this woman’s work

I went out to eat last night with three of my four sisters. So it was my big sister, Erica, and my little sisters Lindsay (no web presence) and Whitney. It was fun but hectic because three out of four of us are too loud (Lindsay is the nicest most listening-est of the bunch).

I have had a shaky relationship with my little sisters up until the last few years and sometimes still I feel totally lost around them. This is because the first arrived when had just turned 14 and the second arrived when I was 17 and I still hadn’t quite got over my dad disappearing from my life. Now that I’ve had my own very small, very time consuming kids I understand how it can look like the teens don’t need you as much as the littles but the 14-year old memory of myself is still a little bruised. (FYI: Teens need their moms and dads just as much as 3-year olds.)

It’s a very uncomfortable thing to be jealous of teensy-tiny babies who then grow up into enviable girls, tweens and teens.

Now I’ve accepted that they have a father I wish I’d had and that as a result, they have relationships with him that I will always miss having. I still feel that loss pretty profoundly and I also — through the loss of that part of my dad — feel the loss of my extended family. My little sisters have gone out to California and met the relatives and recently went to the Friedman family reunion. I haven’t seen most of my west coast relatives since we moved out of there in 1977. I miss the connection, too, in large part because that’s my Jewish side of the family. I hurt for that family history, I really do. But there are six of us (my dad’s kids) and none of us feels like we got enough (even the two youngest because heck, don’t we always want more of our parents?) and I just can’t push my way through to claim the things I wish I had.

My reaction is to stop and grieve it and not try to grab at the things or push because there’s always someone else pushing and it seems like it’d be too easy for us to fall apart and turn into one of those families where people start a fistfight at a funeral or something. You know? And I do know that pictures and mementos won’t heal the hurt anyway. I don’t really remember my grandparents and there’s not a lot I can do about that. i was shy with them when I was a kid and only saw them once as an adult. I can’t ever get that time back.

(One thing though — I have Grampa and Granma’s mezuzah — the one that hung on the doorway of their apartment. I wish I had more but at least I have that. It’s the only thing I have and it means a lot to me.)

In some ways I feel closer to Brett’s grandparents because I knew them a little better and had more of them as an adult. Brett’s family never splintered like ours and so I don’t feel the same crazed worry that we won’t get any of the things — the pictures, the books, the history — that I wish I had from my own family. (My mom’s family has splintered across generations, too, and my mom has missed out on a lot of this stuff so her kids have, too.) It’s something Brett takes for granted and I’m relieved that I can take it for granted, too. This is why we moved back — so Noah could have the memories that Brett has and that I missed. That’s why when Noah was a month old I knew we were going back even if Brett didn’t know it yet.

But this makes me think of Madison and how her family not only splintered, it cracked right from the start. And I know that likely she will grieve the way that I have only harder because in some ways she will have to fight her way into our family (her adoptive family), too.

When she was already here for a few months, Brett’s sister-in-law was pregnant with her first baby. They found out they were having a girl and she sent an email out to everyone saying that it was the first girl-child on Wick’s family tree in so many generations. (I can’t remember how many but Brett’s dad is the only son of an only son and Brett is, of course, the oldest of three brothers.) I wrote back and said, “Actually Madison is the first daughter on the family tree in so many generations.” She apologized and said she only meant the first genetic daughter. Well, all hail genetics, right?

Where will Madison get to feel “real?” Where can she rest and know that she belongs to her family? Will she get cut out of things because she’s not the genetic daughter? And cut out of her birth side because she wasn’t there to participate? When Brett’s dad’s family flag flies (seriously, they have a family flag — Brett comes from a long line of WASPs), will Madison feel proud or like an impostor or both?

I hope I get better at dealing with my own grief so that I can help her deal with hers someday. And I left dinner last night knowing that we have to get her down to see the Southern side of her birth family somehow. We need to figure out a way to do that.