… They always told me I had one!!!
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Oy vey – Only Two Years Away!
12 years
It’s that time of the year!!
Today is my 48th birthday. So far, it’s a good day!
And being my usual pessimistic self, I’m sure it won’t stay that way.
You know those e-cards everyone posts on Facebook? There’s one I find particularly funny and way too true – “I try to like people, but then idiots happen!”.
Why is that??
I wake up everyday but especially on a day like my birthday and really am happy that God gave me another day. I know the big 5-0 is right around the corner. Another day to appreciate things, people, circumstances, whatever. I pat my puppy on the top of his head, I think about breakfast and what there is in the house and I stop to think about my schedule for the day. Nothing ever stays on schedule but it’s worth the ol’ college try.
Then the day happens.
The news always provides something you have to shake your head at. Sometimes it’s an unexpected phone call. Being a small business owner, a text from a staff member can do it. Being responsible for my mother at this point in her life is always a challenge.
But taking stock of things, today, on my birthday, I have to be grateful for many things. Although I make many a joke about being placed in a reed basket and floated down the Nile, I am grateful my birth mother saw it in her heart to give me a chance for a better life. I am grateful for my parents – the only one’s I have ever known. I am grateful for my cousins who have always made things interesting. I am thankful for my friends, old and new, not so new and those who are no longer part of my life. I am even thankful for the people who have made my life challenging. All these people along with the experiences I have had, have come together to make me the person I am today – slightly cracked, a wealth of useless information, a business owner, someone you can ask for anything, supporter of many (whether they realize it or not), critical of some but one who knows when they are out of their league.
Just for the record, I had one of the best birthday days I have ever had. I spent the day enjoying everything as opposed to waiting for the next shoe to drop. The day was capped off with a wonderful martini, a perfectly cooked steak and wonderful company at a great Manhattan restaurant. Enjoyed the day thoroughly, however, I am sure realty will return tomorrow as always.
But maybe, just maybe, I can take the lesson of my birthday day through to the rest of the year – this year, I’ll be thinking positively. Let’s see where it takes me!
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Chosen to Belong – Questioning Who’s Who in a Family
12 years
The title of this post took quite a number of revisions. “The Strangest Strangers: Becoming Part of a Family”, “Belonging and not…”, “You’re Not One of Us”.
Truth be told, I have been mind-boggled by things I have heard over the last thirty something years of my life. If only people could understand how their words could cut so deep that forgetting is not possible, forgiving may never occur.
Chosen to Belong
I was adopted through Catholic Charities from Angel Guardian Home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York in May of 1966. This was a time before Roe v. Wade, open adoptions and all the other options available to people who wanted children but could not have them on their own. For background, I was the only offspring of a union between my eighteen year-old birth mother and my thirty-six year old birth father. I like to make up a soap opera like story of how that union occurred, but that is fodder for another post sometime in the future. The nuns at the Angel Guardian Home put me into the arms of the only woman I know as my mother on April 26, 1966 – “the happiest day of my life” as she often tells me. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and friends welcomed me home that day – the family that embraced me, loved me, shared in my triumphs and consoled me in my losses.
A piece of paper and a judge’s swoop of the pen and I belonged to my parents. The three of us made a cute little family; my extended family always a strong and active presence in my life. We lived in a two-family house – my parents and I upstairs and my mother’s parents downstairs. We saw each other everyday – always a kiss, a hug and a playful tap from “Pop”.
My grandmother passed away one night in 1973, in the house. My other grandmother was babysitting me upstairs as my mother was visiting my father who was in the hospital. “My wife, she no move” was the cry from Pop and with that, one member of our household was gone. Her suffering from Alzheimer’s was over. Pop would live many more years alone but filled his time sitting outside, talking to anyone who would pass, reading his Italian newspaper and listening to the Italian radio station. There had been arguing between my mom and her brother and sister over their parents and the long-term care they both needed. But what needed to be done was done as far as my grandparents were concerned and who was right and who was wrong is now irrelevant.
