Paperwork Schmaperwerk

It has been months I've made any brazen attempts at knowing this strange woman who quite possibly begrudgingly carried me in her warm womb, then in a matter of six short, but painful hours, squeezed me through her birth canal and then left my life forever. The paperwork I have on my birth which is completely compiled in one tight paragraph, did not detail the nuances of childbirth and pregnancy the way most loving mothers would recall having their first born child- splashed with descriptive actions like 'felt your little kicks" and, "rubbing my belly," and the word glisten was perfectly absent. There is a simple, almost polite, completely sterile, three sentence paragraph with not a single comma. Bland and nondescript- as if baby birthing in 1976 was equal to a one-liner joke told by a Rodney Dangerfield impersonator in a seedy off off Broadway flat in NY's finest shitty neighborhood. I don't get it. Not one iota of detail surrounding the birth of a human being except a scientific description of my twisted right foot, and a suggested path to correction. Wow. That is one great book to read- about as informative and interesting as reading a printer manual in Mandarin.

I guess this disgusting lack of description is particularly deflating to someone like me for selfish reasons. I like to describe things. Nothing makes me more happy than to accurately and intricately outline a story. I like to know the juice, drink the juice, be the juice. The nitty gritty intrigues my mind, and I get off on being understood and explaining things to the point of undeniability. And when it is finished, you'll know because you will want more- like now. Like exactly now.

Truth be told, all of this driving desire to reunite with these perfect strangers is a combo of selfish determination and self-unawareness- self being the key descriptor. It's just not right to want to invade someones privacy for senseless reasons that only pertain to myself. Devilishly transparent, even putrid you might be thinking. Either way, I will get to the bottom of this if I have to think this thing into the ground and later excavate it. I hate to say this will be the death of me because I am hoping and praying that breath will be spoken into this relationship, but I have somewhat prepared for a slam in the face heart-wrenching NO, which is really what I've already been dealing with I suppose. The fact that these long lost people of mine, well formerly mine, in utero only, have not responded to my oddball requests and multiple letters to my birth mother, each more forceful than its predecessor, the fact that they have not responded in any form or fashion reminds me of Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd was told that there was one in a million chances that he would have a chance with the girl, and he jumped up, clicking his heels, and said, "You mean there is a chance!" Actually, in the movie I don't recall any leprechaun heel clicking moves in that scene, but there could have been. My memory isn't as good as yours probably.

I have turned into Lloyd. Great. Despite the very real truth that I love Dumb and Dumber with all my heart and even have a VHS copy of it in case the DVD accidentally cracks, I do not insist on insulting my intelligence like that, but I prefer to see the humor in most things uncomfortable.

Lucky for me (and Lloyd) there is hope- that small sliver of detail that people often forget about when the going gets rough. I plan to rely on that and faith for the rest of my life, and until either of those run out, I know in my heart that I will be fine. Period.

I will continue the elusive chase I imagine, until I feel satisfied with one answer, or until I am completely pushed off the face of the earth- whichever comes first.

I like to keep the stalking fresh and switch it up every now and then. Occasionally, banging through the keyboard by means of a random message sent on Facebook, not surprising at all if you think about it, considering 100,000,000,000 (too many zeros) people are finely in-tune with it's feed and consider posting to it a daily ritual, myself included.  I have not picked up the phone to call my birth aunt though lately; Melody is her name- to announce to her family on what sounded like a 1987 Radio Shack answering machine that I have been looking for them for quite some time, and that I believe that we are related. No return call. Twice I called, twice left messages, the second more direct than the first and probably more insistent on a return call, which was not honored nor probably appreciated, based on the response I got- which was zip, zilch, and zero all combined into a whopping bag of nothing.

I have also written the birth mother one snail mail letter, and two separate emails. None returned, so that is a clear indicator that Mr.M Daemon did not get a hold of them. I also have bombarded her friend, and my former friend who has assimilated to the non-responsiveness that the rest of the family is taking up. She unknowingly released the privied information to the search angel, Debi, who ultimately found my birth mother for me, in a very closed, and very sealed adoption dating back to the seventies. I just aged myself, but for the sake of the storyline, which is really my life story unfolding as you see it here, I will take it like a champ. The friend who outed my birth mother, probably got a tongue lashing and a cold shoulder after that, which might assign some truth into the character of my birth mother and her unassuming family. Well I honestly don't believe she told any one in her family other than her sister, and parents who visited her while she was in the maternity home which was and still is located in Charlotte.

One day soon, I might have a visit to the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers. I might just have a visit this weekend. I'll take my camera and upload some pics of the joint since no one thought it was appropriate back then when I was born. I guess instead of creating memories, the birth mothers wanted to shove the memory of birthing a baby and giving it away to complete strangers to raise is something that was not especially camera worthy, and not exactly fond, and probably something that kept resurfacing at odd times throughout the years creating much pain and undue suffering.

But I guess back then, the idea was to keep the privacy of the adoptive parents at the forefront, and the rights of the birth parents practically abolished like the detailed descriptions were of the births and what led up to the births. That would include any real life situations that could have been addressed without having to give up a child.  Maybe that is the truth. Maybe if those thoughts were revisited for too long, ideas would form that would lead to different outcomes and different lives, affecting the world in a much easier, digestible light. Maybe, just maybe I would not be sitting here right now, typing this.

I am very thankful for my family. Do not get it twisted. I am truly blessed, but with that blessing came a very real interest, inherited if you will, and born deep into my soul in finding my people. I think anyone who takes that for granted has no idea what it is like to be the one who doesn't.

