Your Moral Obligation

That's me, on my first birthday. I celebrated my birthday earlier this week. To my utter delight, 70-or-so friends sent wishes on Facebook. One son wrote a beautiful tribute to me on Facebook, the other (who lives nearby and talks to me almost daily) texted me. Close friends mailed cards. My two closest female friends sent lovely gifts, and the Jazzman gave me hugs and kisses and a fabulous Bose Bluetooth device to connect to my iPhone and iPad for playing music with Bose playback quality. I had a wonderful day. I felt loved and treasured by my friends.

So who didn't I feel loved and treasured by? Why, my mother, of course. I hadn't spoken with her since my trip to North Carolina at the end of May for her 101st birthday. That's three weeks. Sometimes I get busy and forget to call. Sometimes I'm so discouraged after phone calls with her that I just don't put myself out to call, as I don't want to feel that discouragement again.

Let's be clear here. The woman's brain is in great shape. Her hearing is dicey, but her mind works fine. She—understandably—gets discouraged with not being able to hear conversations around her. And so she won't attempt to carry on a conversation. But she is perfectly capable of doing so when she's willing to put forth the effort.

But she is and always has been a narcissist of the highest order. You know the saying, "It's not all about you"? Well, everything is all about her. Even fifty years ago when her hearing was fine, thankyouverymuch, she wouldn't listen to the conversation. She would just say what she wanted you to hear without paying any attention to you or what was going on with you.

She has two beautiful grandsons (my two sons) and two incredibly beautiful great-grandchildren (again, my offspring). But she is not one whit interested in them or their lives. My older son neglected to thank her for a Christmas gift about 22 years ago and she wrote him off then and there. She never asks me how they are or what they've been up to. Here's the thing: She. Doesn't. Care.

To give you an example, I can remember many conversations where I'd say, "I have a performance this weekend with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus" or something to give her similar insight into my life. She would not respond with questions about what we were singing or how I enjoyed that activity. She would say, "My neighbor's daughter sings in her church choir." Hey, Lady, I don't care about your neighbor's daughter. I want you to care about your daughter. Oops, your adopted daughter. I forgot, momentarily, that I don't matter to you.

But back to the topic at hand. Amidst all my birthday greetings, I heard nothing from my mother. She couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone and call me. I refused to call her, mentally challenging her to call me. #FAIL. Monday afternoon, after returning from the lovely birthday weekend on the shores of Lake Erie, I called her. She sounded glad to hear my voice. She asked when I was coming to visit again. (I wanted to say, "Why should I?" Instead, I told her I have rehearsals twice a week from the second week of July through three September performances, after which the Jazzman and I are heading to California for a week's much-needed vacation.) She asked if I had a nice birthday. (What? You couldn't pick up the damned phone and wish me a happy birthday?) When I would try to carry on a conversation with her, she would sing or hum into the phone. The nurse walked in to test her sugar and then to give her the required insulin injection, and she kept me on the phone while talking to the nurse.

After a whole lot of nothing, I was able to get off the phone. As I pushed the End button on my phone, I yelled—to the no-one who was listening—"just shoot me now."

And in the middle of the night, awakened by a hairballin' cat, I lay in bed, listening to the thunderstorm and thinking about Mother's attitude toward me since I was six days old and she brought me home from the hospital to adopt.

Here's what I would say if she and I were ever in therapy together:

When you adopt a child, it's your duty to enable that child to feel loved, to feel secure, to grow up as a person who matters to her family—the family who chose her.

It doesn't matter how much or how little love you have to give. It doesn't matter how your parents treated you. Whatever amount of love is swirling inside of you, you have to give this adopted child more. You have to give more than you have to give, as difficult as that is. You chose to adopt her; now you are saddled with the inadequacies of her genetic line. It seems hard? Tough. Your inability to love her makes it even tougher on her.

You cannot and must not just write her off when the going gets tough.

I asked Mother one time, shortly after my first divorce, why she didn't give me more guidance in some aspect of life that was troubling to me at the time. She made a statement I can never forget:

"When you were 14 I didn't know what to do with you, so I just washed my hands of you."

And after another conversation at a later date:

"All you adopted kids had problems."

I was raised by this woman to believe I was dumb, ugly and incompetent. I'm now 64 years old, hold a B.S degree and a J.D., have two children, two grandchildren, and a DBF—all of whom love me deeply and unwaveringly—and I still struggle daily with the thoughts that I don't fit in anywhere, don't belong, am not a person that anyone wants to have around. I fight these thoughts Every Single Day. Don't tell me to go to therapy. I've had years of therapy. And in my mind, in my mental baggage, I still don't fit in.

Okay, it could be worse. It could be so much worse. But these are my feelings and this is my blog, so I'm going to tell you:

When you adopt a child, you have a moral obligation to pour love and security and the tools for self-worth into that child. You have a moral obligation to enable her to develop into a grounded member of society.

