It takes a lot of experience for a girl to kiss like a beginner.

The problem with keeping a journal on a computer is that when you buy a new computer you don’t transfer everything from the old to the new because maybe that particular day you don’t see the reason for a specific file anymore and it’s gone gone gone.

 

Such went the personal folder labeled all the sad stuff- letters and entries relating to the short term connection with the first daughter to which I gave birth. I saved the photos of her in adulthood but the words and thoughts- from her to me, from me to her and from me to me are all gone and linger only as a memory. My husband tells me that my last confessional letter to her was very brutal towards myself but I wanted her to know everything and so I poured it out in one big emotional vomit- maybe because I didn’t believe she would ever really accept me and it might be better if I gave her really good reason. All that self fulfilling prophecy shit. And taking control to insure the bad rather than just risk ambiguity.

 

But I confess I think of her often. Sometimes with jealousy. Sometimes longing. Sometimes irritation, Sometimes simple curiosity.  I don't know she is aware of the imprint her birth had on me and how vivid every one of those memories is burned into my heart and mind. Taking the train to the city and the uptown bus to east 94^th street where I signed the papers relinquishing her for adoption. And waiting at the bus stop to go home with those girls from sacred heart- all nice 17 year old virgins in  plaid skirts and knees socks. And me outward looking the same but never the same again. Nor the way her birth informed every relationship I have ever had since. Or how when she turned 21 I planted 21 daffodils in her honor. and how somehow deep in my freaky telepathic heart I knew that she wasn't placed in a happy family and wasn't always being treated well. I thought of her internally as a little blackbird. my little blackbird but I never let that thought go beyond my mind.Back then by signing the papers I gave up every right they told me. and was just left with the pain whcih even that I was told would go away before i knew it.  

 

SO since everyone was lying to me, why shouldn't I join the game and lie to myself. Accept the verdict, internalize it and expect the rejection when it came. Oh it hurt but it was no surprise. And so when everyone you know in adulthood tells you that you are funny and smart and generous and gracious and you get sickof hearing it because they might have read conrad but they don't know the heart of darkness.

 

Recently I mailed her a book titled The Girls Who Went Away or something like that – a book that gives the view of what it was like to be a “good/bad girl” in the 1960’s and be sent away because being pregnant  unmarried was incompatible with being in decent society.  It was a clumsy overture and she responded- with the articulate directness that I think is genetic because she writes quite well and is honest without being bitchy but it hurts all the same. And she has every right to build her life just the way she wants  and I know I have every right to want to be a small part of it and she in turn also has the right to say no. But I don’t like that.

 

Maybe if Jim and I had  had children the hole would not be so big. We tried many times and did extraordinary things and even got on the adoption roller coaster for a short while. I long ago stopped believing it was retribution for the errors of my youth.

 

But you know. It really sucks to be told plainly that someone doesn’t want to be in your life because of who you are…not because you did the right thing in having them adopted- even if aspects of the home was really bad- many of us survive bad biological mothering and I am sorry she had bad adoptive mothering. ANd yes i know that love must be given without expectation and I love her, but I dont know if I like her.

 

  Anyway I also learned she reads my blog ( as I go to her website to see what's new) and I could make this entry readable only by mindsay members or even close my entire blog to only mindsay registrants… but I also use it as entertainment, soapbox and a fun way to tell friends in Alabama and Denver  what is new. So do I exploit my pain and her privacy and submit this?  Which ever way I can always change it later. Right? Right.

 

P.S. there is  a response from her sitting in my uotlook inbox and I am not sure I want to read it. God I see the icy intensity she brings to relationships and I know it intimately. Nature has a lot more going for it than nurture. Yes. I know that manner very very well. It's mine. out out damn spot