When I was nine years old and in the second half of third grade, my big sister Erica introduced me to her best friend’s little sister who was in fourth grade. The third and fourth grade had recess together but we generally didn’t socialize with one another because in elementary school even a year can make a big difference. Anyway, Erica introduced me to Jennifer because by then we knew I was skipping fourth grade and she’d offered to take me under her wing and get me ready for the more demanding social world of fifth grade.

Jennifer, even at ten or eleven, was a very motherly sort of person. She was extremely nice and outgoing and round in a cozy kind of way. I felt like a big shot — and a little bit over my station — to be hanging with her on the playground.

That day was cold and snowy. The kids had worn down an icy path from the doors to the school all the way across the field where the boys would play soccer. All the big kids were lined up and they were taking turns running and then sliding across the slippery stretch. Normally this was not something I would do. Normally I would be waiting for my turn at the swings. But Jennifer encouraged me to give it a try and feeling adventurous in more ways than one, I ran and slid for one heady moment before my legs went out from under me and I landed right on my tailbone.

The air went out of me. I thought I was dying. I didn’t think it was possible to lose my breath so completely and still live. Somehow I turned over and scrabbled to my knees, trying to crawl away from the kids who were crowding around me. I was dying — I was sure of it — and everyone was just standing around helpless, watching. The playground aide finally got there and knelt down to listen to me wheeze.

“Get them away from me!” I managed to say, embarrassed to be so stunningly incapacitated in front of the fourth graders who would be next year’s classmates. My breath was coming back and I wasn’t going to die but I very nearly wanted to because I was so humiliated. I wanted to go home. But my mom wasn’t home that day. My mom was always home but that day she wasn’t.

The thing about writing memoir is there’s what actually happened, which is always open for discussion, and how you remember it, which is still true. I have always believed that what we remember has its own honesty even when it’s wrong. I don’t know where my mom was that day. But what I remember is that she was gone because she was applying to go to school so she could go to work. And what I remember is that this was good news (for her) and that she was clearly happy and excited about school/work but that this felt like a betrayal because not only was she not home that day, she was happy not to be home that day. I needed her and she wasn’t there and she was happy not to be there. Of course she didn’t know I would fall and need her. But this didn’t matter to me. My memory is of being abandoned even though I know for a fact that this isn’t true.

That is how that part of that day is burned into my brain. Sitting painfully at school. Riding the bus home biting back tears. Getting off at the neighbor’s house instead of my own and trying not to cry until my mother got home.

There are other parts of the day that are missing. Like I am sure that before I fell that I was neutral about my mom being gone because she didn’t enter my mind much except as my mother (i.e., she didn’t exist without me) and going to the neighbor’s after school meant Atari and Hostess snacks — two things sorely missing from my own home. Which is to say, this day — as traumatic as it was — was nothing outside the ordinary, really. Kids fall down. Moms have appointments. Neighbors step in. But still this day looms large in my mind because it’s all mixed up in my mom going from housewife to worker, from wife to single mother. Even though it was three more years before my dad left, I’ve imbued that day with heavy meaning, as if it symbolized everything that came after.

I have been thinking a lot — and writing some here — about how our kids’ memories aren’t always true but still feel true and how small hurts grow into something bigger with the weight of hindsight. And how much of this is beyond me, what my kids remember.

Noah is the age I was when my parents divorced. My adolesence was bleak and lonely. I understand now why this was — how overwhelmed my mother was — but given my natural self-centeredness (the entitlement that is a child’s birth right), I only know that I felt I was left to fend for myself. This is why I’m overreacting to having a job that takes me away two days a week.

Objectively I know it’s ridiculous. It’s two days a week, for crying out loud! But my panic/fear is so heartfelt that it feels like instinct even though I know it’s not. I know things are totally different for Noah. I know that he’s had a better sense of me as a person without him than I ever had of my mother. After all I’ve been building a life of my own since I began writing essays during his naps when he was a baby. I honestly had no idea my mother would want any life other than the one she had looking after me and my siblings until the day she announced she was going to school. It was a shock to me. There’s been no shock to Noah. And then, his parents aren’t divorcing. His father isn’t leaving. He is not me and his family isn’t the one I had and the pattern isn’t repeating.

Still.