If you can't do this, then don't do it. Don't adopt. Don't further cripple this baby or child so that, as a 64-year-old adult adoptee, she still struggles with daily pain.

Don't keep breaking her heart over and over again.

Be responsible.

The Rolling Stones Had It Right

You can't always get what you want.

I have said time and again that when my mother dies I will not cry. There is not the bond between us that–I presume, I imagine–most daughters feel. Those daughters grieve when their mother dies. I will not.

If I am to cry, it will be soon, and maybe even now. At two months from turning 101, her communication skills are failing. Hard and fast. The frustration of trying to determine the slightest thing is horribly frustrating.

I try to be considerate of and thoughtful toward her. I try to let her know she is in my thoughts. But it doesn't matter. She's all that is in her thoughts. I imagine she was a narcissist since long before she participated in the decision to adopt me. She does it so well. She does it with the skill of someone who has been practicing for decades.

I made the mistake of calling her today. She flashed across my mind and I thought it would be nice to let her know that. I looked at my watch, and it was a time she might be in her room. So I called and she answered. She recognized my voice-she has a decent memory.

I asked how she was, and got the same answer I have been getting for 20 years, "Pretty good for an old lady." I guess if I want a different answer I should ask a different question. She didn't have much to say.

I asked if she had gotten the clipping I sent her a week ago. I accompanied a one-act Mozart opera recently and my picture was in the newspaper. I sent her the clipping, thinking she would enjoy reading it. She had no recollection. After trying several different ways to jog her memory, she said, "Oh, yes. That was nice." No questions about the program or my performance, no interest in prolonging that conversation or learning a little bit more about the woman her daughter has become.

I tried to tell her that her great-grandson had been in the local spelling bee last weekend, but could not get her to decipher my words. Nor would she admit to not understanding my words. I gave up, closing with "I'll talk to you soon."

I can hear what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm a self-centered, spoiled brat. Maybe so.

For over 60 years I've been trying to get this woman to care about me, to be grateful for my life. She doesn't. She isn't. At 101, how many years does she have left? Certainly not enough to change this deep-rooted behavior.

My life partner encourages me to quit trying. He recognizes her for who she is. And he sees clearly her inability to care.

Maybe I can borrow his glasses.

Hidden Messages

Still suffering from jet lag, I've been doing a lot of online reading between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. every day this week. Three Facebook friends had posted this link, Parent Pressures Gay Son to Change, which I read this morning. But it was not the main theme that caught my eye. It was the subtext that the parent forgot the son's birthday.

Who does that? What parent has such a busy, all-consuming life that she can forget her child's birthday? Oh, wait. Mine. She forgets (or ignores) my birthday and those of my sons and my grandchildren–who, by the way are her only grandchildren and only great-grandchildren. Whenever I might get her on the phone (she is incapable of picking up the phone to call me), she has no curiosity about my life or the lives of my offspring.

Don't bother to take her side and remind me she's 100 years old. This behavior has been in place for 25 years!

Here's what caught my eye:

When you “forget” a child’s birthday, you are basically negating him as a person. It is as if you are saying that you have forgotten his presence in the world. How very sad for him.

Without knowing for sure, I have long suspected that my daddy was the main instigator behind the decision to adopt a baby girl, who just happened to be me. I believe Mother went along, then found out I wasn't what she bargained for.

She told me once, 16-or-so years after the fact, "When you were fourteen I didn't know what to do with you, so I just washed my hands of you." Really? From what parenting book did you learn that technique?

My spousal equivalent has been telling me for several years–since he first met her–that I need to accept the fact that my mother just doesn't love me. Or, really, doesn't even like me.

Slowly, with enough reinforcement, that fact will sink in. With the support of my children and my friends, who love me, I can readjust my world view.

But that doesn't make it right.

Where in the World ...

If you and I are Facebook friends, you know I'm just back from a Big Adventure. If not, then let me tell you that explains why I haven't posted anything here in a while.

I've just been chided encouraged by a dear friend to get back to this blog, so here's a quick update.

The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus was invited to go on tour with the Cleveland Orchestra. We prepared the Beethoven Mass in C Major for six performances: two in Cleveland's Severance Hall (Oct. 31 and Nov. 2), followed by one each in Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center (NYC, Nov. 4), Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Germany (Nov. 10), Salle Pleyel in Paris, France (Nov. 11), and Philharmonie Luxembourg (Nov. 14). The photo above was taken at the Philharmonie. I'm in the back row of the chorus and am the rightmost woman.

Everywhere we went, the audiences loved us. I felt tremendously honored to be in the company of all these talented musicians. Both the rehearsals and perforamnces were very hard work, and completely rewarding to have accomplished these goals.

