Category Archives: First Mothers/Birthmothers

Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8

First Mothers/Birthmothers, First/Birth Mothers, Grief and Loss, Loss, Psychotherapy, Schizophrenia, Single parenting, Stepparenting, Unwed Mothers, Unwed Mothers' Home, ,

5. Dave

Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it. Anonymous

1986

Dave and I became friends while working together for five years for the State of California before I resigned to attend graduate school. Then we re-discovered each other when I was divorcing in 1980 after graduate school and dated for a year and a half before breaking up under the pressures of my single parenting and Dave’s entrance into night law school. During our year and a half of dating, I made sure not to count on him or let him have much say in my struggling little family. We spent four years apart, both of us trying out other relationships, until I read Jared’s scrawled message on a piece of torn newspaper, “Dave called.”

It was 1986. I’d never expected to see Dave again, though Jared and Chad hadn’t forgotten the camping trips, the movies, and the dinners we’d shared before. Every time I drove over I-5 and passed his Northgate freeway exit, I wondered where and how he was, but I kept in mind his “rolling stone” reputation. Dave had never married or had children, and none of his friends expected he ever would. The chances that he’d stick with me and my kids reeling from one challenge to the next looked little to none.

Still, I was excited to return Dave’s call. My stomach sank when he told me, “I’m relocating to Southern California to be closer to my aging parents and to start an international law practice. I wanted to tell you good-by.” 

We met for lunch at our favorite Whole Earth Restaurant. I made sure to look my best in my brown fuzzy dress with the blue silk sash. Dave showed up in his usual crisp dress shirt, slacks and polished loafers. I’d always liked that he’d been a good dresser.

While I barely nibbled on my vegetarian lunch, Dave and I reviewed all we’d gone through since our break-up. I felt we’d both grown. Perhaps we might be ready for a healthy relationship based on mutual maturity and trust. Certainly, the attraction, the chemistry we’d always had still sizzled between us.

The next few months, while we renewed our dating relationship, Dave continued to make plans to move. Well, if this is all I get, I told myself, I’m just going to enjoy it. Chad and Jared were happy to see Dave again. My family problems continued though. Jared wasn’t doing better in the private school I’d enrolled him in. Neither Jared nor I understood the Scientology terminology they used. Chad continued to earn independent high school credits, but most of the day he was free to follow whatever undesirable opportunities presented themselves.

With my burn-out from a crisis caseload at work, continuing ex-husband conflict, and lack of extended family support, my challenges seemed never-ending — poor grades, discouraging teachers, principals who predicted the worst, indications of drug use, bad examples from my kids’ friends with even worse problems. I dropped a hint to Dave. “Maybe it would be better to get them out of Sacramento.”

Not long after, Dave took my hands in his. “I think we should all move down to Southern California, if you want to go.”

“Yes, we’ll come. Yes.” I folded into his arms, ruffling his soft hair.

Dave’s decision to take on my complicated family baggage was honed on the gritty stone of his disengaged family of origin that inspired his massive caretaking efforts. My great good fortune is that he turned those efforts on me, his pixie, as he fondly described me.

I learned Dave had grown up in a family of six, none of whom got the attention, support, and nurturing they needed. He wanted more connections with his nieces and nephew and siblings, but his now deceased parents set a family pattern of detachment that continued through the generations. He was cheated out of so many family connections.

His childhood, like mine, led him to adopt caregiving as a survival mode. Dave became an expert at supporting people in pain and I gave him plenty of opportunities to practice his craft.

 He told me he saw no reason to bring more children into the world; certainly not his own. He inherited mine; a complicated brood indeed. Chad, the incipient outlaw who pulled Metallica and Iron Maiden muscle shirts over his slim, tall frame, wrapped leather, silver-studded bracelets around his wrist, and dyed his thick long hair a brassy, gorgeous gold. Chad’s high school principal predicted a future for him of life in prison.

 Jared’s withdrawn, uncommunicative behavior made him hard to reach. No one yet understood that he had a serious brain disorder.

 I packed up my brood and joined Dave in our little Los Angeles apartment. He’d stocked the fridge with a quart of milk, a small jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, one package of frozen vegetables, and a box of fish sticks. Gazing at my ravenous teenagers, I returned his warm hug and wondered if he had any idea what he’d gotten himself into.

The palm trees swayed in the ocean breeze in West LA, providing a soothing atmosphere, but Jared soon bombed out of his new school, resulting in calls from truancy officers, police, reports from Jared himself saying, “I wanted to buy marijuana from him, but he held a gun to my head.”  Finally, Jared’s therapist recommended we send him to a residential treatment facility in Utah run by Mormons.

“He can’t run away from there,” the therapist assured us. “Not like residential in LA. He’d just hop on a bus here.” 

Jared, looking eager for a change, got on the plane and spent a year in rural Utah, where his excitement soon changed to disappointment. Still, he seemed to be improving, or at least safe. Meantime, Dave and I made a Thanksgiving trip in 1987 to Las Vegas, where we got married in the coral-colored room in The Chapel of Love. After a visit home for Christmas, Jared went back to his previous high school. The school psychologist called me at work.

 “Your son has schizophrenia. He’s been hearing voices for years.”

Schizophrenia – a neurobiological/psychological disorder usually characterized by auditory hallucinations, inability to separate reality from delusions, confusion, lack of motivation, inability to follow goal-oriented action or to experience pleasure, social withdrawal, inattention, apathy, and more.[1] These symptoms fit Jared. No wonder he hadn’t done well for years and what were his voices telling him?

I closed my office door, roiled with shock. At least we had a diagnosis. I remembered how five-year-old Jared had shown me a little book he’d drawn one day, and I recalled puzzling at his words that seemed so profound. “Mom, sometimes I think life is a book and God is reading it to me.”  I also recalled how young Jared would suddenly burst out with piercing screams. What inner noises had he been trying to drown out?

Jared and I began weekly visits to Neuropsychiatric Institute of LA and anti-psychotic drugs he hated. There were psychiatric hospitalizations, six months at Camarillo State Hospital, board and care, home management, and enormous bills. Everything had to be prioritized around Jared’s needs. Jared’s seventh- grade teacher had described him as “an advanced self-taught artist,” but three years later, he required heavy duty medications to quiet the voices in his head. His illness took all our energy and most of our money.

Dave, my endlessly supportive husband, and I have endured fourteen years of chronic crisis since Jared’s diagnosis. Only recently has Jared become cooperative and medically compliant, allowing us to begin to focus on our other goals.

Dave, the “rolling stone,” the one who never wanted kids, stuck with me and his two stepsons. He put aside his dreams of international law practice, shared his earnings and inheritance for Jared’s care, joined in special education and private school meetings, and participated in multitudes of problems that arose with lack of services, unavailable hospital beds, out-of- home placements, and drastically inadequate insurance coverage. He didn’t turn away from Jared’s pain or mine.

We’d had a plan for months to visit Kauai, but Jared seemed too sick to go. On the phone, I made desperate calls to the LA County Mental Health Crisis Team, begging for help to get Jared into the hospital. Dave was soothing Jared by helping him bake brownies. The chocolate aroma filled our apartment in the middle of our night’s crisis, but the Crisis Team feared Jared was dangerous and wouldn’t come. The Police Department said he wasn’t dangerous, so they wouldn’t come either. In the morning, Dave and I concluded it couldn’t be any worse in Hawaii, so we dragged ourselves and Jared to the airport and boarded the Delta Flight. Dave and I had Scotch for breakfast and Jared stretched out across three seats and slept the whole way. When we returned, Jared’s teacher said he wanted to send all his students to Hawaii. Jared was so much better.

Dave, the heart and spiritual seeker, the one who read Buddhist sutras on love and compassion and had received so little love himself growing up, stayed with me. We recognized our mutual childhood hungers for love and nurturing. We saw each other’s maturity and wisdom struggling to emerge. We struggled to offer it to each other. Somehow, we held onto each other and held together onto something bigger than ourselves, believing love could hold it all together if we didn’t give up.