I love this new job and I know it’s the right thing for us as a family. There’s no question about that. I am excited about what I’m doing and looking forward to the projects we’re unfolding. I feel extraordinarily lucky for the flexibility and that I’m doing something that interests me and having the pressure off to be hunting for work has been like taking off a corset I didn’t even know I was wearing. All of that is good. I know that it’s good.

Still.

It’s almost a sense memory. Like hearing the whine of a dentist’s drill and feeling your teeth ache even if you’re not the one in the chair. I feel like my family is about to split apart without my consent. Even though this is not the same path. Even though we are writing a different story.

Writing this down makes me think that no matter what had happened this year that it would have been a hard year for me. I guess I’ve seen it coming since Noah hit his tweens. My own memories have been coming up fast and technicolored and I catch myself near tears for reasons I don’t always understand but can trace back to my childhood. I guess I just need to live past it the way you have to push through the hardest part of anything. Maybe it’ll be easier when Madison turns twelve and I’ve already seen one child get through it and live down my memories.

You know, I think I’m with Willa Cather who said that most of a writer’s material “is acquired before the age of fifteen.” I’m just revisiting it in different ways.

I am blurry on the details. Both my parents were home, which makes me think it may have been a weekend. (My dad traveled most weekdays.) Also it was summer. I know this because I was in my underwear and a t-shirt. We were not a walk-around-in-your-underwear kind of family (not like my kids who regularly streak down the hall in little else) and I remember feeling quite daring for wearing a t-shirt and underwear to bed like my friend said she did. So I know I was already feeling a little over-exposed. And it must have been evening since I was (un)dressed for bed but I’m not sure how old I was. I want to say ten, maybe. Maybe eleven. It was before the divorce (because my dad was there) so let’s say ten.

I can’t remember — did my parents call me downstairs? Or did I come down to tell them something on my own? I also don’t remember exactly what they said but I do remember their worried, compassionate wrinkled brows and their assurances that they loved me. And I remember something vague about my dad having been a fat kid and how he didn’t want me to suffer the way he’d suffered. (But this adds to my confusion — maybe my father wasn’t there. Maybe he left it to my mom to tell me and I remember him being there because I remember my mom saying this. Or maybe she said this after this initial confrontation. It’s all a blur.)

I know they told me I was putting on a little too much weight, that maybe I needed to watch it a little because I was getting, well, I was getting chubby.

This is what stays with me: The cold, cold shame freezing my stomach and making my vision turn wide then small. My awareness of my physical vulnerability in my t-shirt and underwear. My want to disappear, pull a blanket over me. And my shock because no one — NO ONE — ever told me I was fat. No one had ever said these words to me. So the irony is that my parents wanted to protect me from the cruelty of other children but the only people who had ever told me I was fat were my parents who were telling me now. And this is also what stays with me: that spinning, empty feeling around my limbs as I realized that I did not know myself or my body. That my legs and arms and tummy were no longer close and familiar but were enemies bent on fooling me. Where I had felt strong and pretty, I now knew I had been mistaken and then I realized I had been a fool walking around in the world feeling good about myself because it was a secret from me, the way that other people saw me. And that was the shame that has, frankly, never left me. And this is a shame that I still feel around my family more than I feel it around anyone else because they were the ones to tell me.

It sounds like I’m damning my parents and I’m not. My parents really were trying to be helpful. I believe their intentions were good and loving because the bulk of my experiences otherwise at that time in my childhood were good and loving and supportive and encouraging. So I forgive them for doing their best even though it ended up causing me harm. My father was a fat kid and he carried those scars. On the other hand, my mom was always a skinny, skinny kid and likely didn’t know what to make of her sturdy, stocky daughter. Perhaps I was getting too chubby although pictures I have of that time show only me at my most Dawnest self — neither big nor small. Plain, sturdy, short of limb and stern of face.

I do wonder though what they thought I would do as a ten or eleven year old. We already ate well because my mom controlled the food in our cupboards and on our dining room table. We had lots of fruits and veggies; we had few sweets or processed food. I was one of the few kids who never had Hostess cupcakes in my lunch and when we drank kool-aid, she made it with a fraction of the sugar. I rode my bike a lot, too, although truth be told, I was more of a bookworm. My body at that age (I say, gazing at the pictures) was simply a sturdy, stocky body and this I already knew. My best friend was younger and a full head taller with long, long legs and her tummy never curved out in her bathing suit. But that was how she looked and this was how I looked and it didn’t occur to me that one was better than the other until I heard it. Until my parents told me directly and until I overhead adults talking about Annie’s body and how they envied her her legs, shaking their heads in rueful admiration.