Pulling the Rug Out
But one question posed to my grandfather by his son threw my very existence in my family into a tailspin. My mother, middle child stayed home to care for her aging parents. Her sister and brother left most of the decisions and day-to-day care to my mom because of her proximity. As my grandfather reasoned, each of his children had their homes; my mother did not so he would leave his house to my mother. My uncle was told this by his father and reacted strongly; one question – “So Jane gets the house?”
His own daughters were outraged and told him so right as the words came out of his mouth. My mothers was stunned and as we, the kids, were told to get out of the room, someone said, “Because she’s not blood?”. I know who said it and would rather leave it as ambiguous as stated. Regardless, that question/statement had devastating consequences to an already fragile psyche.
I have had friends who ask me about being adopted. I tell them being adopted at such a young age, I know only my parents and my family – there is no feeling associated with “being adopted” for me. But there is an increasing sensitivity I feel towards comments being made toward individuals and their “belonging” in their families. To say that a person who has spent years, decades even a lifetime being “part” of a family is “not really part of the family” or even calling them “a stranger” is completely not in the realm of understanding.
There comes a point in time when you really have to wonder about the people you surround yourself with. Although they may seem quite cordial and sincere on the outside, sometimes there are underlying issues that confuse event the most seasoned adult. I have heard that young children entering into a new family with their divorced and remarrying parent are “not really so-and-so’s kid”. Children adopted at younger ages than I was are “not really their kid”. Family friends who have been part of people’s lives for years, even decades are told “they are not family”. I have even heard some call their “married-in” relatives “nothing more than strangers”.
Are we not all strangers to each other in the beginning of any relationship?
Are you Serious? Then Get This Straight
A newborn is a stranger to their mother – the woman who carried that baby for nine months. You are not in their minds, however impressionable they may be – you cannot know what is going on in there. A woman meeting a new friend. A man meeting a girl he would one day would like to make his wife. Someone you pass on the street. The person on line in the grocery store. Yet these encounters with strangers lead to some of the most intense and lasting relationships we will ever have in our lives. A child and parent, best friends, a married couple, a neighbor, an acquaintance. At whatever level, these people enter our lives and it is a choice we must make as to the depth that relationship takes.
I know many children whose parents remarried after many years and created blended families. Father is father to each one of the children in that family, mother is mother. Some of those semi-adopted children (some are indeed adopted by their step-parent, others are not) actually become more of the family oriented member of the family, treasuring the relationships he or she was given a second chance at. Adoption makes families where there were none. There are plenty of people we all know that are part of a family by birth-rite not by anything greater than that. That “natural born” status should never give anyone the power to diminish another’s standing in their’s or anyone else’s family. I dare someone to state that an infant would know any difference in belonging, be he or she adopted or birthed into the family they wind up in. Whether your husband-wife, wife-wife, or husband-husband relationship has children as part of it or not is unimportant – that “significant other” is just that “SIGNIFICANT” to that person; relevant, significant, meaningful, thought of, their one and only.
And everyone should really be on that same page – whether it is a step-child, a half-sister or brother, a friend, an integral part of a family for decades, your life partner – those that surround you should be respectful of you and that person and the relationship you feel is important.
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Getting back into the “Flo”
12 years
My Aunt and Godmother – never to be forgotten!
The title will hopefully make you curious. I want it that way.
An ordinary woman with an extraordinary life – no, not someone you would know – not famous, no movie star, not a political figure. This woman was a daughter, a sister, a wife, mother, aunt and godmother – friend to many, mentor to some, protector and as my cousin said, even part “Super Hero”.
Last week, my family lost one of its more colorful characters. My Aunt Flo – Florence Sullivan. Born in Long Island City, Queens, New York, a resident of Dumont, Ringwood and finally Brick, New Jersey – not a world traveler, Ivy League graduate but one of the smartest, fiesty and formidible woman I have had the honor to have in my life.