Dave proved himself to be the “world’s best stepfather” With his assistance, Chad, my rebellious teenager, turned from larceny to a legal, hard-working lifestyle. Chad referred to Dave as “a great stepfather.” Jared, whose brain disease drained us emotionally and financially, became compliant and largely stable. When people asked if Dave had any children of his own, I only-half joked that “a Higher Power, probably a female one, cursed Dave and gave him mine.” As the years have gone by, my sons have become Dave’s family, too. They love and respect Dave.

There were times we barely made it. Dave tried the soft approach with both boys, and when that didn’t work, he tried the strong “male” one. He and Jared got into a shoving match in our narrow apartment hall. Dave threatened Chad, saying nobody would care about him if Chad didn’t show he cared about us. When Jared stole Dave’s silver dollar coin collection to fund marijuana, he apologized. Dave forgave him. Chad started to help more, and Jared became more respectful.

In 1995, we relocated to Northern California, badly in need of financial security. Dave returned to his state job as a governmental program analyst and ultimately, an attorney. I closed my Southern California private psychotherapy practice and got employed at Kaiser Permanente Out-Patient Psychiatry Department as a psychiatric therapist. We bought a modest home in Davis and turned it into a cozy nest.

Chad married his girlfriend, Tonya, and they had our beloved granddaughter, Terra Linda. After they divorced, Chad and his new lady partner, Marcia, became the primary parents for Terra. I learned that Marcia was a first/birth mother who’d lost her daughter to adoption, too. “Marcia grew up in Texas. Her father was crazy, too,” Chad told me.

“I was only fifteen, when I gave up my baby,” Marcia told me. “Back then, I just thought it was a problem I had to get rid of, but now I wish I could find her.”

One more connection to adoption. I felt my long-ago experience was sticking to me and my family.

6. Bad Girls

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. Erica Jong

April 2000 

 For four months since talking to Cathy, I’ve felt lashed to a powder keg of dynamite that may injure me if it blows up and may hurt even more if it doesn’t. Heavy ropes of hope, fear, and longing chafe and tie me in knots. I try to keep up with my demanding job, family, and friends, while thoughts of my upcoming planned visit to Gladney grip me. I obsess walking up the Kaiser Psychiatry Department halls to collect my psychotherapy patients. At home, I fight to stay focused on Dave while he talks about work and we prepare dinner. In phone calls with Chad or Jared, I try to concentrate on their news. Questions race through my mind like monkeys leaping from one branch to the next in a dark forest.

Will Cathy find my son?

Will he want my letter?

Will he like it?

Will he answer?

Is he even still alive!?

Back then, the sign read: The Edna Gladney Home for Unwed Mothers. That June 1964, I’d trudged up the hot concrete steps and tugged open the heavy door. Like the name, the building looked old-fashioned. Ornate trim dressed the upper story and the broad front girth and wide windows leant an imposing quality. The massive feeling that the building exuded seemed appropriate for the weighty secret I carried into it.

            Back then, Gladney hid us mothers, really girls. “Bad girls;” that’s what we were. “She’s gone and gotten herself pregnant.” That’s how people talked about us then, as if it didn’t take a boy at all. The father of my baby didn’t have to sign any papers, didn’t have to consent. Gladney didn’t even ask his name. He was irrelevant. I gave away our son without a word from him, except to encourage me toward adoption. Adoption was Gladney’s solution, too; the only one for the shame our whole culture tarred us with then.

Now I’ll be meeting Cathy after visiting with my father and my brother, Steve. Even phoning Cathy felt like time travel back to a place it would be safer to avoid. What if my search proves as harrowing as my experience thirty-six years ago?

7. Freshman Year

The only source of knowledge is experience. Albert Einstein

Fall 1962

When I began at East Texas State College as a freshman, I suddenly felt released from the unrelenting farm duties during my high school years, like a prisoner who’s paroled, not fully free of the justice system but not behind bars either. Like a prisoner who has been over-controlled by harsh guards, I was ready to rebel from my mother’s over-protectiveness and especially from the grim atmosphere created by my father.

Dating boys my mother would have called “wild,” drinking beer they hid under blankets at loud football games and letting them touch me under those blankets seemed so exciting. I loved going out with a tall, dark-haired Phi Delta Theta fraternity boy and getting drunk on Everclear punch at his fraternity parties. I became the favored girlfriend of a sandy-haired, popular tennis player on campus. I relished the camaraderie with the other cloistered girls in our dorm when the housemothers ordered us to stay in our rooms and bolted the dormitory door, warning us against the hormone-crazed college boys outside intent on a panty raid. We peeked out our upper-story window at the clusters of laughing, bellowing boys and wished we could throw our pink, lace-trimmed panties out to them.

If my school friends from elementary and high school had seen me as the insecure goody-goody misfit I felt myself to be, my new college friends offered me a fresh start. That was the year I started to have fun for the first time. I loved being roommates with Ellen.

Ellen, slim with pale freckled skin and short red hair, was fun, friendly, and unabashedly sexual with her broad-chested West Texas boyfriend. I visited her home and practiced the ‘barnyard dance’ she taught me.

“You scrape first your left and then your right foot across the floor while you imagine sweeping cow patties out of the way,” she explained, while her boyfriend, Dan, offered us swigs from the pint of Johnny Walker he kept tucked into his right back pocket.

I envied Ellen’s good fortune in coming from the “wet” part of Texas where we could sneak a beer during the rodeo events that preceded the dance. The ice-cold beer seemed to cut through the congestion of white dust thrown up by the horses’ heels as their slim riders chased after steers in the ring. The cattle tossed their heads, eyes bulging, trying to escape the riders’ coiled, spinning ropes thrown over their heads.

“Billy Bob Murphy riding Apollo,” blared the voice of the loudspeaker. “Three seconds and that steer is down!”  

 I was repressed, naïve, chronically anxious, quiet, studious, and gullible. Ellen was uninhibited and loved country music. Ellen told me about her sexual encounters with Dan and how to prevent pregnancy by douching with a Coke bottle filled with water. I wanted to be more like her. She seemed more interested in getting her M.R.S. degree than in worrying about the grades my mother wrote were important.

It was Ellen I wanted to be close to. In truth, I had a crush on her. She and I visited nearby small lakes, laying out our bright-colored towels on dry, gravel beaches. We had marathon study sessions, made possible by the “diet pills” the doctors gave out freely then. We compared notes on how little we’d eaten during these all-night stints and how flat our stomachs were as a result, then dashed to classes and filled in test answers with jumpy fingers and dry eyes.

On Sundays, we slept in and awoke ravenous at 4 p.m. Bed hair plastered to our heads, we’d take off to the Plantation Restaurant and gorge ourselves on platters of hot fried chicken, small ceramic bowls of canned green beans, corn niblets, and piles of mashed potatoes. We buttered the white rolls till they dripped yellow down our light, open-necked blouses.

Afterwards, we’d succumb again to our teenage bodies’ cravings for sleep. Lying in our bunk beds, me on the lower and Ellen on the higher, night fell listening to the wails of George Jones’ plaintive voice singing “She Thinks I Still Care.”

My senior year of high school, our Howe Methodist Youth Fellowship group had made an epic trip to New York and Washington, D.C.

“Can I go?” I asked my mother, imagining my father’s angry refusal to spend money. A few days later, my mother returned with good news. I could join my church group for the trip.

I flew in a jumbo jet for the first time, gazing down from the plane window awestruck at the lights of New York City stretching endlessly under the plane’s wing. We visited Chinatown, the United Nations, and then the Russian Embassy in New York. We took the train to Washington, DC and visited the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House.

 That year, Lyndon Johnson from our great state of Texas was Vice-President under President John Kennedy. Vice-President Johnson invited our church group to his impressive office. I stared at his craggy face, his bushy eyebrows over intense eyes. I had heard rumors about this powerful older man. “Let’s line up for a picture before we leave,” one of our leaders instructed. Johnson looked over to where I stood at the end of the front row.

