When we first met…

When I met my mother face to face, for the first time that I could remember, it felt strange.  Not  happy, just odd.  I knew it was her.  Her face was strangely familiar, yet I didn’t  feel anything.  I was detached from the scene, not sure what to do next.  It was winter. Snow was underfoot.  She wore a big coat.  She was wearing makeup and looked nice. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I would love her until I died.  She had my heart from before I knew her, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I wished I felt more, but I could not.  

I was with my husband and 13 year old daughter.  It was too much.  It was not enough.  

She spoke fast.  She looked scared.  She seemed nervous.  I was in love.  I wanted her to love me.  I didn’t know what to think.  She was a real person, not just a dream.  I never thought I’d actually see her face again.  I knew I was real, then.  

I wanted to scream,WHY?  I wanted to shake her, I wanted to slap her, I wanted to hug her.  I wanted to take care of her.  I wanted her to take care of me.  I wanted to feel more.  I wanted more.  

When the **** hit the fan, and how I felt

When my mother lashed out at me the first time, I didn’t expect it.  She called me “Little Miss Fu****ng Know It All”, because I suggested that there must have been a memory erasing cloud hovering around the island when I was born.  No one seems to remember a thing.

At first I thought she texted me by accident.  I texted back, “Mom, it’s me, Girlie”, but she knew who I was.  She meant it for me.  I didn’t know why my own dear mother, who I loved so much would treat me that way.

I tried to ignore her words, but they hurt me terribly.  I felt an actual physical pain when I read them, a pain that took my breath away.  It was late at night, and my mother was at a party with her friends.  She had been drinking.  I tried to reason away her behavior.  I went to bed feeling like I had been kicked in the head.  I was confused and dizzy.  I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through the night, but I did.

It wasn’t the first sign that things weren’t really OK, but I wanted them to be, so I pushed aside the bad feeling I had.  My bio cousin, Piggy had given me her email address at our reunion luncheon.  I waited awhile, then emailed her, asking if she knew anything about my relinquishment.  Piggy is  one year younger than me, and she became the first grandchild when I was kicked out of the tribe.  Her mother is Aunt Matriarch, the keeper of family secrets.  The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree with my cousin.

I thought since we were so close in age that we would have things in common.  I actually thought that my family felt that my adoption was wrong.  I didn’t know that they actually felt it was right.  At 48 years old I still had a lot to learn about family.

Cousin Piggy told me that my parents had some issues, and that she had heard that I died at birth when she was a child.  I asked her why her mother didn’t invite me to her wedding, and Piggy told me that “no one would think that you wanted to be included”.  Despite the fact that I searched for my family, and we had a big reunion luncheon 2 months before the wedding.  I’m the first grandchild in the family, and they had no idea I’d like to be included?  WTF!!!

She also told me that, “just because we’re cousins, it doesn’t mean that we’ll be friends”.  Lovely.  She didn’t even know me!  Why on earth would she come out with that comment, right off the bat?  I still can’t understand.  She blasted me pretty good, telling me that I should feel sorry for my father, because he had to bear the pain of abandoning me all alone, without the support of his family.  She informed me that adoption saved many children from horrible lives.  We went back and forth in emails for awhile, but things just went form bad to worse.  She told me her mother had enough sorrow in her life, and I should leave her alone.  She ended by telling me that I didn’t know her, and she would never stop trying to get to know me.

That was over 2 years ago, and I’ve never heard from her again.

I told my mother what Piggy had said, and Mom told me that Piggy was right, and I had no right to bother her.  I couldn’t believe a mother would not stick up for her flesh and blood, but I didn’t really know my mother.  I didn’t know her true feelings about me.  I hadn’t learned yet that actions speak louder than words .

My Mother

 

 

This topic is so big, and so painful.  

My mother played a starring role in my life, even though I didn’t meet her until I was 48 years old.  That’s not exactly true, I met her the day I was born, and she cared for me in the hospital for 5 days before she took me to the agency.  I must’ve loved her very much, because her loss destroyed me.  I live, I laugh, I do things everyone else does, but I’m not all there, and I never will be.  When I lost my mother, and entire family I lost a big chunk of myself too.

I longed for her my entire life.  My real mother, who was coming back to take me away from the people I had to live with.  My real mother, who had hands like mine, a face like mine and a heart like mine.

She never came back.  I knew she wasn’t going to, but I always had a spark of hope.  Something to get me through the dark times.  

I pictured my mother in my mind.  My adopter told me she had brown reddish hair, and she was 19 years old and married.  A-mom told me my parents were too poor to keep me.  That sounded reasonable when I was little, but when I grew up I wondered why my father couldn’t get a job, so they could have kept me.  My a-parents were far from rich, and the agency gave me to them.  It was pretty confusing for a little girl.  But I had no choice.  I had to accept it.  I had to eat.  There was nowhere for me to go.  I had to pretend I didn’t have feelings about being adopted, because that made a-mommy mad, and it scared me when a-mommy was mad.  She had a big scary voice, and a big scary face, and I didn’t like to be yelled at, so I learned to just shut up.  Shut up, shut off my feelings.  

When I found my mother, I thought everything was good.  She told me she loved me, and never wanted to give me up.  I shared my feelings with her.  I thought she hurt as much as I did, so we could share our pain at being separated.  I made a mistake.  

I shared too much.  I didn’t realize how she was feeling, because she tried to hide it from me.  One day she broke, and lashed out at me.  I never saw it coming.  I thought she understood me, but it was not the case.  

After that, things were never the same.