Part 5: Why did my daughter walk away? All is revealed.

Jane and Lorraine, Sag Harbor, in happier times

Continuing the story of a break in my relationship with my daughter Jane, reason unknown, from a chapter of my memoir-in-progress, Hole in My Heart. For nearly two decades we had a relationship with various breaks, but now, with her settled into a happy marriage, we had been getting along swimmingly for a couple of years. Then suddenly, she broke off contact without a word for more than a year. I was in the dark. Previous sections of this are on the blog, starting on August 6.


(Copyright Lorraine Dusky, 2013. May not be republished in any form without permission.)

Saturday, late October. It is a gray cold day, Tony [my husband] is outside raking leaves. I want to be alone when I make this call. I sit in the kitchen at the table and punch in her number. Bill [my daughter's husband] answers, registers neutral. He says they are working in the yard, he’ll tell her I’m on the line. Would she even come to the phone? But Jane picks up and says, Hello. I breathe deeply and say my piece. I know we talked about this before, and I’ve told you what it was like back then, but I just wanted to say today, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were adopted. I wait. 

I don't know what to say, she says. 

That’s all right, I wanted to say this once. Like that.

We speak for well over an hour, not about adoption—about how she and Bill are fixing up the yard, painting furniture, her job as a home health aide. We speak like a mother and daughter. By the time I hand up, I think, maybe she’ll talk to me now. Maybe. I knew she had a computer, but she had not given me her email address, or asked for mine, and I had been afraid to bring it up and be rebuffed. Now I was always afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Once again, silence. There is no follow up; she is still somehow, for some reason, gone. I feel as if it might be this way the rest of my life. It happened to others, why not me?  One mother, whose daughter spent ten years trying to find her, says she always finds herself apologizing for something. To us first mothers, it feels as if there are all kinds of ways adoptees punish us. * Everything seemingly is going along fine, and then Phfft! a cloud of smoke appears like on a magician’s stage, and the illusion of a relationship disappears to be replaced by a void. The audience wonders: Was it ever real, or only a phantom?        

I do have a life that is outside of adoption, and Jane. I am otherwise engaged writing magazine pieces, doing free-lance book editing, going forward with my life. Though I no longer serve on a village board, Tony and I are involved in Sag Harbor life. We alternate writing a column for the weekly Sag Harbor Express called The Citizen about local and national issues, politics, whatever we want. Once or twice I’ve written about adoption. Tony and I have a lot of good friends we see frequently for drinks, for dinners, to go to the movies with.

Yet Christmas, I know, will be hard. However Christmas Eve is the usual rowdy dinner in New Jersey with Tony’s brother and wife, his six children, two of hers, assorted spouses, and grandchildren. They do not hate me, far from it. We play this absurd giving game of everyone bringing one twenty-to-thirty dollar present for either sex that involves a lot of horse trading to get the gift you want to take home. It’s silly, highly competitive and animated, thoroughly enjoyable. These Christmas Eve dinners, that Tony and I have been going to for years, remind me of rollicking holidays with my mother’s family, and I feel totally welcome and at ease among Tony’s family. But do I miss my own daughter? Of course I do. I cannot hold back the tears when I go to Christmas mass the next morning myself and leave when we in the congregation turn to shake hands and say Peace to our neighbors in the pews. I have no peace in my heart. I miss my daughter, plain and simple. No one can replace her.

Spring. Several months later, she calls up and says: Hello. How have you been? I do not ask her why I have been in exile, and now why I am no longer. I know there is no answer she can, or will, articulate. We resume as before. Now she gives me her email address. Now we are on good terms again. But now, I am wary. Of saying the wrong thing. Of saying anything that might be misconstrued. Of relaxing too much. She could shut down at any time, for any reason.

It would take a long time to figure this one out. Over the months she let slip, in half-finished sentences, what had been going on: She had been determined to prove to Ann [Jane's adoptive mother] that she, Jane, deserved to be loved. There's no way to explain without telling the story that lead up to her hitting “delete” on our relationship.

