A Little More Tahn Kin And Less Than Kind

I loved Ophelia: Forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.
Hamlet, 5. 1

I’ve always had a soft spot for tragic women. In my younger years, I fancied that I might become one, but it was not to be.

I remember growing up in my small town, I would see the ladies with their big Loretta Lynn hair, and baby blue Lincoln Continentals and think they must be like Princesses. I would remark on their beauty and style only to have my Mother say something to the effect of how “they weren’t our kind of people”. I didn’t understand, they always seemed nice enough to me.

Mother knew something I didn’t. When I asked about my first Mom, I was told that she was probably a teenager that was too young to raise me. Quite believable and I accepted it without question. It was not so, and Mother knew it.

My first Mother was 36 years old when I was born. She was raising four other chldren and had been married three times at that point. I was not the child of the man she was then married to, nor the child of the man she would marry right after my birth. There was a man listed as my Father, but first Mom knew something I didn’t.

Two women who couldn’t be more different, they both lied to me, for different reasons. one thought I’d just accept the story without ever questioning. The other, somehow suspecting that I would have a questioning nature, offered a half truth.

It is conjecture, of course, to say I can account for the motivations of either of these two women. I don’t feel that I know the hearts of either, but this is how I see it.

My a-Mother lied to me for all the reasons that a-Mothers always lie. Her own fears , self-delusion, and dread of what I might turn out to be. There is little wonder that my mention of the more free living ladies about our town made her nervous, surely she thought my first Mom must be one of them. Nothing in the world would frighten her more than thinking I might become a Virginia Slim smoking, big haired, tight sweater wearing, Lincoln driver. It was against everything she stood for.

My first Mom lied for all the reasons that first Moms lie. She didn’t want to be found, she thought I might hate her, and she feared what I might turn out to be. I’m sure she expected that I would be a Talbots wearing, country club joining, Republican, mini-van driver. I’m not sure this would frighten her, but I do know she knew these type of women did consider her “not their kind of people”.

They both underestimated me. It never occured to either that I would turn out somewhere in between, no matter what they told me. It just seems that a lot of un-necessary bullshit could have been avoided if either had any faith in me, or themselves.

Jesus Take the Wheel

I don’t care if it rains or freezes,

as long as I have my plastic Jesus

In other parts of the interents there has been some discussion on where the money that perspective adoptive parents pay agencies goes. Monies spent on advertising was a particular point of discussion, the sums spent by Bethany more specifically. Bethany is a part of Catholic Charities and I assumed their access to resources was vast, I did some research and was correct. The sheer amount of dollars involved mad me wonder where all the revenue came from, it was more than that from the admittedly large sums paid by perspective adoptive parents could ever account for. I did some more digging and this is what I found.

Bethany does get monies from the Catholic Church that had made up for much of their revenue until recently. It seems with the death of John Paul 11, and his charisma along with him, donations are down. Pope Benedict XVI with his German sensibility about money has come up with a novel solution to revenue problems, not just for Bethany, but all Catholic Charities, Vale Added Production Based Fund-raising.

Bethany being at the cutting edge of social services and having a good ear on the street has come up with a novel solution of their own that showcases Benedict’s vision for the future of raising revenue for good works. Plastic dashboard Jesus farming.

Bethany’s program encompasses all facets of their charitable foundation. From the orphans in Guatemala who literally plant the seeds of faith in the plowed up fields that once were their playgrounds to the recipients of good works who seek to pay back those that helped them with their stands at flea markets. Bethany employees at the many US offices even get into the act, setting up and selling from cardboard display stands that they designed themselves.

The Home Grown Plastic Jesus program seeks to offer the highest quality protection from vehicular mishaps to the faithful. Agronomist from top universities were called upon to develop a hardy fast growing hybrid Saviour statuette, that compromised nothing in holy protection. Different strains were developed and tested, the little Sons of God had to be tolerant of conditions and soils in some of the poorest countries on Earth. Not only did this mark a great advance in effigy agriculture, but a hands up to the communities that would grow them. “It was all worth it when I saw the look on the kids faces at the orphanage when the Jesus’ began to sprout.” said one researcher who had worked on the project.

Marketing efforts are now underway in Western Europe and the United States. One Akron, Ohio gas station owner is quoted as saying, “I can’t keep the little fellows in my store, everybody wants one.” The Home Grown Jesus will be available in many gift catalogs next year.

