Sometimes, when you were adopted, you're the last to know.
That was, at least, the case for me.
The year was 1968, which in Deep South years translates somewhere around 1955. My mother was a singe gal in her early 20s going to college, working in the steno pool and dating a guy with serious goals for his future, including a detailed five-year plan.
Then she got pregnant.
She found out in short order that "serious goals for the future" did not and would not include marriage or fatherhood.
You do what you want, but leave me out of it.
And since this was 1968 (or '55) my mother was quietly sent to live with an aunt and uncle several Southern states away, where she would gestate her baby; write lots of unsent letters, poems and lists of baby names in a blue spiral notebook; formulate a plan for her baby's future; and deliver that baby on an April afternoon in 1969.
My mother was not the only young woman to leave her hometown for a year or so and return with a baby. She was not the only person in my extended family, even. I could bore you for hours with tales of secret sons and nieces who were really daughters. For hours, I could bore you.
And you could probably bore me, too.
But really, what were they thinking? Was it just the physical pregnancy that was too shameful to have witnessed in one's hometown? Was anyone fooled? Was a good fooling even part of the equation? Or was the nine+ months away like so many Hail Marys - a proper show of penitence for having got knocked up by a douchebag with a rigid five-year plan?
So anyway, my mother returns to her hometown with a little one in arms. And before even a year passes, she meets, dates and marries another man.
And here's where you're going to feel compelled to judge, and I have to ask you not to.
The man adopted the baby, who got a new birth certificate complete with his name on it, and the newlywed couple decided that it would be a good idea to not tell their daughter anything about it.
Lalalalalala - What adoption decree?
The problem with family secrets is that they never remain secret. When every person in the family knows something about one member, sooner or later someone is bound to mention it.
And that is how my mother and her oldest sister became estranged.
For reasons I could never begin to tell you, I became convinced at age 13 that seeing as how I was a deeply mysterious and complicated teenager, I must have had an equally mysterious and complicated origin. You know those fantasies where you find out that your boring, over-protective parents are just stand-ins for the brilliant, artistic nomads who were your REAL parents? It was something like that.
And I happened to mention something like this fantasy to my cousin, who was two years younger than I, and she informed me that I was half right. Or a quarter right, technically, considering that my birth father with the five-year plan was a boring accountant and not, as I had suspected, Mikhail Baryshnikov or Sam Shepard or any other man who had slept with Jessica Lange.
My mother was furious with my aunt for not guarding her secret more closely. My aunt was furious right back. Or defensive. Or whatever. A phone call was placed and heated words were exchanged.
After that call, they didn't speak more than a few strained words to each other for 23 years.
When it comes to conflict, the women in my family don't play.
And they don't make up.
My aunt came to Mom's funeral two years ago. And in the ensuing months, as I was going through chemotherapy, my aunt did something she had never done. She called me. She listened. She sent her prayers and support. She dedicated (bought? I don't remember RC protocol) a mass for my mother at her church.
My mom would have done the same thing for my cousin if my cousin had lost her mother and was facing a serious illness, or a serious treatment, as it were.
Mom always maintained a line of communication with my cousin. She loved her.
Ironically, my cousin and I felt too strongly the strain of our mothers' relationship, and our friendship over the years has been sporadic at best. We were pitted as competitors as small children. Then became close friends in adolescence. Then everything just got awkward and lumpy as we tried to smooth our friendship over the rumpled mess of history that we were both really too young to understand.
We lost touch except for Christmas cards and ... no, just Christmas cards.
Now my mother is gone and her mother is facing a terrifying diagnosis.
I called her over the weekend to tell her how sorry I was to hear about her mom's illness and to ask how she was recovering from surgery. Honestly, I wasn't sure as I dialed the phone exactly what I was going to say. God. What do you say?
She answered the phone and I introduced myself.
"It's your cousin Elizabeth."
I stopped there, and did not add, "You know, Xerxes and Buttercup's mommy. Maybe you remember me from the family? I'm the one who was half adopted?"
I was relieved to find that she was happy to hear from me. This is my family we're talking about, so I don't take anything for granted. I feared she would greet me with a closed door and yell through the peep hole, "Get away! This is private. Go away cancer girl. Get away from us with all your cancer surviving and your dead mothers. We're all full here."
We talked for more than an hour, and it was just heartbreakingly wonderful and awful and important.
She and her parents are slogging through fresh hell this week. They have a million questions and so few answers. They're on a day-to-day rollercoaster, clinging firmly to every syllable uttered by every doctor and nurse passing stranger in scrubs who speaks to them.
I've visited that country. And I don't recommend it to anyone. But there are some spectacular views if you know where to look.