“I want to stand next to that pretty one,” he said, placing himself at my side as the camera clicked.

I discovered next fall it wasn’t only Lyndon Johnson who thought I was pretty. Popular college boys who wanted to do more than stand by me asked me out. I finally grasped the latent power I had in my prettiness and burgeoning sexuality. Maybe I felt worthless inside, but they didn’t know it. I needed to be wanted. My mother’s letters exhorted me to preserve my virtue. “No good man will marry you if you’re not a virgin,” she warned me.

 In the dorm, girls debated when to “go all the way.” Many already had. We heard boys would make vulgar jokes about popping their girlfriends’ “cherries.” That freshman year, I let an insistent cowboy convince me to go all the way. Intimations of the illicit activities my mother counselled me against were mounting. I was discovering that they felt good. Still, after that, my freshman year, I limited my boyfriends to deep tongue kisses and heavy petting.

8. Back Home

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. Charles Dickens

April 2000

At the foot of the escalator in the baggage claim area at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport stands Steve, my brother, as tanned, slim, and muscular as he’d been when he was twenty. He seems the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He looks good wearing the jeans and plaid shirt he must have thrown on before dashing to his pick-up to come get Jared and me. With his thatch of blond hair and eye-catching features, everyone says he looks like Robert Redford. As Jared and I begin descending the airport escalator, Steve lifts his hand in a casual wave. I take a deep breath and pray the week will go well, or, at least not end up a catastrophe.

I know Steve has weathered a lot of disappointments. He’d wanted for a long time to return to farming. He’d gotten a degree in Accounting at North Texas State, but office work never suited Steve. Selling real estate in Denver had left him frustrated and dissatisfied. Now estranged from his former girlfriend and cut out of her son’s life, I’m happy Steve can be back on the farm. “I couldn’t come back to Texas until Daddy was too weak to get out into the pastures with me,” he’d told me.

Steve turns off the farm-to-market road toward the house my father built and we grew up in. I glance toward the tumbling down old building on the corner that used to be the Cassidy Store. Before we were the first family in the area to get our own Philco television, we went to Cassidy’s and sat on sweet-smelling hay bales to watch their black and white TV. Gathering with local men in overalls and work boots, their wives in house dresses and their excited children running around barefoot, thrilled me. I was sorry when my father brought home the big box and set up our own solitary 20-inch television.

Looking back, perhaps my father splurged on that revolutionary new device intending to please us kids. It sure made us happy those Saturday mornings spent lying prone on the carpet with our faces cupped in our hands to watch Lassie and Sky King.

As Steve drives the last mile on White Mound Road, I remember how the school bus used to drop us off at the Cassidy corner, then continue on its route. As we walked home, I’d searched the ditches for crimson and orange Indian Paintbrush, Bluebonnets, and Goldenrod wildflowers to clutch in my fist and take home to my precious mother. She’d put them in a mason jar of water, then hand me an ice-cold bottle of my favorite Hire’s Root Beer. I’d force my tense jaw to open and let the sweet liquid ripple relief down my throat. I liked school, but many of my classmates jeered at my good grades and resented my Teacher’s Pet status. I wished the teacher wouldn’t put me in charge whenever she left the classroom. Once, I joined the other kids jumping out of our seats and chattering in a wild group. Mrs. Morton opened the door and remonstrated me. “Linda, I’m surprised at you!”  I slunk back to my seat, my brief foray into childish hijinks squelched.

Approaching our house, I glance towards Steve and see his jaw tighten. Even with the cheerful jazz playing on the Sirius channel, seeing my father’s John Deere tractor in the field causes a familiar dread to overwhelm me. I wonder if Steve feels the same.

My father is in his eighties now. Daddy recently spent a couple of weeks in the hospital after trying to castrate a bull calf in the field and being thrown violently to the ground. He lay in the pasture till help arrived. The doctor must have gotten fed up enough with Daddy’s constant orders to have put him on an anti-depressant. Now Daddy sounds a little more docile, at least on the phone.

We pull up the gravel driveway to a cacophony of barking from Steve’s German Shepherd and large white Great Pyrenees. “Hello-o-o,” Daddy’s gruff voice greets us as we drag suitcases up the concrete steps.

The metal porch door bangs our arrival. My father’s pink face is still smooth above the rosy triangle below his throat where the sun had outlined the V-neck of his shirts during those stifling days bouncing on the tractor seat.

My father leans over the washing machine that sits at the boundary of the kitchen and the living room. He points the TV remote toward the now 40-inch RCA television blaring a football game. Avoiding eye contact, he directs his eyes to the game, clicking the remote from one station to the next.

 “What’s Chad up to?” Daddy asks. “How’s Terra?”

“Terra’s doing well,” I tell him, “growing up fast.” 

“That girl’s smart,” he pronounces.

He doesn’t ask about me. I don’t volunteer. Once, when I told him I’d been hired for my first master’s level social work job, he’d blurted, “Why would they hire you?” 

            Daddy turns his attention to the football game. “Get Jared something to eat!” he orders. The subtle softening in his voice signals he is as close as he ever comes to joking. “That boy looks hungry!”  He smiles a rare mischievous smile and points at Jared, who flashes a smile back.

It seems whenever I walk past Daddy sprawling in his electric recliner in the living room, he barks orders. “Linda, get me the newspaper.” “Take this dish.” “Ah, run the dishwasher.” “Warm up this coffee.”  “Did you get me some bread?” He’s never smiling. I hold back my irritation, not wanting to make any waves, trying to maintain the peace with him and my brother.

Growing up, Daddy was always impatient. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” and “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” my father shouted. Like a garden hose stuck on “jet,” his orders were a continual stream of pressure. Every night I dreaded his clomping onto the porch, throwing his raggedy straw hat and leather work gloves onto the clothes dryer, and tramping into the kitchen in his bib overalls. I watched my mother’s face tighten and knew she felt the same, both of us searching for clues to forecast Daddy’s mood by paying attention to his scowl, how tightly drawn were his eyebrows, how grim the line of his mouth.

One night, when I was four or five, I forgot to pay attention. My Crayolas and coloring book were spread out on the maple kitchen table where I perched on bare knees in the chair, coloring. My father’s beefy hand swept across the table with no warning, scattering the wax crayons onto the linoleum floor. My mother, in front of the stove, stood frozen until Daddy stomped past. “Get down and pick them up,” she spoke, her voice low and cautious.

Not long after, I found my mother standing at the yellow Formica counter dusting flour and patting out soft biscuit dough. “Mama, why is Daddy so mean?” I asked.

I still can see the concern etched in her face. She paused, wiping her hands across her apron. “Because he’s sick,” she replied, her eyes trained on mine.

Jared and I inch through the six-day visit. One night I walk barefoot into the kitchen and almost step on a scorpion whose waxy translucent body and curled tail are almost invisible on the beige linoleum. Another time my father surprises me as I bring him dinner, raising his hand and clasping mine, squeezing it in a wordless gesture of affection.

Steve hurries in and out to the fields to look after crops and cattle. One day he drives me to the pasture. His pick-up jounces and bounces over the uneven hillocks. Round green patches dot the grass where cattle urinated. Steve jumps out to open the barbed wire gate that confines his huge shaggy bull whose clipped horns stick straight out over big ears from which dangle yellow tags. The bull and I stare at each other until I feel my bladder about to give out.

 “Sorry, Steve, but I really need to go pee!”

“Go ahead. He won’t hurt you.”

I’m not so sure. I climb down from the high seat and circle to the other side of the pick-up, while Steve keeps watch.

“How much do bulls cost, Steve?” I ask as we leave.

“Too much,” he says, “Three to five thousand isn’t uncommon.” He lowers his head, twists it to the side, and raises it again. I remember I’ve watched him make this neck motion for thirty-seven years, ever since he smashed face-first into the steering wheel, driving Mama in the accident that killed her.

What does my brother think about out here all day alone?