At the memorial service for the eldest of the Rhymer’s two biological children over a year earlier, Ann let slip this comment: He was my favorite.

That’s a hard truth to hear in a family where none of the children are adopted; but in a family where there are adoptees? It ate at Jane, for it was irrefutable proof that Ann, the mother she grew up with, did not love her, or her cherished older adopted brother, the way Ann loved the children she bore. Words fail me—what can I possibly say, what excuse can I make? There is no room for lightness here; there is no way to kiss the boo-boo and make her feel better.

A unfortunate comment, yes; but we humans are always coming up short. Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles in unbroken families don’t intend to choose a favorite, but it happens, almost always without the chosen one having done anything deserving of the place of honor. The roll of genetically coded dice has seen to it that this one will closely resemble a parent, or a grandparent, in face, physique and faculties, and there you have it. What was regrettable was that Ann gave voice to her feelings. And all her children heard it.

While the adopted son who lived far away was fuming, Jane let on that her own hurt gave way to proving that she was a good daughter, worthy of her Ann’s love. How to do that? Ignore her first mother as if she too had skied off a cliff. That would be me.

As I’m writing, I am reminded that in a moment of candor Jane once said: “If I move close to you, then I have to move away from the other. I feel like a magnet torn between two poles.”

It ain’t easy being adopted.

Not long ago I came across words that appear to have been sent by the gods of wisdom. This is from a blog called Fugitivis, written by a feminist and an adoptee, Harriet J:

“This is not to say that everything about adoption is wrong, but everything about adoption is painful. For our modern, legal concept of adoption to exist, families must be broken. Adoption is not, and can never be, a best-case scenario. It relies upon the worst-case situation having already come to fruition. From there, you’re working with what is instead of what should be. That should be will never go away. For the entire lifetime of everybody involved in adoption, that should be exists, and it hurts. What is can still turn out to be wonderful, beautiful, incredible, but what is will never be what should be. It is that should be that necessitates education, sensitivity, and trigger warnings, because it never goes away.” **

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*Because I can hear adoptees saying: Wait one minute! My mother won’t even talk to me and she pulls all kinds of stunts, let me say that I know that is true. I’ve heard enough stories about recalcitrant first mothers, disappearing first mothers, first mothers who write letters saying DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN, but I’m talking about what happened to me and writing from the viewpoint of mothers who have been cut off and know not why. I’ve heard many, many unhappy mothers talk about trying to maintain a relationship, but everything they do is somehow all wrong.

**Adoption Sometimes Gets All Fucked-Up, 101, Fugitivus, April 20, 2010.

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Earlier sections of this story:
A relationship with my daughter goes awry. Reason unknown.
Part 2: A relationship with my daughter goes awry. Reason unknown.
Part 3: A relationship with my daughter goes awry. Reason unknown.
Part 4: Explaining reality to my granddaughter.

RECOMMENDED READING
Adoption: Uncharted Waters (Order by clicking on title or book jacket)
A controversial book for what it says about the state of being adopted and what it does to some, but I found it extremely illuminating for understanding the psychological impact of being relinquished by one's family and raised in another. Other reviews:

"A courageous, ground-breaking book. We are not stigmatizing adoption when we open ourselves to this subject. As Kirschner--who has treated hundreds orf adoptees--says in this work, only by understanding the why of these cases can we effectively treat and prevent such tragedies in the future." --Betty Jean Lifton

"Very powerful. It is good to have a clear syndrome named and legitimized. The case histories were lucidly written and whilst the sample is small and a clear minority of adoptees, the analysis of why some adoptions go so badly wrong is terrific. Once again, many thanks David" --Anthony Douglas, Chief Executive of CAFCASS, England and Chair of BAAF, UK (British Association for Adoption & Fostering) 

"A must read. I found the book interesting, intriguing and well-supported by well-known members of the adoption community." --Adoption Today Magazine