What happened after this momentous day is that I quit walking like I was the person inhabiting my limbs. I felt self-conscious as I moved through space. I doubted the me I saw in the mirror and no longer trusted my ability to know what I looked like. I began to look at other people with suspicion and self-consciousness. In short, I became less likely to want to run or ride or dance or be active anyplace people might see. Which is obviously what my parents were trying to avoid. And this has never left me. Nor has the feeling of powerlessness over my body, this sense that it will do what it wants and I am disconnected — body separate from soul. This is a disconnect that feels like I am a poorly dubbed movie with a body that will not co-operate with my thoughts.

I think about this so much lately because I am now a mother to a sturdy, stocky daughter and I feel like high-kicking the world under its collective chin when I think of anyone — ANYONE — visiting any of this on her. I know she is beautiful like I knew I was beautiful. Because looking back, I can see that my parents were wrong. They were wrong to tell me and they were wrong in their assumptions in the first place because I wasn’t fat. I was lovely. And strong and sturdy and exactly how I was meant to be. I know this because my mom fed me well and I rode my bike and ran around the neighborhood and so the body I carried was the perfect body for me. But I can’t get back to that place and so I’m deathly afraid that someone with the best intentions will steal Madison’s sense of self.

So I will tell you now: My daughter is perfect. And so is my son. They are exactly who they are meant to be. They own the ground they walk over. They own the air they move through. They are grace even when they stumble. They are strong and free and masters of their beings. Their bodies will change — filling and stretching — and the change will be perfect even during those awkward times when their knees don’t seem to work right and their elbows knock into things. I feed them well, they run around — they are nourished and active and so I won’t let anyone else’s worries come to visit them.

When we talk about health, we don’t talk about weight. When we say “diet” we mean “food you put in your body.” We mean vitamins and minerals and diversity in your menu. We get off the elliptical trainer or back home from a walk or a run and say, “Wow, that really helped my stress levels! That made me feel strong! I’m going to sleep well tonight!” Because that’s the equation that will build the bodies they are meant to have and those bodies may be slim or round. They may be heavier or lighter or taller or shorter but they will be perfect and my children will never ever ever (god willing) have to lose ownership the way I did when I was ten.

Yup — she finally said it! She said it muttering, under her breath but loud enough that I was meant to hear it. She said it because I was refusing to get her a snack until I was done with what I was doing (cleaning out the old magazines) and when she said it I said, “That’s ok but you still need to wait until I finish this.”

I mean, if MY mother was refusing to get me a snack and I was feeling hungry, I might like Pennie better, too. Especially if the last time I saw Pennie we were making cookies and eating all the frosting.

The thing about being a mothering mother is that it means your kids take you for granted and up to a point, I think they should. Kids ought to know that there are some people who will always be there for them and will always love them and they ought to be able to make the comfortable assumption that this unconditional love is, well, unconditional. Sure, I want my kids to honor my rights and to be able to see me as a full human being but this is a process and frankly I still have to remember that my mom has a whole life beyond being a mom and I’m a week away from being 39. So to me hearing that my kid doesn’t like me best is part and parcel of being the mom I want to be, which means it doesn’t turn my head a bit.

The one time I felt hurt over one of my kids rejecting me is the time that Noah told me I was embarrassing him in front of his friends. He hissed it at me at the Obama rally and I thought, “So it has come. I am now ludicrous to my child.” And I was sad. But this sadness/hurt had its roots in the nostalgia that instantly descends on a parent the minute they become a parent. It’s the nostalgia that makes us sniff over pictures of babies who didn’t sleep through the night and yearn for toddlers who drove us crazy when they were running around underfoot. You do your job right as a parent and your kids outgrow you — it’s the nature of the job. I am both proud and sad when it happens and having my son walk seventeen feet behind me so no one knows we’re together — it’s bitter sweet. I miss that 3-year old who always wanted to hold my hand but I do love this great big tween who sometimes cringes when I crack a joke when his friends are around. And like Madison telling me she doesn’t like me best, I know he can cringe because he feels safe in my love for him. They can reject me now and then because they know I’m sturdy enough to take it.