[1] Dina Cagliostro, Ph.D., “Schizophrenia Symptoms and Diagnosis,” Psycom, Accessed 2/19/19, https://www.psycom.net/schizophrenia

Time for Change — Chapter 4

First Mothers/Birthmothers, First/Birth Mothers, Single parenting, Social work school, Therapy, , ,

 Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. Carol Burnett

1979

 Training as a master’s level social worker requires a lot of self-assessment. My three years in grad school felt like three centuries of personal development. After learning about assertiveness, setting limits, boundaries, communication skills, self-esteem development, conflict resolution skills, parenting skills, and recovery from codependency, I realized it was time for major changes at home. I hoped Don would want to work with me to create a faithful, sober, stable, and healthy home life for us and our children.

Choosing Don was the first indication of how my own adoption loss would influence later family choices; what I began to see as having caught and spread the “adoption virus.”

Don, the kinky-haired, fun-loving man I married, not comprehending that his playfulness disappeared into gloom when not fueled by alcohol or marijuana. The husband I spent eleven tumultuous years with, swinging from intense love, joy, and passion to equally intense rage and conflict, exhausting us both.

 In kindergarten, Don taught Jared to draw cartoons featuring rabbits and monkeys. Later, painting vivid flowers and jungle scenes caught Jared’s imagination. In a street mural done through Turning Point Foundation for mentally ill clients, a local newspaper article featured Jared’s charming green frog, his painting so much more expressive than any words.

The fact that we had both lost sons to adoption was part of the glue that attracted and bound Don and me. Don’s first son had disappeared into adoption when Don was only fifteen. He got his girlfriend pregnant again, and though she kept that son, their parents refused to allow them to marry. The unspoken commonality Don and I shared was grief. Our lost-to-adoption sons became the ghosts in our family life, dragging unrecognized depression in their wake.

It turned out that Don wasn’t interested in making changes – at least not with me. Right after I received my master’s degree in 1980, we split up. I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened, but after six months of heavy depression and therapy, my darkness began to clear. I realized it might be the best thing that had happened to me.

If I’d had family support, I’m sure we’d have separated sooner, but with my mother deceased and my father abusive, I felt I had nowhere to go. Now I realize I did have options, but then all I saw was subjecting myself and Jared and Chad to our chaotic, conflict-laden marriage. That had done us no good at all.

I bought a low-maintenance home with an indoor atrium and a Japanese garden, obtained a professional position with a living wage, and set out to make a better life for myself and our children who visited Don regularly, moving between two homes. I struggled with loneliness when they were with him and the new family he soon started. When they were with me, though, I started a ritual after work. It began at the kitchen counter. Before chopping and sautéing, I turned to my clamoring boys. “You first, Jared; how did your day go?” After discussing Jared’s day, I turned to Chad. The next night, Chad came first.

Still, too many evenings I arrived home to find peanut butter smeared on the counter and ice cream melting down the cabinets. A friend suggested I draw up a list of chores with promised payment schedules for each.

 “From now on, when you want money for a movie, you can earn it,” I told Chad and Jared, showing them how much they could earn for daily, weekly, or monthly chores. Next time Chad asked for cash, I pointed to the chart. Soon after, I came home and found Chad wearing my paisley apron, the counters spotless, and a broom in his hand.

 Jared got into the act. “What a good job you did cleaning the bathroom!” I encouraged him. “The toilet and sink look great! Maybe just wipe that corner a little more and it will be perfect!” What a change from my usual complaints! Now we could all feel good about positive things! I loved the looks of satisfaction on the boys’ faces and sometimes even threw in an extra dollar for a Coke for a job especially well-done.

I learned to lower my voice to a whisper instead of raising it to a yell whenever our feelings grew heated. Both kids approached closer. It was far more satisfying than their former high-speed escapes from my attempts to impart parental wisdom.

The condition of our house and our relationships improved. I was making progress at raising future housekeepers, but Chad decided attending school was not in his plans. He had scored at a twelfth-grade level on the SAT given to all 7th graders. Chad, who had loved pre-school and found all the next grades boring, concluded he knew enough. High school became irrelevant to him.

In the mornings, I hurried off to my crisis caseload at Alta California Regional
Center while the crisis at home built. “Get up!” I exhorted him. Chad lay prone on the mattress he’d put on the floor. I vacillated between being the extra-nice parent and punishing him, locking his stereo in the trunk of my car to deprive him of his heavy metal music while truant.

Nothing worked. Every day, my sense of helplessness grew.

One morning, Chad emerged from his bedroom in white Boxer briefs carrying a load of Legos. Evidently, he had plans for his day. He and I bumped into each other in the hall. His Legos scattered into a shamble of sharp-edged red, yellow, blue, and green squares and rectangles on the floor.

“Pick these up!” I demanded. He crouched down to gather the Legos. Gazing at his vulnerable back, his beautiful torso, his blond hair falling onto his straight spine and angular face, my heart softened. I bent down to help. I wanted to be gentle with my beloved fifteen-year- old son. But gentleness only supported the poor decisions he was making.

My voice tightened into the tone of tough love I’d learned. “All right, Chad. You get over to school today — not tomorrow; today! Find out how you get back into classes. Either that or pack up and get out! If you don’t need to go to school, you can get a job and take care of yourself somewhere else.” 

When I got home that night, Chad had registered for continuation high school, where it turned out he thrived, earning credits independently.

Then thirteen-year-old Jared, my talented cartoonist, began falling behind in academics. Jared had always been closer to his father, Don, while Chad got the lion’s share of my attention. Jared had so many years of being the quiet younger brother, so affected by the verbal battles between Don and me. As a baby, Jared had been an early talker, speaking in whole paragraphs by a year and a half. Then, something changed. By three years, his language became halting. Yet it was Jared in second grade who stared at the stuck curtain rod in his classroom and then showed his teacher how to fix it.

Now every night Jared’s middle-school teacher called to report a new problem and exhort me to be a better parent. Her tone of voice suggested Jared’s problems must stem from presumed parental indifference.

“Ask him how his day went!” she advised. “Show him you’re interested.” 

“I do!” I assured her. “He won’t tell me. He walks away and hides out in his room. If I follow him, he refuses to answer.” I pictured my curly-haired son with the hooded eyes, closing out my attentions. I felt my own deep sorrow.

The truth is that my attempts to listen to Jared’s troubles usually failed. The same critical, judgmental words I’d heard from my own father came out in my voice all too often.

One day as Jared passed by, I was struck by his expression and stopped him. “Jared?”  He raised his eyes to look at me from under his hoodie. I spoke slowly, softly, but deliberately. “Jared, you’re just as important to me as Chad is.”

Jared’s face transformed somehow — his cheeks, the lift of his forehead, the tightness of his jaw all softened. Dawning relief readjusted his features. “You matter to me just as much as he does,” I assured him. His shoulders dropped. The set of his head on his neck straightened.

No miracles occurred after that. He continued to be withdrawn, seeming easily confused and overwhelmed. When he was younger, even an unexpected phone call would send him running to his room until one day I pointed out whoever was calling couldn’t hurt him through the phone and he could even hang up if he wanted. He’d been tested as superior in intelligence, but now his teacher complained he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t keep up.

 At the school district’s White House Counseling Center, his therapist said he was depressed, which I didn’t have any trouble believing. Her words repeated in my head as I lay awake at night reviewing my failures. How I wished I could go back and change the way things were with Don and me.

Chapter 2 — I Begin

Adoption Loss, First Mothers/Birthmothers, Grief, Unwed Mothers, Unwed Mothers' Home, , , ,

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Mark Twain

January 2000

The mail arrives. In the clutch of bills, a corner of a glossy newsletter pokes out. I pull the Spring 2000 Gladney Newsletter edition out cautiously. I feel my heart race as usual and a vague pain through my chest, even though I’ve been receiving Gladney’s newsletter ever since our visit in 1980.

I poke my hand into the glossy tri-fold paper and a loose staple embeds itself in my index finger. “Ouch!”  A drop of blood collects from the prick. A memory flashes, the heavy pads I wore between my legs after giving birth.

