18
FINALLY FACING THE "A" WORD
The White House refused to acknowledge the reality of global warming. The needs of corporations came first. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, President Bush decided to go to war with Iraq even though the sanctions made by the United Nations were succeeding. He needed an excuse to promote his esteem among voters.
Valerie wrote that she had a good time with Elizabeth, was sorry about having lied to us and wanted us to know she still had plans to do something more creative. She needed to please both parents and was afraid that she could never be herself. She loved me very much and needed my support and friendship most of all.
She wrote again that since we hadn't corresponded with one another for months, she had obviously done something to create this void. Three weeks later another letter arrived saying that she wondered if she would ever hear from me again.
I needed a rest. I felt betrayed when she lied to us in an attempt to get closer to her father. She wasn't addressing her issues but tried to make me believe she was.
In April we left for Canada again with a third addition in mind - a larger bath- room for our composting toilet. The last fifty feet of the 8429' Teton Pass were icy and snow packed. We could see winter receding into the mountains as we drove along the west side of the range. There was nothing as far as the eye could see, and then a barn. Black cows against green fields that disappeared into invisible foot- hills. Idaho governor Cecil Andrews made a surprising "critical crisis" choice after pro-choice women across America boycotted Idaho potatoes. Isn't it strange how a few old geezers sit around making decisions on women's issues?
A cup of peppermint tea hit the spot after a stop to get our spines aligned in St. Anthony, where shaped trees and manicured lawns reminded me how few of us are drawn to the wilderness anymore. A tree too close to another didn't develop on that side. Unhampered on the other its branches reached out into space and I thought about myself. Have I been handicapped because of my adoption? A snowstorm cleared as we crossed the border into Canada and, after four more hours of driving, reached our property.
The cabin was as we had left it except for mice droppings. It took a few hours to clean up, settle in and get used to being alone again. The marsh was hypnotic.
We couldn't see the mountain goats in the early morning because the huge rock they hung out on was in shadow. A young elk emerged from the trees, strutted into the meadow and checked the premises for two does who followed moments later. They all disappeared amidst the thick second-growth. The buds had just bloomed and the distant logging road would soon disappear. I forgot about the road during run-off because there was less traffic up the valley, but without the lumber trucks, there wouldn't be a road. The flutter of a grouse brought me back to our cabin in the Canadian woods and my hammering. We reluctantly left three and a half weeks later.
"His name is … ," Elizabeth said, and after a moment of silence … "I know, I know, Ma." Her new boyfriend had the same name as her father which proves, to me at least, that blood is thicker than water. Twenty years of input from Steve didn't stand a chance when it came to blood. At least she could walk into the house and say it like it was. So where does that leave me? My blood was a mystery to me. Whose veins had it run through? Who was pulling my strings and influencing my decisions? It made me think of my real father, wondering what part of me reflected him. Who was he? What was he like? Was he still alive? Did he know about me?
In the middle of June we returned for a month to build a fourth addition. By now our tar-paper shack, as one of the neighbors referred to it, was becoming a house. We added an 8'x12' room on the front which would become our kitchen. We could now do our dishes while watching the sunset and the movement of wild- life in the marsh below.
I suppose our trips to this northern country where I was born stirred an ancestral awareness, but the impetus to start searching truly arose after our visit to the farm where I had seen the new-born piglets and had that epiphany eight months earlier. I remembered throwing the coins and reading the hexagram from the I Ching before leaving for Canada.
"The time of darkness is past. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time. Return means coming back. Return leads to self-knowledge."
We are moved by a Great Spirit only when the time is right. For the first time I started to think about my life, I mean really think about my life. The next day in the library I whispered to Steve to ask the librarian if she had anything on adoption. I was forty-nine years old and still intimidated by the A-word. A pile of books came home with me and as I started to read, the tears fell, and the more I read, the more I cried. I was hit with a tidal wave of information, of feelings and fantasies I had been avoiding all my life. I was just like all these people when I was never like anybody before.
"Rejection is an unnatural act, the forsaking of a child by its mother, severing the closest relationship in the human experience. Avoiding the unpleasant issue of rejection, some parents falsely picture the birth parents as dead. Actually they may have introduced a more onerous vision for their children to dwell upon: the responsibility of their parents' deaths." 1
"Adoption is a cataclysmic rupture in our most primal relationship, shaking our earliest sense of security, signaling abandonment and leaving deep wounds." 2
"Taking a child from one set of parents and placing her with another set who pre- tend that the child is born to them disrupts a natural process. The need to be connected with one's biological and historical past is an integral part of one's identity information." 3
I read on, book after book, and cried a lot, sometimes wrenching, uncontrollable feelings in the pit of my stomach. So this was my story … my dark side … the shadow part of me … the mystery of my life.
"The children have to know. It can't be helped. Adoption is their cross to bear." 4
"In legal terms, we, the illegitimate, have no roots, no ancestral heritage. The adoptee is handed over in a contractual agreement to a responsible couple. We have been refused a basic human right - access to our ancestry." 5
"An adoption agency 'sealed record' contains the records of both the birth parents and the couple who comes to adopt and pertinent medical, legal, personal and family information including identification information. When the adoption has been legalized, this combined record is sealed by the agency. The record can be opened to answer questions by the adoptive parents, the