Witnesses
We kept the apartment full of friends. Hers and mine. They trickled down from other floors in the building, and from other buildings in Manhattan. People LOVE reunions. They will eagerly come to cheer you on. Everyone has a few orphans crouched in the dark corners of their psyches, am I right? A few lost and banished parts they’re afraid to acknowledge, so they’ll jump at the chance to live vicariously through your awkward attempts at reunion. They’ll eagerly help you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, Oh look a nose. Is that a wrist? Does anyone know where this elbow goes? They will ask the questions neither you nor your birth mother seem to have the wherewithal to ask. Childhood, siblings, work, politics, religion, your parents, grandparents, schools, college? They’ve got you covered. Raking over the unfathomable.
You’ll be able to listen from the sidelines, sniff around the edges, without engaging head on. How does she laugh? What words does she use? Is she funny? Smart? Articulate? Someone you’d like, if you met her at a party? The thing is you ARE meeting her at a party and yes, you DO like her, and you like her friends. Everyone will ooh and ahh over all the coincidences and similarities: the fact that you lived right around the corner from each other here on the Upper West Side, hey, you might’ve stood in line at Zabars together, sat side by side on the downtown bus. What? You were a plant lady where she was an editor? Her goddaughter went to your school, lived in your town, chose you to be in your first play? Your cousin went to grad school with her son? My-my-my. Amazing.
It’s through friends that you can map the parameters and plot your course.
Things to Bring
This probably goes without saying, as you’ve no doubt already noticed, babies are what this story is all about, symbolically and quite literally, so if you happen to have one, by all means, bring it.
Nothing melts hearts like a baby.
Nothing says hope and redemption like a baby.
Nothing says, see what you missed? Fuck you, like a baby.
Or, you could just bring your spindle. Yes, why not? A whole sack of squirming curses, a pocketful of locusts, pestilence, famine, a hex, a pox. It’s your goddamned right. Who would blame you, if you wanted to wreak a little havoc. After all, you are the banished one, the bad seed returning, and we outcastes have a long tradition to uphold. Ask the brothers Grimm. A thorough scourging, full-on, with a thicket of briars and a hundred year sleep could really turn the tables. Yup, it’s your call.
But would they still invite you to dinner? And isn’t that the whole point? A place at the table?
Everyone always talks about how brave adoptive parents are. How they accept an unknown commodity into their home, not knowing if it will turn out to be the curse or the blessing. But let’s hear it for the birth families, too! When they open their doors to the uninvited guest, aren’t they just as brave? Knock-knock. Hello may I help you? They won’t recognize you at first. How do they know you are who you say you are? It could be a trick. Knock-knock. Look what the cat dragged in. Who is it honey? She says she’s your daughter. I don’t have a daughter. They hesitate. What kind of not-like-us evil tricks have you picked up on your travels? Why were you expelled in the first place? They can’t quite remember. It was a long, long time ago. Will you even know which fork to use, will your thank you notes arrive in a timely manner? How can they be sure? Are you, or are you not, a Democrat?
It takes courage to welcome the thing you once rejected. abandoned. forfeited. tried to forget. The thing you designated to an eternity of Other.
Listen, an adoptee never really belongs, so she learns pretty quick how to fit in, and become recognizable to almost anyone, a mistress of disguises. It’s a matter of survival. Reunion is just like being adopted all over again. You get extra points for being a “happy and responsive baby”.
Oh mirror mirror on the wall who is really the bravest of them all?
Forgiveness
O.M.G I almost forgot, don’t be alarmed if the touchy subject of forgiveness comes up. Do you or don’t you. The cleaning lady of 20 years, also a friend, bless her heart, may pull your birth mother into the kitchen, in the midst of the festivities, and ask, urgently, as if it were the only question on everyone’s mind, the only one worth asking, Does she forgive you? and, later, when your birth mother tells you this, shyly, in the hall passing, when for the first time all day, you are actually alone together, all the guests and cleaning lady gone, you’ll both giggle, as if it’s funny, because it IS funny. The whole concept of forgiveness is hysterical, feels ridiculously out of place, culturally inappropriate, ill-fitting, like a relic from a by-gone era, but wait a minute, hold on, something has shifted, what is it? Awwww, just look at the two of you, in your nightgowns, toothbrushes in hand, on your way to bed, suddenly acting like an “us” a “we”, like a mother and daughter, sharing a joke, a big fat one, called forgiveness.