The Edna Gladney Home for Unwed Mothers was what it was called when I went into hiding there in June,1964. I knew nothing of the history then, but later I learned that the Center in Fort Worth, Texas began in the 1880s to find homes for children sent across the country on what became known as “orphan trains.”  Edna Gladney’s name became enshrined after she expanded to include services for unwed mothers and adoption for their babies. She was credited with the permanent placement of ten thousand babies. In 1941, MGM released a movie about her life, “Blossoms in the Dust,” which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture of the Year. Many years later, I watched the touching story of Edna Gladney helping illegitimate children, presumably orphaned or abandoned by their mothers, receive happy adoptive homes.

By 1964, Edna Gladney was no longer there and Executive Directorship had passed to Ruby Lee Piester, who in 1980 would help to form the National Council for Adoption, with founding goals included to prevent opening of sealed adoption records retroactively and resisting allowing birth mothers at least two weeks before signing adoption relinquishment papers, even though these had been recommended as state models for adoption by an Advisory Panel of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.[1] During Ruby Lee Piester’s period at Gladney, she supervised the placement of seventy-six hundred babies. One of them must have been mine. Had she admired his little rosebud mouth? Probably not.

One of Ruby’s social workers would have brought my tiny boy in to the prospective parents. I imagine him wrapped in the same blue flannel blanket as the one time I held him, his new parents sitting in the social worker’s office dressed in their Sunday go-to-church clothes, nervous, palms a little sweaty, older than me. The worker hands him to the mother first. “Oh, he’s so precious,” she coos. She gawks at his round face, his dark hair, his eyes so blue. “He’s beautiful.” She turns to her husband to show him his new son. That father is tall, clean shaven, his hair brushed back, a whiff of Brillantine drifting from his scalp. He smiles at his wife, pleased she’ll be a mother now. His hands shake just a tad as he reaches to trace a finger across my baby’s forehead.

My baby.

            Drops of blood continue to well from my finger as I examine “The Gladney Center for Adoption,” newsletter. A new name with an admirable ring for a couple hungry for a baby and eager to trust the adoption services.

To me, even the word ‘adoption’ seems dangerous, as if saying it sends tiny slivers of glass into the sensitive tissues in my mouth. Ever since I’d given up my baby, that’s how I’d treated adoption, wanting to eliminate the word from my vocabulary. Some of my professional colleagues specialized in adoption, but I never did. I passed by a lawyer’s sign advertising “Adoption Services” once and wanted to kick it down.

One time at Kaiser Permanente Hospital, where I treated outpatients as a therapist in the psychiatry department, a social worker from California Child Protective Services gave us a training presentation. After telling us how stressful it was to work with cases of child abuse, she declared: “Most of my employees don’t stay long. They go to work for something happy, like adoptions.”

Happy!  My colleagues chuckled in agreement, while my jaw tensed. I wanted to blurt out that their picture of adoption, the one with the happy couple receiving the fortunate baby, left out the mothers like me who’d given birth, given them up for adoption, and never seen them again. My picture had a dark empty cutout space where my baby would have been.

I made a fast retreat to my office and hid from my co-workers that day. To me, adoption was like a ferocious dog let off its leash. It might appear friendly, but if you got too close, it could lunge at you, dig sharp teeth in, and rip out a piece of your tender flesh. One of my colleagues, an Asian woman, had adopted a baby girl from China. Someone asked her what happened to the “real mother.”  “I’m the real mother,” she pronounced, her voice sharp. I kept silent.

On the front page of the Newsletter is a picture of a girl about nineteen, the age I was when I entered Gladney. She is smiling broadly. Her face, framed by black hair falling down her shoulders, is unlined. In her hands, she clutches a pink plush pillow.

Beneath the picture is her testimonial. “I’m happy I made the right decision for everyone and didn’t think only of myself.”

Yes, that’s “the loving thing” we were supposed to do. I did what the social workers told me. I bought the party line that my baby needed a mother and a father, and it would be wrong of me to keep it.

But did the neatly-dressed, young women social workers at Gladney think of what I would suffer? Their ring fingers sparkled with gold bands and diamonds and framed pictures of their children decorated their desks. How could they have imagined I’d ever forget?

I’d never been given a pink plush pillow to hold. They gave our babies to someone else to hold and praised us for not thinking only of ourselves when we let them do it.

Well, they didn’t exactly give them to the new parents. Those adoptive parents paid a small fortune. They didn’t call that selling babies, though.

How much did my baby cost? I hope it was a lot.

On the back page of the Gladney Newsletter, I am surprised to find an article about a Post-Adoption Department that now helps women who gave up their babies in the past. I never dreamed they might offer ongoing help to birth mothers.

I only have a vague memory of one phone call from some social worker at Gladney a month or two after I left.

“How are you doing?” I recall her asking.

Feeling numb and disconnected, I croaked out a lifeless sounding “Okay.” When the phone call ended, I wandered listlessly over to the refrigerator and stared at the contents. The thought of food repulsed me.

I might have told the caller from Gladney that anxiety held me in its tight grip, as if a thick rubber band clenched my stomach tight. I might have said I looked good without that pooched out fat tummy that most women have after giving birth. I might have asked about my baby, but I didn’t. I had sunk into a hole too deep to plumb, even if I’d been able to fathom what words I might have said.

In the newsletter today, a photo of a genial looking woman with curly dark hair and plastic framed eyeglasses looks at me. Cathy Bowman is her name, a Post-Adoption Social Worker. The thought of contacting Gladney again sends ripples of anxiety down my body and makes my limbs twitch, as if I’ve had too much caffeine. But maybe things have changed.

During my 1980 visit, the social worker informed me Gladney had developed an internal registration process where I could register. My son could also register when he turned eighteen. If both of us registered with contact information, Gladney might put us in touch with each other. I sent away for the paperwork then and I learned that a notary public had to verify my identity. Shock and shame stopped me in my tracks. Who would falsely claim an identity as a birth mother anyway? For two years, I imagined the notary’s disapproving expression before I finally screwed up my courage, got the paperwork notarized, and mailed it off.

Once my son and I registered, Gladney required that we each have a counseling appointment before they’d give us identifying information. What if the counselors decided we weren’t ready to meet?  Would Gladney refuse to give me my son’s name then? Where did their control end?

After these brief attempts to reconnect with my past in 1980, I’d done what most of my therapy clients did with traumatic memories—compartmentalized, poked, pushed, and shoved them into the deepest part of my psyche where I barely noticed them. Even though I’d spent six months in my own therapist’s office sobbing through the clinical hours, grieving my childhood pain, I’d managed never to mention my lost son.

I look at Cathy Bowman’s picture again. She has a nice smile. The article says she welcomes calls from birth mothers. I see her phone number. Taking the newsletter into my cluttered office, I lay it on top of the paper pile. It’s too late to call Texas today. Tomorrow morning, I’ll call Cathy to see what she’s like. I can always change my mind.

Tonight, I’ll watch an old movie with Dave and cuddle Girlie, my gray cat, while we hold hands.

[1] “Mission, History,” National Council for Adoption, Accessed Feb. 18, 2019, ttps://www.adoptioncouncil.org/who-we-are/mission

Beginning of Book: I’ll Always Carry You: A Mother’s Story of Adoption Loss, Grief, and Healing, by Linda L Franklin

Adoptees, Adoption Loss, Adoptive Parents, First Mothers/Birthmothers, First/Birth Mothers, Grief, Grief and Loss, Loss, , , , , , ,

Acknowledgments:

Among those who have contributed to this book, I count friends and members of valuable organizations, including Concerned United Birthparents, Post-Adoption Center for Education and Research (PACER), and American Adoption Congress, whose voices have informed, educated, and given me courage and motivation to share my own story. In addition, I have “met” dozens of first mothers and adoptees on Facebook and Twitter and learned from each of you.