I could make a list of stories: my godmother, held me in her arms at my “blessing”; cared for me on many a weekend/week long trip; summer vacation in Ship Bottom, New Jersey; at every life event – communion, confirmation, graduations, business opening; deep conversations as I got older; trips to Pennsylvania to visit with my parents at their campground retreat; holidays and other days to meet up and spend time as our family often did. So many things and times that left indelible marks on me as I grew up.
My mother’s family has been through this battle before – before “Alzheimer’s” was the unfortunate diagnosis of the week, my grandmother suffered from memory lapses, then loss, wandering back to her old neighborhood, going missing and making for frantic searches which I remember as a 5 year old. She was “just getting old” and “this is what happens” were the things I remember hearing about my grandmother. She passed in 1973 – her other grandchildren, my cousins had been spared most of the gorey details of how she could no longer communicate, becoming bed ridden, every need to be tended to by my grandfather and mom – even an “opportuntity” for me at the age of 6 to give my grandmother dinner – baby food as she could no longer chew or swallow. Now you may think that that is not something a 6 year old should be doing – you can have your opinion. Because she could not speak, she would grab onto you when she became cognizant of who you were and held on with all her might. I am not saying it was a wonderful experience but, as they say, it built character. My grandmother was lovingly cared for by her husband until the night she passed, at home, peacefully.
My aunt, my mother’s sister, my grandmother’s daughter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago. I watched again as a woman who was tenacious, fiesty, vocal, and at times, demanding and strict, slipped away from our world, with only brief, fleeting moments of recognition. This time, it wasn’t just “this is what happens when someone gets old” – it was clinical, medical and diagnosed – ALZHEIMER’S. Even the word sounds like a throw back to some Gestapo torture briefly hinted on in a World War II documentary. Same things… same robbed life.
Retirement should have given rise to years of rest, travel, grandchildren and walks on the beach. But this was not to be for my aunt. Her daughter, Colleen, spoke at the funeral Mass yesterday and paid homage to everything her mother had done for her. Aunt Flo had done so much for her son, Patrick and her daughter, Debbie after their father’s untimely death in the early 60’s. She began a new life with my Uncle Mort and as he told me yesterday, “saved him”. He loved her more than any of us ever realized; as Colleen said, he cared for her through every step of this horrible disease – at home, by her side, where she passed.
Over the last two days, I have heard all the same words used to describe my grandmother and now, my aunt. Their caregivers, their husbands, did more than they ever thought they could.
I don’t know who has it worse – the person who losses the ability to know people, things, events and more or the people who have to watch the long fading and try desparately to hold on to every piece of normalcy. I had to apologize to my cousins as I did not form a tough skin from my experiences as a child – I should have been able to tolerate the progression and lend more of a helpful hand in the process, but I could not bear to see such a strong figure in my life fade away. I am sorry for that. Colleen asked me when it gets better – my dad had passed away in 2007, so maybe she thought I had some wonderful words of wisdom on this matter. I wish that I did. All I could definitely say to her was that it “gets different” – once you start with your normal routine, get back into the flow of your regular life, you’ll remember but it will be different. Enjoy people, places, things when they present themselves to you – be open and spontaneous – treasure the family that you’re born into, the friends you let into your life and every experience that comes your way. Whatever it is, make the best of it.
I keep with me my memories – good, old and recent – a blanket, crocheted by my aunt years ago even though she could barely hold the needles as arthritis and Carpal Tunnel made it a true “labor of love”. My last visit with her, when she saw me and immediately put her hand to her opened mouth and said, “I can’t believe your here!” with the biggest smile ever. She extended her hand, grabbed mine and held on ever so tightly – I felt the same way I used to when my grandmother would do that but I came to the realization that the tight hold was the hug they could no longer give – holding on to what my grandmother, now my aunt, remembered that they loved.
My aunt gave me the best gift she could that day as she allowed me to do something I had not done in over 40 years – I sat right next to my aunt, held her hand and told her that I loved her. She looked away sheepishly, turned back, then smiled with a tear in her eye. She remembered.