It seems that the future of faith based fund raising has come into the 21st century.

Possible Outcomes

What are a rednecks last words?

Hey, watch this!

Speaking as someone with some redneck cred, that is a funny joke.

Do you know why?

Because it’s true.

Weighing possible outcomes is a weakness of my native people. They just don’t take everything into consideration.

In the third grade, a boy in my class broke his arm jumping off the welfare apartment using a sheet for a parachute. No one was surprised. He was sort of a hero, like Evil Knevil. That cast was a badge of honor. He had taken a chance, it would have been spectacular if he had made it.

Many of our most important cultural tales contain the phases, “We was all about half tanked up” and/or “that’s when I knew I was blowed up”. Almost all are stories of devastation to property, bodily injury, and economic loss. They chronicle quests for bootleg whiskey, the theft of brides, racing cars, robbing banks, and practical jokes, just to name a few. The thing almost all of them have in common, whether they end in failure or success, is that the process of trying to obtain these goals is much more important than the outcome. Sure the story turns on the moment they know that they was blowed up, but that’s not what it’s about, it’s about getting to that point.

The reason that things do not work out most of the time almost always lies in not taking all things into consideration. Maybe they didn’t know about the new police car, that the train didn’t stop in the next town on Tuesday, the watermelon patch was guarded by a big mean dog, or sheets just don’t work like parachutes on a fifteen foot drop. It just never occurred to them, they had a plan, and attempted to execute that plan. They ended up in jail, up a tree all night, or in the hospital, but they had a hell of a good time getting there. If they didn’t come away with anything else, they had bragging rights, and that’s worth something.

Sure with a little research things might have gone more smoothly, but I fear that they would never have been attempted at all. That would be a shame. People like me would have no cultural heritage. We would never have learned that it really doesn’t matter how it all ends as long as you took the chance.

The joy is in the ride.

What does this have to do with adoption, you ask?

Absolutely nothing, but it has everything to do with reunion.

Zen And The Art Of Frying Pan Baseball

Transcendence, to change, to go beyond intended use, to function on a higher plane of reality, a thing experienced but not spoken of. A ten dollar word, and at least a million dollar philosophy. A concept that has meant many different things at many different times.

In one Hindu tradition transcendence is seen as obtaining a state beyond the material, where one is not bound to the cycles of rebirth. Mistakes are not repeated over and over again. It is in this context that I believe that an ordinary frying pan transcended it’s use yesterday in Utah.

Three teenage girls used the frying pan as means of escape from a maternity home. The use of violence was the only way they could see a way out of their situation. They had been sent to the home by parents who wished to hide them from their friends and community. It was the only way they could see their way out of the situation. The people who ran the home’s motives are unknown to me, but I’m sure they saw the home as the only solution for both the girls and the parents.

They are all blind.

There is clearly an elephant they cannot see.

The elephant is adoption. It seems that many truly cannot see it, and some that can refuse to acknowledge it’s presence.

It’s right there in front of you.

Small Town Girl

I live in a very small town in the Mid-west. It’s one of those places where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Pretty much everybody here knows I’m adopted. Strangely enough, they all seem to think it was a good match, at least between me and my b-dad.

I read something written by an adoptive parent last week about how she felt that enviroment made the genes of adopted children express themselves differently than they would if the child was raised by b-parents. It made me snicker. Then wonder.

It came to me as so many of these things in life do, completely from left field.

My trashy neighbor, who seems to own the world’s most extensive collection of junky old Toyota pick-ups, must be beginning to construct a building to hold his treasures. From my living room window you can see little orange flags laid out for a foundation. This building is less than welcome by me, but’s that’s a different story. The flags got me thinking about something.

My b-dad owns a grocery store in my little town. He built it in 1967. It was the first supermarket in town. He did well with it, much to the displeasure of a chain store that had a building on the town square. My b-dad got word that the chain w=store was considering building a new store. They were looking at a piece of land just south of our store.

One day when Dad came home for lunch, funny how Dad’s used to come home for lunch-a more simple time, I guess, he loaded up me and Mom in the store truck. In the truck he had a bundle of thoser orange flags and the blueprints from our house. We went out to the peice of land that the chain store was considering buying, Dad had purchased an option on the land that morning. Dad, Mom and I put the flags around the property, an entrance from the highway, parking lot, and a big ass building were marked out.