I have benefitted from friendships and participation in my local Gold Country Writers’ Group. Shelley Buck, Paul Comiskey, and Marianne Barisonek generously read and offered criticism on manuscript excerpts, as did numerous members of Gold Country Writers’ weekly critique groups. Margie Yee Webb offered support in technology, helping me reach a wider audience. Friends, including Linda Ankeney, Janie Evans, Rose Kraft-Bo, Julia Mullen, Barbara Tellman, Marcia Martin, and JoAnne Jones donated their hours reading and giving feedback on my story, as did other first mother authors, Carol Schaefer and Janet Mason Ellerby.

My book could not have begun without the searcher, Marilyn, who reached out to me. It may never have progressed without the support of the caring post-adoption social worker, Cathy. They have generously allowed me to share portions of their emails, as have my sons. Letters and email messages have been lightly edited for punctuation, clarity, and brevity.

I cannot overlook the value of my two editors, Rachel Howard and Margaret C. Murray. In Rachel’s capable hands, my story became the right one to tell. My work with Margaret has been more in the nature of a needed knife to carve excess from my creative endeavor and reveal the essential story. While at times I’ve wished her knife to be less sharp, I believe she has made my story pop.

Most especially, I must thank my discovered son, Lee Yates, who both read and commented on my progress and who has allowed me to reveal some of his story in telling my own. My husband, Dave Judd, read and gave more positive feedback, on multiple manuscript versions, than I could possibly deserve. I am indebted to all of my family members whose stories are featured in this book – Chad, Jared, Lee, Terra, Maddie, Gwen, Marcia, Ellen Kaye, Judy Ellen, Stephen, and Dave.

Other than the use of names with permission, all other names have been changed or restricted to non-identifying first names. Any similarity to other persons is coincidental and unintentional.

Preface:

Almost two decades ago, I began writing to help me release the overwhelming feelings I experienced upon discovering that my son I’d given up for adoption thirty-five years before was alive. That discovery opened a deep well of feelings I had buried in order to survive his loss. The journal I began then transformed into this story.

I became driven to reconnect with him. I opened to the world of what is known as the adoption triad – the birth family, adoptee, and adoptive family. I became aware that the voices of original mothers such as myself are rarely heard. Our pain is easy to ignore and discount. I hope my readers, within and out of the adoption triad, will gain appreciation for the perspectives of mothers like myself, many of whom still do not know if their children are dead or alive.

Many women of my era faced pregnancy crises, though not all lost their children to adoption. Many hurriedly married and raised their children. Some pursued then illegal abortions. Yet they also faced painful choices within the then unbending expectations of family, culture, and society.

Younger women today may know little about the limits of that earlier time. Yet they too are caught in a maelstrom of differing views and opportunities for women. I hope my story may inform them to protect their rights, hard-fought and gained.

My title, I’ll Always Carry You, contains multiple levels of meaning. We mothers are said to carry our babies during pregnancy. We parents carry our children in our hearts forever. A client once shared a beautiful proverb with me: “When our children are little, they sit on our laps. When they’re grown, they sit on our hearts.” How much more this is true for first/birth mothers whose adoption loss is wrapped in grief and often carried in secret.

But connections between mother and child are even deeper than we know. Scientists now know that mother and child are linked at the cellular level[1].[2] Fetal cells cross the placenta, allowing our babies’ DNA to become part of our bodies. These fetal cells are not only circulating in our blood; they are embedded in our brains, often for a lifetime. They can migrate to various areas in our bodies needing help to repair tissues, heal heart damage, stem cancer tumor growth, and even reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease. In other circumstances, these cells may set off undesired autoimmune reactions as well.

Now we know that even when our babies leave our bodies, we mothers carry their traces. Is it any wonder we never forget them or completely recover from their loss?

What should we call a mother like myself? Since I first discovered support through Concerned United Birthparents, I applied their label of “birthmother” to myself. I have since learned that many others prefer to call themselves “first mothers,” “natural mothers,” “real mothers,” “mothers of loss,” or simply “mothers.” It appears to me that there are no labels that will not be felt as an affront to someone in the adoption triad. The public recognizes the term “birthmother” to describe a woman who gave birth to and did not raise her child. The fact that I did not raise the child I gave birth to is the source of deep sorrow for me, but the use of the term “birthmother” neither causes nor worsens that pain. It is also true that I am my son’s first mother, so I have decided as much as possible to refer to myself and others in this story as first/birth mother or simply birthmother when needed.

[1] Laura Grace Weldon, “Mother & Child are Linked at the Cellular Level”, June 12, 2012, lauragraceweldon.com, https://lauragraceweldon.com/2012/06/12/mother-child-are-linked-at-the-cellular-level/.

[2]  Robert Martone, “Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains,” Scientific American, December 4, 2012, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/.

Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.

Rumi

Chapter 1: Jared Started It

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. Rumi

April 7th, 2000

 My son, Jared, and I cram into our American Airline seats. The stewardesses scurry up the aisles, adjusting luggage in the overhead compartments and snapping them closed. Jared buckles his 300 pound, 5’ 9” heft into the window seat while I squeeze into the middle seat. I’ll have to struggle over the woman on the aisle to make my way to the bathroom.

Jared will probably doze and not want to chat a lot; so, I’ve decided to write the letter I’ll bring to the post-adoption social worker during our five-hour flight to Texas. Under my eyelids, I sneak a peek at my aisle mate. She is at least twenty-five years younger than my five-and-a-half decades, with a face that appears untroubled. I make a quick decision not to strike up a conversation. My abdomen tightens at the thought of her peeking over my shoulder while I write. This young woman can’t imagine the world I felt trapped in before she was born or the shame that still keeps me locked in its grip.

I turn and look past Jared out the tiny window. There’s the Northern Sierra Nevada mountain range rising 7,000 feet to rim the Central California Valley. I’ve loved trekking up and down many of the challenging trails, often washing away dust and sweat at the trail’s end in a frigid lake. But today the craggy peaks show rough and sharp-edged.

What am I getting myself into?

A memory, the loneliness of lying flat on the hard labor table staring up at the dark ceiling, trembles through me.

 I glance toward Jared and notice him smiling. His characteristic sweet smile curves like a crescent moon. He’s happy I invited him to accompany me on this rare trip to Texas. The sun coming in behind him on the plane makes his curly brown hair gleam. He was always sensitive, but now there’s an innocence engendered by his disease that slowed his thoughts and words yet made his heart more visible. Despite or maybe because of his chronic disability, Jared has the facility seen in children that points to the essence of truth. Only Jared would have encouraged me to come back home to Texas to begin this search.

 It was January 2000, only a few months ago, and Jared and I were at home in Davis, California when he asked me, his olive-skinned face immobile, “Why don’t you look for my brother?”

With his flat expression, he might almost have been inquiring about the weather. I’d stood frozen, staring at his penetrating green eyes. There was only one time I’d told him and his older brother Chad about my firstborn, and that was twenty years ago.

Jared, always slow to speak, just waited and watched me. My special, most vulnerable son had just dropped a bombshell. A faint image of the baby I’d seen only once, decades before, burst into memory, while my mouth clamped tight like a rusted hinge on a tiny coffin.

Adrenaline rushed through my body. Had I failed Jared by not searching for his brother? Had I let myself down as well? Maybe I’d done more than conceal my lost son. Maybe I’d buried a vital part of myself along with him.

I looked at the clock. Four-thirty, it said. I decided it wasn’t too early to pour myself a screwdriver cocktail. When I returned from the kitchen, Jared hadn’t moved.

“Why should I look for him?” I asked at last, holding my drink and my breath.

Jared’s voice came back clear and definite. “Because you’d be a good mother for him to know.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. Tears of gratitude at his praise choked me. The loss of his brother must have been on Jared’s mind all these years. All of the dedication and support Dave and I gave Jared had paid off. Serious, intense, his expression pinned me on a knife’s edge.

“Maybe he wouldn’t want to know me,” I finally replied. “Maybe he wouldn’t like me. I don’t know. Maybe I’d just upset his life.”  I didn’t relay my other, worse fear. Maybe he inherited schizophrenia like you.What if I found another disabled son? Could Dave and I handle that?

