years ago today, she didn't even know I existed. She got the call from her attorney a couple days AFTER my birth (back in the OLD days of adoption that was more common, I guess). In fact, according to her, they only "got" me because the couple who was before them on the waiting list "got pregnant" and so the attorney called and asked if they wanted a "red headed baby girl". She wasn't there on my true birthday, nor had she even met me, or been aware of my existance. So what made her say that? In her mind, she must have needed to somehow believe it.
But to me, maybe that is why my birthdays have always been very challenging? Because she WASN'T there, but it was celebrated as if it was all so right? Don't know.

Not to mention that she got my age wrong. I had to stop and think, but figured out I was truly 39 yesterday, and not 38 yrs old. I said, "I think I'm 39 - wish I was 38 - but was born in 1968 - let's see? - yep 39." (after my slow mathmatical brain did some counting). She had simply lost count. Understandable. Right?

I wanted to post the words from the card my natural father gave me, and I will, I promise - but I guess my little mind is trying to process my adopted side right now. I was re-reading the card my Mom gave me - (aMom, of course, as my nMom passed away before I could find her).

Here are the words in the card my Mom gave me - with a little bit of weirdo thought-pattern of this adoptee, thrown in -

"Thank you for my Daughter, Lord"
"Dear Lord...thank you for my daughter" (my thought: thank you for her tragedy of losing her natural family, so that I could have the priviledge of being her "mother")

"For her warm loving ways" (not always warm or loving (guilt) - except as a child and very young adult, before Frankenstein peeked and found out she was a frozen entitity and quite scary at times).

"For every smile and tear we've shared since her early childhood days" (the golden years I'm sure),

"I often whisper "Thank you, Lord" to heaven up above for the blessing of a daughter whose as sweet as you to love." (thank God in the crap-shoot of adoption I at least got one who held on ALMOST my entire life to the role she was bought to fill).

Then she wrote - "I love you very much, You are a blessing to me." (I love my Mom, but that just seems to reiterate to me how I was born to be a blessing to others, without regard to my own loss or pain in order to fill those roles.) Not that I don't want to be a blessing. I just need validation and healing and not expectation from birth to death to be "ok" with being switched out.

So there. Sometimes I wonder if aparents read this if it is too harsh. I'd be totally embarrassed for those in my "real" life to read this, except for a very few (and thank God for them). But it does feel kind of good to be honest.