28
OF BIRTH AND BEGINNINGS
Black spots in my pelvis - anger. I had to find a way to get rid of my anger. But first I had to figure out what I was angry about. Elizabeth. She was lonely and taking her problems out on me, said an alternative doctor we visited. She was breaking the bond, the bond my biological parents broke when I was put up for adoption. This was just a trigger. Her problems were hers but they triggered mine. I had to concentrate more on myself and let her go. I must be angry at my real parents and she sparked that anger that weekend when she was ornery and distant. There was an answer to the pain - let go and it would stop. The doctor said I wasn't grounded and when she pulled away, those feelings when my birth mother dumped me arose. I should ground myself. I have Steve.
On October 27th I awoke at 3:28 a.m. and Steve wished me happy birthday. Could I have been born at that time or was it just the "time of my liver?" At 7:40 a.m. I got up with no profound dreams of my real mother, which I always hope for and expect on my birthday, and realized that yet another year had passed with no information or messages from her. Was she thinking of me today as I am of her? Is she still alive? Where could she be?
After Elizabeth left for a well-deserved holiday in Hawaii, I Greyhounded it to the coast to see my kids along with a girlfriend who was visiting her family. Valerie and Caroline met me at the bus station. We stopped for some groceries and arrived at their house in the early evening. They had been in a car accident a few months ago and her husband was still in terrible pain. I called our chiropractor in Calgary to recommend a doctor. That evening she broke down, scared and helpless in the face of her husband's predicament. He hadn't worked for a while and wasn't improving. I hugged her like a little girl and said we would figure something out.
The next morning I drove my son-in-law to the recommended chiropractor's office and after much adjusting took him home. It didn't take long for him to function more easily and they both realized he was finally going to get better.
My little granddaughter was everything I could wish for. She was four and performed like an eight-year-old. We did yoga together, gave each other manicures and pedicures. Oiled up to her elbows, she threaded her fingers through my toes, massaging them. I even got a new hairdo. We all walked to the beach while Valerie and I talked about her persistent problems with her father, her in-laws, and the dis- cord between her husband and her father. She struggled with all her relationships, admitting her confusion. I tried to help, and while she seemed to listen, I knew it would soon be forgotten; still I felt duty-bound - as a mother.
I was surprised when my friend had made other plans for the last night in the city after promising to let me stay at her hotel so my kids wouldn't have to take me to the bus station at 6:00 a.m., which is what happened. That old rejected feeling arose and I arrived home with a sore throat, which developed into a full-bodied cold because I hadn't voiced my feelings. It's amazing how we never grow out of our childish emotional hang-ups. Had I told my friend I was angry, I might not have gotten a cold. It's called "dealing," difficult to do when you're intimidated by women, a trait developed from having an overbearing mother. It was much easier to talk to Steve, who listened with a loving ear. We were here to learn and if we didn't learn this time, we'd crave to return and try again. Craving, craving, craving!
In December I started working in preparation for an exhibit at the Devonian Gardens in Calgary, scheduled for March '99. At Elizabeth's urging, I had sent slides of my artwork and was chosen for a one-month show. I would be responsible for hanging and dismantling the exhibit and they, for the invitations and advertising. Sounded like a good deal. "The Gardens" was an extensive greenhouse situated on the top floor of one of the downtown indoor malls where people could stroll along brick walkways, over bridges, amongst pools of exotic fish, fountains and fabulous flower displays, and enjoy lunch, a private conversation, a refreshing respite.
My routine for the next three months began every morning with starting a fire in the little cabin, after which I returned to the main house to have breakfast with Steve. Then, for the rest of the day, I chopped, rasped, sanded and polished my inner emotions into my marble, while the snow accumulated and the tree limbs hung heavy; a meditative woman walking, walking, walking with a lotus flower as her heart in white alabaster; a realization of letting go of Elizabeth, our hearts as one, in pink alabaster; and a reclining bison in black serpentine. It felt good to be carving again. Two new prints - an Indian paintbrush and a wild rose - added to my wildflower series and, along with all my other prints and sculptures, comprised an extensive repertoire of work.
"Homelessness" in Canada was declared "a national disaster." "Serbs in a Belgrade demonstration protested the Canadian government's decision to join the NATO bombing campaign aimed at stopping ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Canada had never before attacked a sovereign country that had not previously attacked Canada or one of its allies." Scores of demonstrators gathered in Seattle, Washington to protest the plans of the WTO to expand 'free trade.' Stanley Kubrick died.
On a brisk January morning on one of my walks to our telephone, I received a message to call Esther, my Vancouver birth buddy. She informed me that a few more adoptees had joined the list of Dr. R.'s deliveries. When in Montreal, she met a woman who worked for Parent Finders and after telling her of my dilemma, Penny, an adoptee herself, who wasn't doing searches anymore, said she would help me. I wrote to her about the Hershorns, giving her all the data I had. She eventually found that they hadn't been born in Montreal and sent me the birth indexes for 1900-1925, the marriage indexes for 1926-1974, and the death index; there was nothing. She did find Isidor Hershorn, a milkman, on Avenue Henri Ju- lien, but I already knew that. I wasn't any further along than before. I asked if she could find any papers on me; she said she would try. In the meantime I called a cousin in New York whom I hadn't seen since childhood and who lived next door to the Hershorns in 1929. He remembered Lily and Ruth, probably born between 1917 and 1921, making them between twenty-three and nineteen when I was born. Either could have been my mother.
The opening of my exhibit at Calgary's Devonian Gardens went well. Valerie, in the seventh month of her second pregnancy, flew in from Edmonton where she was working. A friend brought two beautiful trays of food and I made some dips. Steve sent me two dozen red roses that gave a festive touch to the table. It had taken two grueling days of moving marble and hanging the show. Two television studios interviewed me and as the days passed, many people viewed the work. On the morning of the opening we found my grizzly stone missing from the glass case it was in. The curator was shocked as we were. This had never happened before. I was eventually reimbursed for my stone but the feelings of somebody actually reaching into the case and stealing it were bizarre. I sold a few pieces, enough to pay for the preparation, and after one month we struck the show and returned to the cabin. Our time in the city was over and it was a relief to be home, the two of us alone again.
On the 24th of April the ice melted and the creek opened. All the dams we had built with fallen trees, branches, stones and mud, against the rushing water coming too close to the cabin, didn't matter. It picked its own course and we watched it rise and flood the