Miracles do happen.
Do I forgive you?
If you listen really hard, you’ll be able to hear all the ancestors, shuffling in their front row seats, nervously coughing. Where does the need for forgiveness even begin? The egg that created you was formed inside your grandmother’s womb and on and on. Backwards and forwards through time. I’m sorry.
Do I forgive you?
Sweet of the cleaning lady to ask, but that’s a question you probably won’t know how to answer for another 35 years, at least.
You Were Never You
It wasn’t until the second night, that I started asking the questions. My friend Alice was there as as my witness. My baby continued to crawl in circles around our feet. Stirring the pot. There was ribbon candy coiled, snug as a sleeping kitten, in a blue ceramic bowl, a ceiling lamp spilled its full-spectrum benediction indiscriminately over all of us. Everywhere was a circle.
What about the birth? I wanted to know, but didn’t have the guts to actually say, MY birth.
So, May 10, 1958, 7:15 am you say? Hmmmm, all I remember is that it was dark and then it was light and there was this awful moaning sound. ‘Who is making that noise?’ I asked the nurse, as they wheeled me down the hall to the delivery room, and the nurse said, ‘You are!’ I was drugged, you see, I was drugged for my son’s birth, too, so as not to remember the first one. I didn’t want to remember anything. The whole point was to forget.
No one was supposed to let her see the baby, it would be easier to forget all about it and move on with her life if she didn’t. But her two best friends had stopped in for a visit on their way to a wedding shower, and some how, my birth mother was able to bribe the nurse to bring it into the room, so they could have a look.
It’s a baby! they shrieked in surprise.
You have to understand, you weren’t you, up until that point you were the worst most horrible thing that could happen, you were just an alien taking over my body.
But what I didn’t expect, what really surprised me, as I held the baby on my knees, and unswaddled it, to check all its parts, you know, a) to make sure the knitting needles hadn’t done any harm and b) to make sure it had all its limbs, because one of my grandfathers was born without a leg, while I was looking at the baby, all the toesies 12345678910 and fingers, 12345678910 and the 2 legs, 2 arms, nose, cute as a button, all that hair! —— what really surprised me was this feeling…
Feeling? asked Alice.
Yes, this feeling rising up in me, that I’d never experienced before, I didn’t know what it was. And then I figured out, it must be unconditional love.
Huh.
But it was too late.
Too late?
To do anything about it.
The feeling? I asked.
No, the baby.
Oh, right.
To change my mind, to keep it.
Keep it?
YOU. I mean YOU!
We all laughed, another big fat joke to share, Remember the time when you weren’t you!? that was SO funny! Only this time the joke really was on me, coming all this way to the Source, to find out who I was, only discover that….I wasn’t?
So, here are a few questions you might ask yourself as you continue along the path. If you weren’t you who were you? When did you become the you that they think you are now, but weren’t then? How does a you become a you, anyway, and oh, yes, lovely, when, if ever, does a you become an I?
And really, the most urgent question of all: Are you even listening?
Love this, Emily. On so many levels. As it applies to becoming who we are and have always been at the core of all
of it. xoxo
Another stunning installment. I feel there is another one right behind it and wouldn’t be surprised if you posted again tomorrow! Your story makes me think of my own story and what it has meant to have a father who was orphaned at birth - left in a hospital for six months- and after a series of orphanages and foster homes was adopted at age 11! So, your writing has me thinking, very much today about generational effects and especially about my siblings (6 of them). We are experts as abandonment. We do it to each other all the time - leaving each other at the curb. Perhaps we seek that out in other relationships too…carrying internal posters “abandon me” “adopt me” to keep the familiar pattern going.