31
MARRIAGE OF THE MILLENIUM
Although Al Gore received many more votes than George w. Bush, it was Bush who became President. The Constitution required that the winner be decided by each state's electors. Because the electoral vote was so close the result was going to be decided by the electors of the state of Florida where Bush's brother was the governor. In the limited recounting Bush came out ahead by only a few votes. The Supreme Court refused a reexamining of the vote because they were determined to see Bush as President.
Researching the 1940’s, '50’s, and '60’s with one war after another and the terrible hardships humanity underwent had gotten me very depressed. I was trying to find out about the consciousness of the country in which I was raised. People's cruelty and ignorance was unforgiving; the Japanese internment camps in the United States and Canada; the Axis against the world; the travesty of the Vietnam War; the dishonesty of the government; the military budget; the treatment of Native Americans, the poor, women and children; and it goes on.
It was New Year's Eve. We had chosen to be home alone but hearing the fes- tivities the world over made me lonesome. My kids were away: Elizabeth cooking for eighty people at the Kushi Institute; Valerie and her family on a ski vacation; and Susan somewhere in the west on a sail boat. We listened to the radio to hear a review of the last century but the CBC's programming of the New Year's celebrations was stupid and superficial. All year we had heard depressing news of hijacking, murders, kidnapings, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and now with a chance for some good newscasting, only meaningless messages. Even Y2K never happened. The broadcasters had lost their ability to talk about happy matters and had nothing to say unless some disaster or violence had occurred.
I hadn't been smiling much during the last days of December, but when I walked up to our outdoor phone booth to check for messages, it was comforting to hear Elizabeth's sweet voice. Hearing from her always lifted my spirits. On New Year's Day we called our close friends and two other daughters and wished them well on their answering services. Valerie phoned at our pre-arranged time and Caroline told me she loved me. My spirits lifted again and I didn't feel so alienated. Writing about rootlessness made me feel that way.
Then our neighbors dropped by and she mentioned she had been depressed for the last few days. When they left I talked about all the things that might have been on my mind, and it came down to my feelings about my middle daughter, how estranged we were, how we couldn't seem to get it together and probably wouldn't in this lifetime. Susan's remark to Valerie, that the next time she would see me would be in my grave, frightened me. With an outlook like that, no reconciliation was possible. A psychic had once told me many years ago that I would get two of my daughters back. She may have been right.
On April 9th we suddenly heard that wonderful whisper of spring; the creek was running, the temperature was on the rise, and the snow was almost gone. I was sitting at the window staring out at the trees, the marsh and the mountains, trying to make out the moments of my life that would give me a picture of who I was. I was so engrossed that Steve complained I wasn't around anymore. I had stopped communicating. I felt it too. I was immersed in reading about those years without my two older children, letters we wrote to one another, phone calls they made to me, and the pernicious presence of their father. So I took a day off and we went out to enhance the view from our cabin. We'd been talking of clearing some trees but found it difficult to actually cut them down.
Valerie and her family came to visit and left Caroline with us for a week. We drove to town, rented cross-country skis for her and spent a few hours every day in the woods, on the marsh and along the river. We introduced her to Shirley Temple movies and every evening, cuddled up on our couch, she watched in wonderment. We had her all to ourselves and enjoyed playing grandparents for a change.
One day when she and I walked up to our phone to check messages, I was shocked to hear Susan's voice on our answering service. She was going to be in Calgary within two days, it wasn't much notice but she had just found out about her trip. That evening I called the hotel where she would be staying and left a message to call at 6:00 p.m. the next evening and I'd be at the phone. About five minutes after the hour, as I was about to return to the cabin the phone rang. I listened to her talk about her job, traveling, their apartment, that she had plenty of money and they were both doing well. She became familiar so quickly that I found it disarming. We hadn't talked for over two years. I was excited because I had always been the one to initiate an interchange. I wondered if she wanted to get together or was just covering her bases as she said she liked to do. We couldn't get to see one another but maybe some other time. I walked down to the cabin debating whether or not to tell Steve about our conversation. We were having such a good time with our granddaughter, I didn't want to disturb the sweet balance.
The next afternoon I told him about the call; I had awoken that morning with a slight raw throat which got worse as the day went on. We finally talked about why I hadn't told him. Rather than the excuse I used, perhaps there was an attempt on my part to deny the reality of Susan's close presence in Calgary, so near to where we spent so much of our time. Did I really want to see her? Did Steve? Had I deluded myself into thinking she might be coming back into my life? Was I embarrassed at my delusion? Was I afraid of being hurt again? We hadn't seen one another since the death of my father, six years ago, and I still felt resentment for her in my heart. Did she understand that what she had done was wrong? Or had she denied, perhaps even forgotten, lying to me about sending a check to cover the money my father had loaned to her and her husband, so that I could conclude dealing with his estate. Could that be causing her to feel guilty and be overly familiar with me? I felt an apology was in order.
In my morning meditation I had a flash of the back of a hand reaching into the frame of my consciousness, picking up a puzzle piece and withdrawing, becoming veined as it pulled out of my vision. Was my life an unfinished puzzle and my birth mother's piece there at one time but then removed? We talked at breakfast and I realized today was Susan's birthday! My first feeling was that the hand was her father's, plucking her from me years ago. She was not a part of my life; the puzzle was still incomplete. I knew it had to do with her in some way.
An adoptee doesn't have a choice but to view the world from a search mode. What traits had I transmitted to my children? What traits had been transmitted to me? Elizabeth easily fell into identifying with another mother as she had done with her aama in Nepal. In one of her letters to me from Nepal she had written extensively about her aama and how she felt as if she were part of the family and how her aama wanted her to remain in Nepal and marry somebody in the village. Susan had negated her real mother and replaced me with two other mother-figures, rather than making an attempt at reconciliation. Valerie had identified with her mother- in-law and even though her husband didn't get along with his mother, she pushed for a relationship. A girl looking for her