If it happens that we meet, that we exchange some open communication, some rhetoric is dialed up, maybe even some real life interaction, I don't know what I should expect because I have already formed in my mind what it will look like when it happens. That is a probably one of the only private things about this story of mine that I have remained sealed about. That too, will be revealed, as more is revealed, an unveiling of a mystery. That mystery holds the key to me. And by God, I am determined to get to the bottom of it- even if the outcome is devastatingly unfavorable. I can assume closure, and this chapter will be no longer an anomaly in this life.

The Voices that Brought me to 13

While lying under the soft, thick covers of the twin bed I was very uncomfortably and against my will, but insisted upon sharing with my daughter, Sarah, on Valentine's Day during a sleep over at my aunt and uncle's house, I had a great and wonderful feeling come over me from something that most people would find small and insignificant. I was lying there, straight as an arrow, blindly looking straight up at a seemingly never ending ceiling. Without vision correction, I am legally blind, I just recently learned at an optometrist visit. I laid there stiff as a board as if I was a corpse in a coffin six feet under with saddened family members stomping on the ground above me. There was no room for elbows or bent knees because of the impending little arms and legs that curled up beside me, leaving me practically dangling from the edge. As I laid there, thinking about the day that had ended and mentally preparing for the future 6:30am alarm, I was lucky enough to have a feeling come across me that many people probably wish they had more often.

I felt like I was again at home, not my current home I share with Sarah, but my parent's home that I grew up in- that home that they sold in 1999. That was the home that we grew up in. This feeling that was spreading throughout my body and mind was almost overwhelming. And what it stemmed from, was something routine and ordinary, but to me, was out of the ordinary, and felt extraordinary.

You know how sometimes when you are lying in bed and your eyes are open, but the room is pitch black, and you are somehow mentally transported to your childhood bedroom by just the way the light is hitting a wall? You lay there imagining your closet door hanging open with its built in blinds that as a child you always envisioned was concealing some form of monster or ghost. And you can picture your chest sitting there against the wall right beside your bed draped with your trinkets and childhood jewelry box or mementos that your grandfather who died when you were 13 had given you, but somehow during your lifetime you managed to regrettably lose. Perhaps they were stolen by a friend or worse, your brother's friend. Perhaps  misplaced in a move and unknowingly left in a dusty moving box in the attic, and had you known they were there, they might be currently sitting proudly atop your new dresser that you bought yourself with your first real paycheck from your first real salaried job. Whatever the scenario might be for you, you know that you will never forget your childhood bedroom no matter how many times you might paint it a disastrous orange or adorn it with unsightly hair band posters which rivaled a neighboring Kirk Cameron in a blue blazer and white t-shirt poster, all stuck to the walls with some yellow, greasy silly putty knock off that never really did the trick, so you resorted back to the old stand by- scotch tape. It worked every time.

As I was frozen, mentally trans juxtaposed in my alternate reality that now mostly provides me with fond memories, there was nothing I could do to get myself out of this state of mind. There was nothing I wanted to do. I enjoyed it. It was like I was 13 again, only I was happy.

My early teen years were particularly painful because of mean girls at school mostly, accompanied by the obvious hormonal changes that alter even the sweetest of little girls' demeanour, and there were days I felt like committing suicide. I would never do that, but the thought of being dead meant not having to deal with mean three-way calls and sitting down at the lunch table and having every single person at the table get up and walk away. I will never forget how painful that was. Those people who stood up with their brown lunch trays probably don't even remember doing it, maybe they don't even remember my name.

What brought me back to that awkward time of my life, minus the awkward, was something so trivial. I could hear from downstairs the voices of my Aunt Linda, my Mom, and my Uncle Neil. They were talking and the TV was almost drowning out their conversation. That's all it was- the sound of men and women talking that was traveling up the stairs to my room above. It's been almost fifteen years since I have been in an upstairs room and heard adults talking below me. The house that my parents bought after we moved from that house didn't have an upstairs room that I slept in. I mostly slept in the basement apartment or on the same level as they did.

Who would have thought that something so small, so insignificant, would have invoked such feeling. I would love to have that feeling everyday. But as it is, I don't think I will. It felt good to reminisce though. I love moments like that. You can't replicate the feeling of family. You can, however, appreciate what you have when you have it. It's in those moments that I feel most alive, most grateful.

9/14/11 creativity should not be squandered

I am starting to believe that creativity is a gift from God. I've always wondered what gifts I've had, other than being a really good bullshitter. Having been known for having the gift of gab for most of my life, starting at the ripe-old age of 7 when my second grade teacher would often make handwritten notes to my mom on my tri-folded report card, donning the school crest in the traditional all-American colors of red, white, and blue- after all, it is called Myers Park Traditional, still to this day. (In fact, I have been toying with sending Sarah there next year, if I can get her in.) She would say things like, "Talks too much," or "If only we could get Brooke to focus as much on her schoolwork as she does on gabbing to her neighbors." No one pointed out to Mrs. James that was an incomplete sentence, especially not me.
My GOG- gift of gab has had its ramifications. I have either been the life of the party, causing many nights of senseless groundation while I was in my teenage years. Well, it was senseless in the regard that I was doing dumb things, and always got caught. On the other hand, I was also occasionally the social outcast, having always spoken my mind, and at the age of 17, it is never appropriate for a young woman to speak her mind, simply because she doesn't have enough worldly knowledge to sufficiently and succinctly express any opinions she might have prematurely formed, without realizing. Everyone knows that when you are a teenager, you know everything. You can't tell a teenage girl anything. She already knows. Little did I really know. Little do I still know. Maybe that's a clue as to why I am so intrigued with elderly people, and enjoy their presence and likewise accompanying stories.