“I’m running away as soon as I get home!” Madison hollered at me one day when we were in the car.

“Well, I’ll just run after you,” I said.

“Because you won’t let your girly leave?”

“Nope.”

“Because you love your girly?”

“Yup.”

And a sigh and a wriggle in her booster seat, content to hate me and know I’ll love her right through it. I love my kids even when I don’t like them and I love them even when they don’t like me. So this rejection? That Pennie is more funner and I am a big old embarrassment? Really it means I’m doing my job right.

Ever since Madison and I talked on this day about her concerns that I would be jealous if she openly expressed her affection for Pennie, things have been better. A lot better. Madison is much more open with me about her Pennie feelings and much more spontaneous in bringing her up in discussion. That’s not to say that things were bad before because they weren’t but it turns out they could have been better and now they are.

Here, I’ve got to stop and say that there is a huge lesson for me in this. I hear so often from other adoptive parents that their kids are “fine” because they never bring up adoption, never talk about their birth parents, never seem interested in their adoption stories, seem neutral about visits, etc. Never bringing it up or bringing it up cautiously or appearing disinterested might be the norm for some kids (I’m not discounting that it might be) but it also might be because we adoptive parents do such a good job of sending our kids the message that their curiosity, concern, love, passion, fear, anger, sadness, grief or other messy feelings are unacceptable to us. I believe it is so so so important to bring it up first and bring it up often in casual, not-necessarily-serious ways. I think they will tell us when we get it wrong (as Madison humorously did here) so I think it’s worth the risk.

Anyway, Madison was excited about two things today: 1) Seeing black Santa; and 2) seeing her beloved Pennie.

On the way to the bookstore, she started talking about when Pennie eventually has another baby because Madison has decided she’s against this. She likes being the only child and she thinks that’s how things ought to stay. I asked her how she thinks she’ll feel when/if Pennie does have another baby. She thought about it and said, “I would be pretty down about it.” (She brought this up because she was talking about family size and how some of her friends have bigger families while she thinks two kids is about perfect. Fortunately, I happen to agree.)

I feel for Madison here. I am awaiting Pennie’s someday parenthood with equal parts excitement and worry. I will be so happy for her and can’t wait to meet (and snuggle) her future babies but I know that no matter what, it’ll be hard for Madison and I dread her hurting.

So we met Pennie and we didn’t meet black Santa (I’ll write about that tomorrow — we were all disappointed although Madison and I also had a good conversation around the lack of Santas of color but this is a pretty full entry already). Pennie was starving so we headed out to eat. Pennie & Madison were giggly girls running across the street and getting lemonade and eating nachos and talking about hair products. Good times. Then we drove home (with plans for Madison to come make cookies with Pennie on the 24th like they did last year).

And on the way home, Madison talked about not liking to share Pennie because Pennie brought a friend along and I told her she needed to tell Pennie that and Madison said, “Why, because it would make her feel good?” And I said, “No, because she probably doesn’t know that you’d like to spend time with just her sometimes.” Then we got home and I was checking my email and Madison came into the kitchen with her tights off and her fancy dress all crooked and said, “Why am I not living with Pennie?”

And I told her what I felt like I could tell her (because truthfully, I feel like the answer to that question is going to take her whole life to figure out and even then it’ll be just one piece of a huge, complicated story).

Now I can see the path Madison took to get to that question. She’s been asking for the book Madeleine over and over (she spontaneously recited the first few stanzas over lunch) and I think this inspired her to ask the other day if she was alone in the hospital when she was just born. I told her that she was NEVER alone in the hospital and that the hospital was when Pennie was taking care of her. I said, “That was the time when Pennie was just being your mommy and not your birth mommy. I was not your mommy until you came home with us and the hospital was a very special time for just the two of you to be together. You were NOT alone.” (And was anyone else wigged out as a kid that Madeleine’s parents couldn’t even take it upon themselves to visit? I envied the dollhouse but I couldn’t figure out why her parents only sent it instead of rushing to bring it themselves.)