I stayed an extra two days in Brussels, Belgium, returning to Ohio on Sunday, November 17.

I'm slowly recovering from the jet lag. The Jazzman is currently working a job where his weekend is Sunday and Monday. Yesterday I just hung with him, going to lunch and running errands. Last night I fell asleep too early and consequently woke too early this morning, but had an 8:00 a.m. nap, and am now at the computer, offloading photos from my Nikon, my iPad, and my iPhone.

A travelogue blog post is being written and will appear shortly at this address.

And I promise to be more committed to this blog.

Thanks for visiting.

When a Man Notices

We change the towels in our bathroom every Sunday. After his shower, the Jazzman scoops them all up off the towel bars and dumps them down the laundry chute. Later on, I pull clean towels out of the laundry cupboard and place them, still carefully folded, onto the towel bars, his and hers.

This morning, as he emerged from his shower, the Jazzman called from the bathroom, "Did you fold these towels and put them back on the bars?" "No," I called back, "those are clean." "They look just like the old ones," he said, with an air of wonder. "Yep, we have multiples," I told him.

Isn't it fun with a man notices something simple like that?

A Step Into the Past

Last month the Jazzman and I drove to Maine for a week of vacation. We decided to spend the final two nights a little closer to home, to cut a couple of hours of the last day's drive, and found an inn in Ipswich, MA. My ancestry, back to around 1630, lies in Gloucester, MA, just a few miles away from Ipswich. As I had recently uncovered some previously unknown genealogical information, I suggested to the Jazzman that we drive into Gloucester and out around Cape Ann. We would couple my research with a stop in Rockport as we drove out around Cape Ann to visit the recently-sold home of a relative of his. He had visited this home overlooking the water several times in his life. We would be walking through our minds a little on this trip.

In research I had done over a year ago, I learned—to my great sadness—that my birthmother had lost her father, whom she adored, when she was 16. How did I know she adored him? When I was 33 and she was about 70, I found her. I tried to speak with her on the phone, but she simply said, "I can't talk to you now," and hung up the phone.

My darling daddy—in a quite astonishing turn of events—was her doctor. He didn't realize she was my birthmother until I solved the puzzle.

When he learned she was my birthmother, he pulled her medical file from the file room in his office. That way, if she came in to see any of the doctors in his practice, the nurses would be searching for the file, and he would know of the visit. Voila! One day a few months later, a nurse started looking through the files on his desk while he was sitting in his consultation room. He asked what file she was looking for and, when she said "Gertrude Verburg," he replied, "Tell her I'd like to speak with her."

So when she was situated in the examining room, before starting her appointment, she was visited by Daddy, with pictures of me and my sons in his hand. He said she had no look of joy or familiarity on her face. She showed no emotion. When she looked at the pictures, she simply mused, "Oh, aren't they nice." She was having hip problems and had surgery scheduled later that month. She said she would accept a letter from me if I'd send it to Daddy. He would take it to her while she was in the hospital, preventing her husband—who had no knowledge of my existence—from seeing the letter. A few weeks later, I got an envelope from Daddy in the mail. Inside was my letter to my mother. She had written me back in the margins of my letter. What she revealed shocked me.

She had never felt her mother loved her. (Ding! Ding! Ding!) She was very close to her father. (Ding! Ding! Ding!) She lived for Sundays when he didn't work and they would spend time together. I could not believe the parallels in my life and hers.

And then she asked me never to contact her again. Which I didn't. About ten years ago, I learned she had died in 1998. In the past week, I learned that her husband died last year. Done. Book closed.

I've thought so many times about that girl who lost her beloved daddy at age 16. How that must have changed her. Her oldest brother moved to Pennsylvania to work. Gertrude and her brother still lived at home with the mother who couldn't show her daughter she loved her. Then, five years later, at age 21, her mother died. At 21, she's all alone with her brother who was fifteen years older. She was only 21. She was barely an adult. She had no parents to turn to for guidance and nurture. She had only her brother, himself never married. They lived together in Glocester for several years, then he moved to Florida. To Orlando. When she got pregnant at age 37, she went to stay with her brother to hide her pregnancy. To hide me.

I had also, about a year ago, determined the location of Hodgkins House. To that point, I had thought it was the house my mother or grandmother grew up in. But when I started examining and comparing dates, I realized that could not be. More research revealed that my great-uncle, Harvey Monroe Griffin (my grandmother's year-younger brother) and his wife, Amy, had been the owners of the house. Why the painting was entitled "Hodgkins House" has been lost over time. My grandmother's married name was Hodgkins. It is unknown what relationship the Hodgkins family had to the house. I know my great-grandfather Hodgkins was a carpenter. Could he have built the house? There were numerous "housewright" designations in my ancestry. I never determined the provenance of the name, but I now knew where the house was, and I was determined to see it in person.