Then Dad got out the house plans, set them on the hood of the truck. He called us over and pointed at the flags, gesturing like this would be here and that would be there. Mom and I thought he had lost his mind, we had just built that house, and he was talking about a grocery store.

We didn’t know that the chain store manager drove by the lot we were standing on everyday on his way back from his lunch hour. The chain store manager didn’t know that we were looking at house blueprints.

Plans for the new chain store came to an end.

That sounds exactly like something I would do. Nature or nurture? I wonder.

I also wonder if it was wrong of me to move a couple of my neighbors little flags about six inches?

The Audacity Of Grief

I’m not sure I can afford the audacity of grief. Anger is cheaper.

Grief is big and elaborate, it requires much investment, and tending of that investment. It’s like a 401K with separate accounts. Some must be invest conservatively in order to have enough to get you through the rest of your years. By the time you reach the middle of life, you know you will have much use for grief. Sometime you stopped having to be fitted for bridesmaid dresses and found yourself in need of sober suits. They don’t come cheap, and you start asking yourself if you need more wardrobe options to wear to grieving occasions. You don’t know how long this will go on, and if you’ll even stay the same size.

Some of your grief must also be invested in higher yield riskier instruments, you need to make this pay while you can. You’re got to build it up fast in order to have enough to let it take care of itself when you just don’t have the strength to work at it anymore. It is more likely that you will become disabled, than die young. Also, the bigger the grief nest egg, the more comfortably you’ll be able to do it. If you get lucky you might even be able to spend you grieving twilight years somewhere warm and sunny. You could also need constant care in your grieving, you want to be able to do it somewhere nice, with scheduled activities, good food, and a caring staff. You don’t want to end up grieving on the welfare state.

You could even invest in commodities. Speculating on grief contracts. Will greif demand be higher next hurricane season in the south? Will grief come in short supply due to a lighter than usual civl unrest season in South America or Africa? Should you bet on it? It’s risky, but the rewards can be high.

I can’t even afford to buy into this right now. I have my grief contribution at it’s lowest level. I’m not even taking full advantage from my full vestment by order of being an adoptee. I need ready cash reserves for anger.

Anger is cheap and I can buy it anywhere. In fact, I can get it wholesale. There is something to be said for buying anger on the open market, it drives the world. It get things done. It even feels good. Sure, it’s addictive, but it fuels the fire.

And I can quit any time I want.

Happy Ass Adoptees

I hate happy-ass adoptees. If I hear how special they are because they were “chosen” one more time, I’m going to explode.

They can take their “I’m so special because I was wanted more than bio kids.” and shove it.

As for the attitude some of these happy asses seem to have about only adoptees that had awful childhoods being disatified with their situation, I’d like to invite them to take a swim in Lake Fuck.

I’m just sick to shit of hearing it.

To think someone would have the audacity to tell a firstmom who has searched for her near middle aged child to forget about contacting her directly because the a-mom didn’t want her to, I say screw off. This firstmom at least deserves to hear that her birth-daughter doesn’t want contact directly. If for no other reason than she was brave enough to seek her daughter out. That takes a fair amount of guts and she at least deserves to hear her daughters voice for her troubles.

The very disrespectfulness of suggesting a reunion shouldn’t even be attempted because Miss Happy-Ass wouldn’t want one enrages me.

We aren’t all like you.

Grow the fuck up.

I probably shouldn’t post this, but I’m going to anyway.

Conversations

I spoke with a strong lady last night. I like her very much, we have a lot in common. We’ve been down some of the same roads.

In speaking with her and others involved in adoption, I’m always struck not so much by the similarities, but our reactions to them. I’m beginning to detect patterns somewhat like the stages of grief.

It seems that many of us start out as the happy adoptee, we cannot fathom what these angry people are saying. What do they mean by declaring adoption as something like slavery? Our parents loved us didn’t they? We were cared for.

Then we come up against everybody from the government to our families and friends treating us like the eternal child when we complain about the lack of information available to us. At first we wonder why the hell they are so mad at us for just wanting to know what everybody else does. Then it occurs to us they don’t think we deserve to know these things, we should just be grateful that someone adopted us. This is where the anger starts.

We aren’t really mad a these people, we are mad at something much bigger. We start to sense what we are up against. It seems that the institutions and people who should help us are instead putting up every roadblock possible to finding answers. It dawns on us that those angry adoptees might just have a legitimate reason for their anger, but we aren’t quite there yet.