Yet Jared’s question pushed open the door to my past, just enough for me to squeeze through. I can’t let it slam shut again. I have to dare. I have to find out if my son still lives. What is his name? Where is he? How can I reach him? Maybe I could meet him. Maybe I could get to know him.

I can’t stop until I find what I lost.

The plane lurches into turbulence and the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ light blinks on. I grip the armrests and reach beneath my feet to pull out the packet of paper I’ve brought with me. The seatbelt digs into my stomach. I had better write the best letter of my lifetime.

But how to write this “message in a bottle” and how long will it float after I leave it in the murky ocean of the Gladney Center for Adoption, which I knew back then as an unwed mothers’ home? It will probably be yellow with age if my firstborn son ever sees it. Still, my shaky hand poised over the paper, I begin.

“Dear Biological Son,

It is very hard to know how to begin this letter or even how to address you. After all, I saw you only one time and that was thirty-five years ago.”

I look down at the nearly blank paper on my tray. My throat aches and a tense emptiness fills me. Still, I continue.

“I held you in my arms for only fifteen minutes.”

I turn to stare out the tiny airplane window. Beside me, Jared’s eyes are closed. He’d been a cuddly baby, quick to nestle his warm body into the curve of my arm. Would his brother have been the same? The nurse had brought him to me wrapped in blue flannel. His eyes were closed that morning, too.

I lean back in my plane seat and close my own eyes, remembering how the nurse had leaned over and gently rubbed his cheek. My baby opened his eyes. “He’s just been fed,” she told me. Wisps of dark hair stole from beneath his blanket.

I stare down at my empty hands, then pick up my pen with heavy fingers and write two more lines.

“You were sleepy, and I remember you finally opened your eyes briefly. I looked down into the deepest blue eyes imaginable and you seemed to peer up into my hazel eyes.”

Did that instant of eye contact create some unconscious connection for my baby as well as me? I doubt it. I am flying to leave a letter for a grown man who, as far as I know, may not even still exist. How strange that he may be carrying on a fully formed life somewhere while I, his mother, don’t even know if he’s alive.

Out the plane window, dark clouds scud across a gray sky, mirroring my recollection of the nurse reaching down to remove him from my arms.

“It’s time to take him back to the nursery,” she’d said. It was the only time I held my baby.

I watched as she carried him through the heavy wooden doors. They swung shut and he vanished, lost to me.

My throat squeezes the sob that threatens to escape. I cast a glimpse towards my seatmate, engrossed in reading a tattered copy of Redbook. With my sleeve, I rub away a tear and return to writing.

 “That is all the time we had together and perhaps it’s all we ever will have. I am writing this letter not knowing if you will ever read it. I don’t know if you will ever want to…or even if you are still out there somewhere. By the time you read it, if you do, perhaps I’ll be gone.”

Outside the airplane window, leaden clouds threaten an early-spring rain. We’ll probably have a bumpy landing. Thinking of these memories I’ve closed off till now, I bite my knuckle. My stomach reels. What do I know of this lost son? Only those days inside me when he performed acrobatic feats beneath the coffee cup I held on my swollen belly, never knocking the hot liquid onto the carpet. We played Bridge together with the other girls in the Gladney apartment while their unborn babies tumbled too in their huge stomachs and Diana Ross crooned “Where Did Our Love Go?” from the little brown Philco radio. The Supremes harmonized behind her, singing our song as I hummed along.

Don’t leave me, I begged my baby. Could he hear? Did he already know what I wouldn’t admit, that I was going to let him go? Could some remnant of that 60’s music reside in his subconscious?  Did the accumulated, unspoken sorrow we four abandoned girls brought to the game permeate his cellular memory? 

Perhaps he likes to play Bridge, I wonder?

I twist my legs in the cramped airplane seat, unable to get comfortable, as I imagine how my son, now grown, may feel. Maybe he thinks I abandoned him. What if he blames me?

Maybe if he hears how things were back then, he won’t be angry at me.

I write more about myself, how I was only nineteen, a sophomore in college, grieving my mother’s tragic death only a few months before, my grandmother’s death shortly after. I was unable to turn to my father, always mentally unstable, and diagnosed after my mother’s death with paranoid schizophrenia. I tell him of my lack of confidence in myself and in marriage. My parents had been so miserable together.

I don’t mention that my baby’s biological father abandoned me and encouraged me to give him up for adoption. I remember how impossible it seemed to consider bringing home my baby, how the shame of my unmarried pregnancy would have branded me, almost like the letter “A” the adulterer, Hester Prynne, was forced to wear for the rest of her life after having a baby out of wedlock in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

“It seemed unimaginable to present my father with a baby born ‘out of wedlock,’ as we said in those days.”

I lean back in the airplane seat. My shoulders and chest feel weighed down like the lead-lined apron used when I have mouth X-rays at the dentist. I hear the Fasten Seat Belt sign coming on with a ping.

 “Mom!”

Jared is pointing toward the aisle where the flight stewardess approaches. A red scarf tied around her neck, she leans over me to ask, “What would you like to drink?” 

Did I not hear her the first time? “Oh, coffee,” I say.

“Cream and sugar?” she asks.

“Yes, please. Sweetener if you have it.”

“The yellow packet or the pink one?”

“Yellow.”

Jared orders his favorite, Diet Coke.

I try not to spill the coffee when it arrives in its little white Styrofoam cup with the yellow Splenda packet. How complicated just to order a cup of coffee! How many ways can there be to imbibe carcinogenic chemicals while attempting to control my middle-aged waistline? If all of these diet drinks cause cancer, then I’ll be gone if, or when, this letter I’m agonizing over ever reaches its intended recipient. I chuckle to myself in dark humor. Then, sighing, I return to my letter.

“Both my parents had very conservative ideas about premarital sex.”

In case my son receives this, I need to write a compelling reason for him to return to my life. Our evangelical ministers told us Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead after four days. Can I unearth him like Lazarus? Should I? If my child grew up in a strict religious environment as I had, maybe he’ll judge me. Maybe his parents told him bad things about me.

Before stopping at Gladney, Jared and I are visiting my father again. No doubt he will welcome his favorite grandson. Instead of his usual endless criticisms and judgments, he shows a rare sweetness and even occasional light-hearted teasing with Jared. It’s an affection he doesn’t display with me, my sister, or brother.

 A stewardess passes by, holding out the plastic bag for trash. I toss in my empty paper cup. These secrets I’ve been keeping for thirty-five years and the shame I’ve hidden behind are my trash. Aren’t they the detritus of my painful past? I pick up my pen to tell my son how I released him for adoption as an “act of love,” because I felt he needed something better than I could offer him then.

Maybe if the Supremes had warbled “Mommy, mommy, mommy; mommy, don’t leave me,” I could have found the strength to question if I must give up my baby. All those months in the unwed mothers’ home, I’d ignored my inner voice trying to tell me this path was a mistake. Instead, I hoped somehow the moment of separation would never come. Plaintive feelings like an Irish blessing pour out in my next paragraph.

“I hope you have had a good and happy life. I hope the parents who raised you were good to you and that you felt at home with them. I wish I knew more about you and that we could discover what we have in common. Perhaps someday we will.”

 I hope, I hope, I hope, I wish, I wish, I wish. I hope and wish so much for this stranger son. Will I ever find out the truth? My seatmate gets up to go to the restroom and I decide to do the same. Walking up the aisle, I glance at the other passengers dozing, reading, or watching a movie. No one else seems to be struggling.

How to describe the person I’ve become, how to convince my son I’d be someone worth knowing. Back in my seat, buckled up again, I take up my paper and pen. I tell him I now am married to a wonderful man who is an attorney and plays classical guitar and the violin. How I now have a happy life. How I became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, have a job I enjoy at Kaiser in outpatient psychiatry, and always think of him when a client tells me they’re adopted. 

“After a lot of struggles and mistakes, I have recovered from my own anxiety and depression.”