After standing in front of the house where my mother had grown up and taking a few pictures, we drove out around Cape Ann. On the north shore, as we were heading to 505 Washington St., we took a wrong turn, so we turned around and went back to a beach we had passed. We got out, admired, the view, snapped a few pictures, and talked to some divers. I had no idea how serendipitous that wrong turn and the time taken to enjoy the view would be.

Getting back in the car, we continued on around to Washington St., just a couple of miles further down the road. After so many years of admiring the photograph of the painting, I recognized it instantly. The Jazzman pulled to the curb and I got out to take pictures. He drove ahead to find a place to park.

As I was taking pictures, I noticed a woman leave the house and get into her red Mini. As she drove down the driveway, she looked over at me. I smiled and held my hand to my heart. She pulled across the street into the driveway next to where I was standing, rolled down her window, and asked, "Are you a Hopper fan?" I smiled and said, "No, I'm a Hodgkins." For the first time in my life, I had said, "I'm a Hodgkins." I felt who I was. She asked more and we talked about the Griffin/Hodgkins connection. She also told me about having found the headstone of an ancestor, Moses Hodgkins, in an outbuilding when she bought the house. It now sits in her second story studio.

Our conversation drew to a close, and she handed me a card with information about her recently published novel. I glanced at the house again, and ran across the street to get into the car and recount the incident to the Jazzman.

And we drove to Oak Grove Cemetery.

As soon as the city offices opened that morning, I had called the Archives Department and asked if they had a master index to all the cemeteries in the area. I gave the woman who answered the name I was seeking—John Hicks Hodgkins—and she called me back half an hour later, telling me exactly where the grave was located. We pulled into the cemetery, which is situated across the street from the Derby Street home where my mother grew up. I looked at the cemetery map and, after scratching my head a little, suddenly saw a monument marked "Griffin." I raced over there and saw names both familiar and unfamiliar.

Lying in this plot are the caskets containing the remains of my great-grandfather, great-grandmother, great-uncle, his two wives and the son he had with his first wife, my grandfather, and my grandmother.

Let me just say here that I cannot speak for all adoptees, but much of my reading has indicated—and many adoptees I've spoken to in person have indicated—a sense of not belonging. It was not until I first discovered the microfiche of the 1920 census in the National Archives in Washington, DC, that I felt I belonged on this earth. That I had an entitlement to walk on this planet.

Walking around that cemetery last Friday gave me the same feeling. I had to fight back the tears as I tried to elucidate my feelings to the Jazzman. Those were my ancestors. We had driven through the cemetery and seen lots and lots of surnames that are in my family tree: Babson, Lane, Hicks, Allen, Swift .... These were people who would have acknowledged my existence. They would have loved me, as my grandfather loved my mother, or they would have tolerated me, as my grandmother tolerated my mother. But I would have belonged.

My heart was full.

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You can read about the rest of our vacation and view more pictures on my travel page.

Memory

I earned about 1,573 Good Girlfriend points yesterday. Despite a headache that began shortly after I woke, I went out in the blazing sun and mowed the front lawn (so DBF wouldn't have to mow it in the evening after a hard, 12-hour day working on the railroad). Midway through the job, I noticed the weeds in a couple of beds previously mentioned by DBF as needing attention. I plopped right down and pulled those nasty weeds. Then, after completing the mowing, I drove to two nearby stores to buy mulch to refresh the beds.

These tasks would have garnered only about 73 points. The headache added 1,500 points to the balance. The headache that continued through the evening and the night, and that is still with me this morning.

After taking an Excedrin at 6:00 a.m. and retrieving the ice pack from the freezer to apply to the base of my skull, I started thinking about my personal lifetime headache count.

I started having headaches when I was 16. That's about 47 years ago. There has probably not been one week throughout my life when I haven't had at least one headache. Do the math: 47*52*1 is the minimum count: 2,444. Over two thousand headaches. But many weeks, like last week, I had two or three or four days that were marked by a headache. Over two three four thousand days when I wanted to—at the least— put my head on the pillow and make the world go away and—at the most—bang my head against the wall and kill myself.

Think about the people who have hyperthymesia. While it might be cool to remember that on July 13, 1976, I wore that cute little green knit shorts outfit I made, it would not be cool to remember each and every headache. Especially the one in the summer of 1979 that lasted, relentlessly, for three months.

When someone dies of a lingering, painful illness, we tell the bereaved, "She won't be in pain any more." My sons should probably publish a version of that in my obituary: "She won't have any more headaches."

Please tell me that, wherever we're going when we're done here, we won't feel pain. If I thought I would still get headaches after I die, I'd kill myself. Oh, wait—that doesn't work! That's kinda self-fulfilling.