I won’t say how I explained Pennie’s decision to become Madison’s birth mommy and make me Madison’s mommy mommy here just because it feels sensitive (some specifics) but part of what I say emphasizes how much Pennie has always loved her and will always love her and that it was a difficult complicated decision. And I told her that she can talk to Pennie about this even though it’s hard. And I emphasized that her birth was a joyous occasion for all of us but I think even a 4-almost 5-year old can hear that there are no easy answers.

Madison asked twice why she wasn’t living with Pennie. She didn’t ask why she couldn’t; she asked why she wasn’t. It’s an important distinction. The first time she asked, she wanted an answer. The second time, it was rhetorical and she was sad. And I was sad for her. She was extra cuddly tonight and our first night of Hanukkah was fairly low key in part because we were both feeling moon-y.

At the beginning of our open adoption, I hadn’t realized how their relationship would change. It was short-sighted of me but then I’d never done this before. There was a time when Madison seemed angry with Pennie and a time when she didn’t seem much to care. In hindsight I appreciate that these were part of Madison’s developmental path but I also appreciate how easy it would have been to let them define our whole adoption. I can see why — without support and information — an adoptive parent might let those developmental snapshots dictate the course of openness. I can kind of understand how a person might say, “She finds the phone calls upsetting so we decided to stop” or “he just shrugs when we look at his lifebook so I put it away for now” but I will say again that I think this is a mistake.

Openness — not simply visits or cards or pictures or phone calls, because I know that there are those adoptions that don’t lend themselves to this for lack of information or because of safety issues — but true openness, which is meeting our children with honesty and a willingness to share, it brings it all out into the, well, open. And I think that’s nothing but good.

I cried today after Madison fell asleep because it’s not easy to see her hurting. If she hadn’t seen Pennie today, I don’t think she would have brought up her adoption. I don’t think she would have expressed such sadness. But I do believe the sadness would have been there only maybe she wouldn’t have words for it or known why she felt sad. And to have an experience that helps her put name to her emotions and to have some relationship even if it’s not the one she might wish for, that’s so important. I believe it goes such a long way to helping her be a strong survivor, to develop her resiliency and self-esteem.

I haven’t been online at all today. I woke up at 9:30 (!!!) thanks to the Nyquil and was out the door with the kids by 11:30. I dropped them at Abby’s and hit a meeting with a great client. I love this client — she’s smart, she’s funny and she’s good to her people. (I know this because I’ve been working with someone else on her team to help get this going.) Then back to Abby’s to get Madison and out to dinner and quick shopping then over to breakdancing to watch Noah spin on his head. Now I’m waiting for Abby to come over and pick me up so we can go watch Pennie sing. I’m going to try to get video.

In short — no time to blog! 

I can’t wait to hear Pennie sing tonight!! Actually she might just be rapping. She raps this song. I don’t know if she’s performing any others. In preparation, I’m drinking Vanilla Coke. (Hmm, watching the video, I had no idea Digable Planets were so good looking. Sheesh!) Anyway, if I get video, I’ll ask Pennie if it’s cool to post it. We’re seeing her Sunday, too, for a trip to see Santa. BLACK Santa, Madison will have you know. She’s been very anxious to see BLACK Santa and we were on a mad hunt to find him. We missed Kente Claus at the King Arts Complex but then my friend Katawi saved the day by sending me a flyer about the Book Suite’s Santa event! 

See, Madison found a picture of Santa in a book where Santa looked African American (it was the way it was printed — it was a Raggedy Andy book and I guarantee that Santa was meant to be white) and she was so excited. So I took it upon myself to find a BLACK Santa (that’s how she says it). Then Pennie and I spent a few zillion hours yesteday on the phone trying to coordinate schedules so she could come, too.

Abby came through for me, too, by securing a bunch of Sarah’s Attic African American angel figurines for Maddie. When Noah was this age, I’d occasionally pick up little animal figurines at the thrift store because he loved animals and he liked “decorating” his room with them. Madison isn’t so much about animals — she likes people. But I don’t want to get her a bunch of white people. I mean, she has some white figurines she got from my mom (although she’s played with them in her dollhouse and they’re worse for the wear) and I never see black figurines at the thrift store. I mentioned this to Abby and she said that these Sarah’s Attic figurines are made by a woman she knows in Chesaning where she’s from. She said she’d hook us up. And she did. I can’t wait for Madison to open them! I thought about doling ‘em out for Hanukkah or give her one big grand box full at Christmas!