Do I sound like someone he’d like?  Could he understand those struggles and mistakes?  I describe his two half-brothers, both of whom would like to meet him. Chad, thirty-one, who didn’t go to college after high school, but has been one of his company’s leading salesmen for several years and is the father of our darling five-year-old granddaughter, Terra Linda. Jared, twenty-nine, single, who works in construction labor and is a talented acrylics painter. 

I pull out the pictures I’ve brought on the airplane to enclose in my letter. Jared’s shows his full face like mine, green eyes close to my hazel ones. The curly ringlets that circle his face came from his father, as does his artistic temperament. His serious eyes fixed on the camera, he gazes out with his mysterious jumbled thoughts. It’s Jared who seeks out family, calls every day, reports his latest activities, therapy groups, doctor appointments, medications, and painting projects. 

Resting next to me, Jared opens his eyes, turns to look at his photo. “Are you giving my picture to my brother?” he asks.

“Yes, assuming he gets the letter. Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

I pull out the photo of Chad, tall and slim, whose logical mind I can always count on to make sense of my emotional tangles. Chad stares directly at the camera with gray eyes, his blond hair falling all the way down to his shoulders. With his narrow face and strong triangular jaw line, he resembles his father, though he has my thick wavy hair and, when we’re both in good moods, a wide smile. Chad wraps his arm around Terra with her blue eyes, red hair, and bright smile. Though Chad loves his partner, Marcia, it’s his daughter who has captured his heart. 

Then there’s a picture of me and Dave with his short-trimmed beard and mustache, our arms around each other. Dave’s ruffle of wavy hair curls on his neck and around his ears, circling his bald head. My dark wavy hair, maintained through Clairol, is not much longer than his. If these pictures reach my first son, will he recognize himself in my round face and the high cheekbones bequeathed by our Choctaw Indian great-grandfather?

I release a silent prayer and let my son know if he ever wants to meet us, we would all welcome him and his family members.

“If that never happens, please believe that I have always loved you and treasured your memory in my heart.

Love, Linda.” 

Adoption Can Hurt

Adoptees, Adoption Loss, Adoptive Parents, First Mothers/Birthmothers, Psychotherapy

Are you part of the adoption triad? If you are reading this blog, you probably belong to it.  It refers to the birth family, most often the unmarried mother; the adoptee; and the adoptive, most often infertile, parents.

I am a birth mother from 1964, when unwed girls were expected to give up their babies for adoption to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. Statistics from that period of roughly 1945 to 1973 claim that up to six million of us did the same in what is now called “The Baby Scoop Era.”

I am also a psychotherapist. After the loss of my first-born to adoption, I became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.  Still confined by the shame of my secret past, it was not until my youngest son encouraged me to look for his missing brother that, in 2000, I began to learn about the lifelong process in which I had participated. This has been a challenging, complicated, and ultimately rewarding journey. It has also afforded me the opportunity to learn far more than the average therapist about the issues facing birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive parents. Frankly, I’ve been surprised and disappointed to learn how many of my fellow professionals are woefully uneducated and unaware of the lifelong issues experienced by members of the triad.

When I met my son’s adoptive parents, the first question his mother asked was “What nationality is he?” She had lived thirty-five years wondering about the source of our son’s wide cheekbones bequeathed by my Choctaw great-grandfather and never mentioned by me to the adoption agency.

How difficult to parent a child about whom one knows so little! How difficult for me to know nothing about where, how, or even who my son was for those three and a half decades! My son claims to have never been bothered by questioning where and who his original parents were, but millions of adoptees do not share his perspective. Even a cursory review of social media adoptee sites will uncover the pain many describe at feeling unwanted, abandoned or denied their biological heritage. This is despite however loving their adoptive parents may have been.

The reality is that sometimes children must be raised by non-biological parents. It is also true that adoption is not the idealized system it is often seen to be. Adoption has been used not only to provide for the best needs of the child, but also to satisfy the needs of adoptive parents.

As described by Evelyn Burns Robinson in her book, Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief, revised edition published 2003, all adoption begins with grief. There is the grief of the birth mother who loses her child, the grief of the adoptive parents who cannot conceive their own child, and the grief of the adoptee, who loses his or her original mother and family. All these losses present deep and lasting pain. We know now that the primal connection between a mother and child is one of nature’s most powerful forces. Babies are no longer seen as blank slates. Adoptive parents face special losses and challenges.

In my memoir with the working title of River of Connection, A Mother’s Journey of Loss and Discovery, I tell of my own loss, search and reconnection. I will be happy to send you the first chapter free. Please sign up in my Books section.

Through my personal experience, along with participation in organizations, support groups, conferences, retreats and reading, I have developed a special interest in helping other members of the adoption triad to heal. If you are seeking such help for yourself, you may visit me at www.lindafranklinlcsw.com or email me at linda@lindalfranklin.com.

 

.

I NEVER FORGOT

Adoptees, Adoption Loss, First Mothers/Birthmothers

Why do so many people believe that we birthmothers, natural mothers, original mothers, first mothers – whatever you want to call us – forgot about, stopped caring about, our children lost to adoption?

Why do they imagine that loss doesn’t bother us, even decades later?

When I found my son I’d given up in 1964, a man at my Bible Study group asked me in all seriousness, his face creased with surprise, “Do you still think about him? You still miss him?”

The other day, I saw a tweet from an adoptee. She said that if her whole family had been killed on her birthdate or if she’d been abducted from her original family, everyone would be shocked and sympathetic. She said that when she complains of her adoption loss, she is met with surprise. People ask her if she had a bad adoptive family. How else could she be negatively affected by the very fact of adoption, they want to know. Or maybe they don’t want to know.

I think there are a lot of parallels in the case of birthmothers who lose their children. Since I’ve found my son, I’ve told a lot of people of my loss. Not a single time has anyone expressed the kind of shock or sympathy I’m sure they would if I told them my son was kidnapped or killed. People don’t seem to recognize that I’ve been traumatized. Their main reaction seems to be that they’re surprised that I even feel the need to mention it, much less write about it.

It was the year 2000 when I discovered my lost son’s identity and location and continuing existence, and I was employed as a psychotherapist in outpatient psychiatry seeing people with depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, and all manner of presenting psychiatric problems. I’m ashamed to say that I never asked a single client if he or she might be an adoptee or a birthparent. That’s because in my profession, despite its mental health focus, this question was almost never addressed. Not on the assessment forms, not in the interview. I’m sure I saw dozens, maybe hundreds, of people affected by the loss of a mother or child through adoption and never knew it. I’m sure my colleagues did as well and still do.

Only after I opened to my own adoption loss and became involved with adoption related groups, did I realize that adoption posed trauma to me and to my clients. I proposed to conduct a training in my department to raise my colleagues’ awareness. Convincing my boss and co-workers that everyone in our department needed to learn more about the effects of adoption was an uphill battle, though I eventually succeeded. The training, in which I brought in a panel of birthmothers, an adoptee, and an adoptive mother, was well-received, but why is it not a required part of all professional mental health experts’ training?

Recently, I discussed with a social work colleague some of my grief experiences from losing my son that I’m including in my memoir, River of Connection. This colleague, who has years of experience working in international adoption, commented, “I don’t think the mothers in China or other countries have the same grief you did.” I was stunned.

Once I went to a meeting which included many prospective adoptive parents. A slogan bandied throughout the gathering stated, “Adoption Creates Families.” During a question and answer period, I stuck my neck out and commented, “Well, for adoption to create one family, it has to destroy the original one.”

One of the prospective parents turned and asked innocently, as if they’d never considered it, “Oh, you mean when we adopt children, someone else loses them?”

Why is there so little understanding of the grief, loss and trauma experienced by birthmothers? And, for that matter, by adoptees? I believe there are many reasons, but the biggest one seems to me to be the fact that our voices are only recently being heard. Our silence has allowed our pain to be invisible to the larger culture.

It’s time to change that. That’s why I’m writing my memoir, River of Connection. It’s why I’m starting this blog.

I hope you’ll write your own story. I’d love to hear it. And I look forward to your comments.