So we take on the system, with varying degrees of sucess. Some of us find what we are looking for, some don’t. The funny thing is, from that point, it doesn’t seem to matter. Those who are disappointed stay mad, those who aren’t stay mad too. Knowing what you missed is every bit as maddening as not knowing.

No matter which road life takes us on, we end up in the same place. All roads lead to anger.

What’s the next stop on the road? I honestly don’t know.

I’m stil mad.

I hope there is reslution for every single one of us, all I know is many of us are walking together now.

Down To Business

Now that I’m over the stress of the move, let’s move on.

I’m still trying to figure out how much of the shit I go through is about adoption, and how much isn’t. I’m not sure there is any way to tell.

It is said that we are all much more complicated than we seem to others. I do believe that, but why does it seem that everybody’s more adjusted than me? By this I don’t mean the brave everything’s alrght face that everybody puts on, I mean, how is they can say what they are with such authority. They say..

I’m the mother of three, that’s what I am.

or

I’m an artist, that’s what I am.

or

I’m a IT person, that’s what I am.

or

Whatever.

How are they so convinced that’s what they are?

I have no idea what I really am.

Just how do you come to this decision? I’m too many things. I’d need a book.

Am I overcomplicating things?

I'm Outta Here

Just go here..

http://addiepray.wordpress.com/

Thanks.

Who You Are Dealing With Here

It has come to my attention that there are those out there who aren't quite sure who I am. They want to know who they are really dealing with, okay.

It's really pretty simple. I'm a 41 year-old woman from a small town in the mid-west. My interests include weaving, painting, writing, and pissing people off on message boards.

I have no fear of crowds, snakes, or Republicans. I'm a good cook and a decent gardener.

Oh and I'm an adoptee.

2007

The New Year. A time for resolutions, promises, and new beginnings all around. A time to look back on the last year and evaluate our experiences and reactions, to try to work out a way to start anew, with a fresh perspective.

Screw that.

In the past I've made plans, promises to myself, resolutions. The thing is, they never work out. I think I'm going to do what I always end up doing anyway, flying by the seat of my pants. Why fight it?

It's my belief that the moment we think we have any control over our circumstances, that's when things really start to fall apart. Too many times from a western perspective we view ourselves as the stream, forever moving and carving our own channel. I more truly identify myself as a pebble in the stream, washed over, buffeted, but still complete.

So this year I'll let the waters rush by, take me where they please, but remain just as I am.

This isn't to say I'll be passive, just steady, and not fight the forces I can't change, no matter what I do. I've pushed a lot the last few years, I think I'll sit on the porch with a glass of wine and watch it all go by this year.

Yes, I can hear you, "She is so completely full of shit."

Yeah, probably, but I'm going to try.

We are not a gang, we are a club..

"We are not a gang, we are a club.." so said some character on a 70's TV show, the name of which I've forgotten.

I hear I'm the member of a gang, crew, clique, posse, called the Clean-up Crew. I'm disappointed, they could have come up with something better. Let's face it, batting clean-up is the best position, you get the base runners in. I like that, I think I'll embrace it.

I won't tell you who the other members are since we are secret society, with blood initiation, the car coat, the whole deal, but I will say I'm proud to be associated with them.

I think that those that bestowed us with our name must view us as something like this photo,

cool.

I'm a bad girl.

Oh and a free e-margarita for the first person who identifies the above photo.

Darkness Retreats

Today marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Over the past few days there has been no light here, cloudy, foggy, and raining, it is as it should be.

Somehow these dark days feel right. Tomorrow things will be different. The day will be longer than today, and each one after longer than before. Eventually things will grow again.

I welcome the short days as a time to slow down, as much of a hibernation as the modern world will allow. As others scurry about, preparing for the holidays, in what seems an effort to banish these days, I try to embrace them. I have always felt that one has the embrace the dark as well as the light.

One must pay homage to the dark in order to keep it from growing wildly as a neglected garden will. To keep the pansies and sweet potato vine from overgrowing the magnolia and asters, they must have attention. They must be cultivated, watered, fed, and yes, trained. Ultimately the dark complimenting the light, each making the other more beautiful.

Now things will change, I will look to the light. Through the bright winter days when the sun shines so intensely on the bare ground reminding me the corner is turned and brightness is returning. Through the first days of warmth when things struggle up through the soil only to be cruelly reduced to brown again by the brief return of cold.

It is from down on, I do know that the darkness will end, for a little while.