Month: October 2020

I remember a friend telling me, “40 is a big deal,” as I approached that milestone birthday. I didn’t get it at the time, but as I’m now approaching 50, I have to say that she was right. Like, holy shit right. This dear friend has been a gift in my life for about 15 years now. I so appreciate the honesty of our friendship and the wisdom she has shared with me. She has mothered me through many challenges over the last decade. Neither of us were well-mothered as children, so I think we understand and appreciate what it means to lovingly support each other as adult women.

Ten years ago, I had no idea what coming out of the fog was for an adoptee. I certainly didn’t know that’s what was starting to happen for me. I didn’t know there would be times I would feel like every part of my being was unraveling. I didn’t know that physically experiencing the depths of my pain would be so liberating. I didn’t know that I would need to visit that depth several times in order to begin to heal. I didn’t know that there was so much I didn’t know about being an adopted person. I didn’t know how much it had impacted my entire life. I didn’t know that choosing to live authentically would be both costly and priceless at the same time. I didn’t know that searching for my first mom would take so long. I didn’t know it would be so hard. I didn’t know that searching for her was also about searching for me. I didn’t know I would feel like I already knew her when I did get to meet her. I didn’t know I’d been loving others and living my life in a suspended state of tension—forever. I didn’t know that my adoptive parents would choose to end their relationship with me. I didn’t know I’d so easily come to terms with that.

I also didn’t know I would need to cross my legs before I cough or sneeze. I didn’t know that jumping rope would no longer be feasible for the same reason. I didn’t know that tweezers would need to be strategically placed in multiple locations for emergency chin hair removal. I didn’t know that the further I got into my 40’s, the shorter my arms would seem to be. Bottles and labels with small print need to be moved back in order to read them. I didn’t know light would become so essential for seeing things well. I didn’t know that hanging out with my adult kids would be so cool. And soul-filling. And I didn’t know that YaYa would be the best name anyone could ever call me. Grandkids are the best part of aging.  

At 40, I didn’t know I had so much to learn. I’m ready to keep going and keep growing. I have a lot left to do.  

One of the bigger arguments I had with my adoptive mother near the ending of our relationship was about adoption. It was one of the only times adoption was a topic of conversation in their home. Growing up, the subject was pretty taboo. Unless we were in a public setting where it could be used as bragging rights, the topic was basically off limits. The only other time I remember adoption being a specific topic was when I was about 10-years old and it came with a warning. My dad’s parents must have been coming for a visit soon. My mother told me to be cautious around my grandmother.  She stated that, “She just wants to get you alone so she can talk to you about being adopted. I don’t want her discussing anything with you if I’m not there.” In retrospect, I wonder who she was protecting, me or herself? I heard many times about when I’d first come home with my parents and my grandmother stopped by to visit while my dad was at work. My grandmother told my mother that she’d never forgive her for not being able to have children “of her own.” That sting pervaded throughout both my mother’s life and mine.

I wonder if that’s why my mother spent so much time trying to point out my specialness. Is that why she thought I excelled at everything I did? I wonder if that’s why she spent so much time pointing out the faults in others in order to deflect any negative reflections away from me. As an adult, I know that when it comes to athletic endeavors, I am mediocre at best and always have been. And yet whenever my team would lose a soccer game, the post-game conversations in the car revolved around everyone else on the field’s lack of performance. Had they done their job, the opponents wouldn’t have had the chance to shoot on me in the goal. Supposedly my junior high volleyball coaches commented on how beautifully I jumped at the net (my mother’s words, not mine), and when she told them I’d taken dance lessons since I was in preschool, they all had a connect-the dots moment. I now wonder if the late-awarded medal from the state gymnastics meet wasn’t actually a scoring-error correction and was really just a way for the hosting sponsors to pacify my mother’s loud complaining and make her go away. And it wasn’t only sports. I started taking piano lessons in 3^rd grade. My mother seemed to think I was gifted there, too. What I remember was finding the most joy in was playing by ear with the portable radio sitting nearby or making up my own music. She loved the yearly competitions that were involved. When I would place in the events, she had bragging rights that were on full-on display. She could show others I was special once again.

When we had our argument near the end of our relationship, I remember her reminiscing in the telling of how I’d come back from a diving accident and conquered my fear of jumping off the diving board again. Her grandiose telling of the tale made me interrupt her and holler, “Stop! Just stop. I didn’t want to be anything special. I wasn’t any more special than any other kid in the neighborhood.” She responded with, “But you were special to me!” There it was—from the day I arrived via adoption, I was special. The “birth announcement” they sent out even said so. “I wasn’t expected, I was selected.” The constant broadcasting of my specialness and perceived superiority were in direct conflict with the internalized messages of unworthiness and sub-par quality that relinquishment had taught me. Not only was I trying to live up to the role of the child they’d pinned all their hopes and dreams on, it felt like the world’s spotlight was focused on me, too. During our argument I looked at her with tears welling up in my eyes and said, “I just wanted to be a regular kid.” She couldn’t understand what I meant, nor could she hear anything in the explanations I tried to provide. She insisted that I was special, and I finished our argument by telling her, “But I was never asked if I thought so. I just wanted to be a regular kid and have that be ok, too.”