My GCAC workshop is full so that means there are a lot of people who are hoping I have something useful to say. I’m hoping I have something useful to say, too. It so happens that the workshop is coinciding with a small crisis of confidence I’m having in my own career, which makes me a tough sell on my own talk. Ha!

I’m using some of my writer quotes for the powerpoint presentation. I want to have something for people to look at both to keep me focused and because I know some folks in the audience will be visual. (It’s for all types of artists.) I don’t know anything about the practicalities of careers in other practices so I’m keeping things very loose and basic and not planning what I’m going to say too much. Instead I’m going to be pulling from the audience, particularly two friends of mine who will be there and who are very talented visual artists. (Sharon and Melissa) Originally I was going to try to get Sharon to teach this with me because she is doing AMAZING things but I could never get my stuff together enough to organize that so I’m just going to use her a whole heckuva lot.

I’m nervous/excited about it. It’s both better and worse that people I know will be there (Pennie’s Nate’s sister will be there, too — she’s also a visual artist).

Ok, back to work!!

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Brett found one on clearance and grabbed it for me. It doesn’t have the apple mail program on it but I don’t need it because I use gmail. We think this will buy me some time re., the blackberry/crackberry decision because I can check email on the run as long as I can find wifi. An imperfect solution, perhaps, but now at least I have my own iPod once again and won’t have to share mine with the annoying boys!

What a good, kind, handsome man that old Brett is!

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From Ira Glass:

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When you gather six siblings across three marriages who have never been in the same place at the same time into one room to surprise the father they share? Answer: It’s a trick questtion! Because at least one sibling won’t get there!!

So we were trying to have a family reunion for my dad and boy howdy, did it bring out the daddy issues! Tears! Rants! Cussing! (that would be me — all three) Frantic angry phone calls! Rabid emails! (Me and me again.)

And I was not the only one although I was the most, shall we say, vocal. But! I love my father although I grieve my father and like the other scurrying, worrying daughters (and one laid-back son) I had high hopes for the day.

Five kids made it although to be fair three of us live in Ohio and making it there wasn’t so hard. Two flew across country. And one didn’t make it onto her plane. We are sad about that. The one who didn’t make it is the one most lost to us. I haven’t seen her in twenty-five years and the youngest two kids didn’t even know she existed until they were in grammar school.

It may be that my dad will never get to see his kids together and that is heartbreaking but it’s also the truth of our family. Surely you can now see why I’ve been mulling over family-of-origin AND adoption issues this week while I worked my way through all of this.

Grieving — yet again — my dad even as I love my dad reminds me of how Madison is sure to grieve Pennie even as she loves Pennie and that sometimes that grief and that love will look like other things. Nobody could replace my daddy — the one I had or the one I missed. My oldest sister (the one who missed her plane) who had a step dad would surely say the same thing even though my dad released his parental rights because everyone said it would just be fine. And I sure can’t replace Pennie.

(What kind of ludicrous world is it that anyone assumes that anyone can replace your lost parents anyway???)

But I also realize I can never make this all better for her. I can’t protect her from it. I can’t shield her. I miss my daddy and she will miss her mommy. But I can love the hell out of her and I can love Pennie and I can get out of the way when I need to and I can listen with sympathy whenever they talk. That’s all I can do.

Life is so hard. We love each other so much and it’s still so damn hard.

The whole thing made me miss Pennie like crazy but she has plans tonight so tomorrow we will see her. Because that’s another thing. She has her own family of origin stuff (obviously I ain’t gonna spill her laundry here) and so she totally gets mine. I can say to her, “Wow, I am totally damaged in this way” and she can say, “Word. I am totally damaged in my own way.” We bond over this. And we bond over our worries and fears and ridiculously overflowing love for Madison. We used to think that we could make the right decisions and make it all ok and lately we’ve been talking — we can only make it a different kind of hard but we can love her any old way and love each other, too. And step out first with forgiveness knowing that all of us — my dad included — are just doing the goddamn best we can.

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I will tomorrow if I have time. But there was a big thing supposed to happen this weekend and I found out last night sometime after midnight that it wasn’t happening. All that angst for nothing!

I tell you — family of origin stuff? A person needs a therapist on speed dial to get through the hard parts. Unfortunately I haven’t seen my therapist in (thinking thinking …) six or seven years. But when things are hard I still have to ask myself, “What would Barbara tell me????” She’s my go-to imaginary girl.

My therapist was my mom’s therapist first so by the time I got there she already knew our whole family history — and a convoluted history it is. Then I saw her again when I was resolving our infertility. I carry her with her in a little pocket of transference in my heart. Barbara reminded me of my mother. Other people who remind me of my mother: Becca and Julia. Also my old co-worker Jamie. Why? Because they’re bossy and confident, as is my mother. None of ‘em are that much older than I am but they are older and this is part of it, too.

Another person who reminds me of my mother: Carol Burnett. I have no idea if she’s bossy but her coloring is very similar as is her figure and she has a big mouth. My mom is LOUD. (That’s where I get it.)

On the long ride to the airport, the long wait at the airport and the long ride home, Noah and I talked about all the family stuff swirling around my (and so his) head. As you all know, I’m all about being honest with my kids about relationship stuff so he asked questions about the family of origin issues and I answered as honest as I could, without blaming. I’m not mad at my dad anymore but I will always be heartbroken. There’s just no fixing things that happened a long time ago and we all have to live with the consequences. It makes me think a lot about primal wounds and reunions gone bad and all the heartache that comes through adoption, too. Noah and I talked about some of that as well because he had some questions.

So this week when the coast is clear, I’m hoping to get down some of my feelings about my own family stuff and how this gives me insight into Madison’s family stuff (although I rush to add that I’m not saying she’ll experience her situation the way I’ve experienced mine). It’s given me a lot to think about.

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