My Three Graces

I just have to write about something that has made me think that there's a lot more to blood family connections than we might ordinarily think. In order for this to make sense, I have frame it by re-visiting something that happened to me some ten years ago when I began to search for my natural mom.

I used to be a member of the now-defunct adoptees only UCSD Adoptee Mailing List, which was well moderated and had a lot of traffic. Since my entire life feels like "the dark night of my soul," the list became a sanctuary of understanding and support. A huge chunk of meaning was torn from me when the list owner called it quits (I've since discovered the Chosen Babies list, which is as close to the UCSDAML list as any I've seen). But while I was a member of the UCSDAML, I worked with a couple search angels (people with expensive software who help you search for your natural family for a low or no fee). One was a lady who told me, among other things, that she thought that my natural mother was still alive, but that she would have to do more research and would need a little money for photocopying and gas for her car, etc. I was broke at the time, so I told her it would have to wait. But she did help me to fill in a few small blanks.

Meanwhile, R (my husband) and I drove to the city where my altered birth certificate and the search angel said I was born (this was around 1996). I used the scanty information I had that included a marriage date and a man's name that my natural mom married after I had been born. I spent an hour or so in the hall of records and in the library and learned a few more things, like the name of my grandmother and grandfather, and how old my mom was when she married this other guy, but I really didn't get very far. The next morning in the motel room, I stood between two mirrored doors brushing my hair when I got a thought that told me that my mother was dead and that she had died of breast cancer. I told R about that thought.

Fast-forward eight years to 2004, when I finally found my mother's sister, my aunt who was dying of breast-lung-brain cancer. She told me that my mother had died of breast cancer. I wasn't the least surprised, since I had already heard this from Somewhere Else. I only got to know my aunt for eight months, but I loved her so much. I saw her getting weaker and weaker. The last time I kissed her goodby, I knew it was for the last time. After she died, I cried my eyes out. I still miss her terribly.

As for the cancer, so much for keeping adoptees medical records sealed.

Since then, I've been very watchful of my younger daughter's N's health. A year ago she some episodes with her lymph nodes and this year with her stomach that worried me. Sometimes I'd lie awake at night anxious for her safety. Sometimes I got so worried and had nowhere to turn, so I cried out to my aunt, my mom and my maternal grandmother (the last two whom I never got to meet, and all three whom are no longer on this earth) to watch over N. I would do this almost daily, many times a day. "Please look out after your niece, your granddaughter, your great granddaughter," I'd whisper when I was alone, tears stinging my eyes, my heart heavy and filled with anxiety. I had to cry to someone. I was so worried. I reached out into the void to have a connection where there never really was one that I knew of. I never told anyone that I did this.

Then a few months ago, my older daughter K phoned me to tell me of a dream she had had. She said in the dream she wanted to tell her sister N something important, something about being careful and taking care of herself, but N kept running from her. K said she chased her for a long time, finally losing sight of her in a huge cave with pillars. Later in the dream, she found N in a big feather bed surrounded by down comforters so that only her face showed, and N was laughing and happy. Over the bed three faces stretched through the ceiling, like a membrane, and looked down on N. K understood that these faces were watching over her and that N was being taken care of. What do I need to chase her for? She's got it so good! K thought. Before she left the bedroom, the "faces" handed her a sundial made of a ring of rainbow-colored hands spread outward. The sundial was the reason K told me the dream. She found it incredibly beautiful, and that's why she told me the dream, not because of the faces.

But I felt strangely in awe after she told it to me. The hair of the back of my neck stood up. It makes me think that there's more to life than what meets the eye. Oh, and by the way. My natural mother's middle name was Grace.

Yeah! I Got an Open Line

Never thought my half brother would ever phone me again. We talk about, oh, twice a year on the phone. When he's not too busy with his family, restaurant, traveling, and whatnot. I had pretty much accepted the fact that like the other members of what's left of my natural family, he too had politely rejected me. So, when the phone rang a few nights ago and the caller identified himself to me as my brother, my gasp was involuntary. I felt both detached and reserved. Protected. My armor firmly in place.

The You-Can't-Get-To-Me-With-Any-More-Rejection defense.

It was unprecedented, that phone call. We talked for about forty five minutes. I suspect it's because he heard that I'm moving further away and there's less of a chance we'll see each other very often, or at all any more. He told me how lucky I was to be making a new start by moving out of state. He scolded me for being shy around him. I began to open up a little more, just taking a chance, that sort of thing when he reiterated about how tough it was being a kid while our mom raised him and my half sister. That our mom did the best she could with what she had. That she would visit people's homes around dinner time just so he and our sister could get a meal. That she was in an abusive relationship with their dad. But when our aunt adopted the two of them, their lives turned around and they grew up in a "normal" home, especially after our mom died of cancer in her early forties.

My response was, At least you got to see her, know her, touch her, hear her voice, no matter how tough it was to live in her life. He told me that when he first saw me he couldn't believe how closely I resembled her. Than none of the other three siblings looked as much like her. On the phone my other half sister, five years older than I, the one I've never seen in person because she lives too far away, told me that one of our mom's trademarks was a streak of grey hair just above her forehead that she had even when she was young. Now I know who my mom was. I have that same streak, but my siblings don't. Sometimes I feel close to her even though she gave me up. Sounds kind of out there, but it's true. At any rate, my sisters don't really show much interest in having a relationship with me...or with my brother, for that matter. But the fact that he wants me to keep in touch with him is the best news I've had from him since I first found him in 2004. How sad that while we lived only two hours away from each other we talked maybe twice a year by phone. And now that we'll be living nearly twenty hours away he says to email him regularly. It's true I never phoned him, though, because I thought he wasn't interested in us getting to know each other. Guess I was wrong. Sure, we don't share the same political or religious views, but we manage to talk around all of that, just knowing that we have each other is enough. And that's enough for me for now. I have a brother, even if he's over a thousand miles away.

In ten days we'll be on the road again. This time with what's left of our posessions packed in the back of an F-150 GMC and a six-by-twelve U-Haul trailer. I've been cleaning out cupboards, closets, drawers, and those spaces that I see so often that I don't see them any more in the house. It's so amazing what you manage to stockpile over the years and never even use. It all just sits there taking up space. Getting rid of things is the biggest challenge of selling your house. All the documents and signatures, all the formidable steps you must take with lenders pale in comparison. Even so, sellers and buyers eat it in the end. Comissions and fees and services and hidden costs that add up to eat away half of the profits of the sale. Yes, you read that right: half of the profits, so that tidy little chunk that's listed on the sale fliers that looks so great? It actually represents twice what they finally put into your bank after all is said and done...everyone involved outside the buyer and seller takes a huge chunk of the pie. Almost seems better to sell your house yourself except unless you're a real estate attorney or a Realtor, you don't know a damn thing about negociations, necessary paperwork and all the legal implications. It's one of those Gotcha! things.