Second Chances

by William Umansky

  But I don’t feel ugly anymore. I’m getting sick fewer times. Holly has been wonderful. She’s visiting at least every week, sometimes a few days in a row, and sometimes it feels like we are just having a big, long sleepover. Today she brought me those little chocolate turtles she remembered were my favorite. We watched bad daytime TV together and told stories from when she was little, when she was a teenager, and when her father was alive. Never once did our old problems come up, and sometimes I don’t care if they ever do. I’m just glad I get to be with her, and I can’t wait until she comes next week!

  April 20, 2008

  My doctor came in today with a clipboard and told me the therapy has been taking and that the cancer is under control. What excellent news! She said my positive attitude has helped. I have my daughter to thank for that.

  It was a nice day yesterday, so Holly took me out for a ride in the car to go to the park. We had an ice cream cone and sat by the water and watched people walk their little dogs. We talked a bit about why we had our falling-out. I came out of today knowing that we have a better understanding of one another. I know I said some things, in hindsight, that I could have been gentler in saying. Perhaps there are some things we will never see eye to eye on, and we will have to agree to disagree. But Holly said she has forgiven me for my harsh words. That was the most important thing to me. I got to see the sunshine and the birds fly. I was able to be with someone who loves me. I hope I may have many more days like yesterday, and, well, today too, for that matter.

  December 15, 2009

  My birthday was yesterday. I am sixty-one years old. I didn’t think I’d ever see another birthday. And what a birthday it was! Holly got me birthday presents—a blue beret, a straw sunhat, and a red and white bandana. Then she helped me get dressed up in my best going-out clothes, we put makeup on, and she took me to Tony Lina’s Italian restaurant, the place that we always used to go on Friday nights when we all lived at the house together. We drank a bottle of wine and gave cheers to our good health. We had spaghetti and meatballs and the house lasagna, and they tasted just how I remember them. She even got the waiter to bring me out a piece of cheesecake with a candle in it, and everyone sang to me.

  When I blew out the candle, I almost wished for more days like today, but I decided to wish that Holly becomes successful in her business. I want her to have my wish. Holly made it the best birthday I’ve had in years. I’m so happy to have a daughter like her. I was alone on my birthday for three years. I almost forgot what it was like to have a party thrown just for me. It was so lovely, and I will never forget today.

  March 1, 2010

  The past few months have been a roller coaster. The cancer has unexpectedly spread and the chemotherapy has not been having as aggressive an effect as it used to. I am getting sick more often, and I have to have fluids pumped from my stomach occasionally. I am not able to go out with Holly anymore. She still comes, though. I’m so glad to have her next to me during these tough times.

  May 1, 2010

  I got the news today that my cancer is in advanced stages, and I have at most only a few months more to live. Sometimes it is difficult to keep a conversation going for a long time. I just hurt all over. It hurts to breathe. I feel faint sometimes, and I have a feeling of being called away from the world. Holly comes and holds my hand for awhile every day, but I can hardly do anything fun with her.

  I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid even though I know I’m going to die. I somehow feel wiser than the first time I thought my fate was sealed. Today I did a far better thing than I have ever done before, though. I told Holly that no matter what lifestyle she has, no matter whom she chooses to be with, no matter what sorts of choices she makes, I love her. Holly came back to me. She came back to be with me when we weren’t even talking. She was really the better woman in our relationship, because she forgave me first. I will always and forever love and accept her. I believe I am truly at peace with her.

  June 7, 2010

  Today I asked Holly to check me out of the hospital and bring me to the house where our family lived so I can be there when I do pass. We cried a lot today. It was a very sad day. But it was a happy day because I know now that Holly will get to go on. She has so many wonderful possibilities in her life, and she will go into the world knowing that her mother loved her and accepted her. She has a second chance to live with my love, and for a brief moment I had a second chance to live with hers.

  July 1, 2010

  This will be the last time I write. It is getting too difficult. I get confused sometimes, and it is hard to concentrate. I only want to say a few more things, though, and then I will be able to rest.

  I’ve decided I’m going to give this journal to Holly when the time is right. I hope that she will read it, not to feel the pain that I felt but to know that the last thing I chose to write, the last thought that I wanted to place on paper, was this:

  I love you, Holly.

  Mom

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A PICTURE PAINTS A HISTORY

  Adoption is not about finding children for families; it’s about finding families for children.

  —Joyce Maguire Pavao

  I first came to America from Russia when I was eight years old. I was adopted by an American family from a Russian orphanage near St. Petersburg. My biological parents died when I was just a baby. I had lived in the orphanage with about forty other children for as long as I could remember. I had an older sister, but she had been sent to a different place than I had. I had no connection to my real family.

  But I will never forget the first time I saw my new family—Dennis, Annette, and their daughter Brenna. They didn’t even know me yet, but they were so happy to see me. They hugged me and held my hand all the way home on the plane. I was not afraid to go with them, because my old life was terrible. The orphanage was cold, and we had to eat the same thing every day. The people looking after us were not kind, and there were no toys or birthday parties. Four children, that I can remember, died of pneumonia while I was there.

  I was so sad at the orphanage. I felt lost, like no one cared about me. I was a nobody. I had no history. I didn’t even have a birth certificate. This American family had rescued me, though, and they gave me the opportunity to be a new person and have a story all my own.

  When my new mother and father brought me home, they showed me photo albums that chronicled their lives. They showed me pictures of their marriage, their relatives, celebrations for birthdays and anniversaries, and Brenna growing up. I would look at the pictures very intently and interestedly because they were like prizes. The pictures were things I could hold and look at and think of as having been captured in the moment.

  I wished I could have prizes like those because I didn’t have any. There were no pictures of me with my biological parents, pictures of me from the orphanage, pictures of me with my sister, pictures of me on my birthdays. I had no photo records from Russia at all. I didn’t mind that, though. I was happy to shed my old life. But I wanted to have a history and to be able to tell it from a group of pictures and stories that were about me and that allowed me to hold and remember the special times of my life.

  My new challenge was to build new memories—to earn my own prizes.

  After I settled into my new home, my parents enrolled me in school. I went to a special class in the afternoon to learn English. My parents bought me the most popular clothes and the prettiest dolls. My new sister, Brenna, who is two years older than I am, quickly accepted me and introduced me to her friends, and they became my friends too.

  Dennis and Annette took pictures of me, sometimes when I wasn’t looking. I was so excited at the prospect of new gifts or experiences sometimes that I was not even aware of the camera’s eye on me, even when they’d tell me to smile. I wonder sometimes if I was even able to make the connection between the snap of the camera and what made the photographs appear.

  On my eleventh birthday, my parents gave me a very special gift. It was a photo alb
um—my own photo album! The first picture showed all of us standing in front of our new house in Georgia with a caption that read, “The day we became a whole family.” The rest of the pictures showed me playing dolls with Brenna, showing off my new clothes, playing soccer with other kids, my tenth birthday.

  I could remember all of these experiences. I could imagine being in those moments again, and I had photographs of them to hold. I was so happy because I felt that I had a history now. I wasn’t a nobody. There were people that cared about me. Having a history made me feel like I fit in, like I was a whole person.

  Now I’m all grown up and have a daughter of my own. I became a journalist and photographer at a prominent Washington, DC newspaper. I make sure to document my daughter’s life as she grows up. Even though she’s sometimes exasperated with my picture-taking, I remind her that I was a person without a history for awhile. I want her to know she will look back at all of the photographs someday and appreciate who she is—someone with a history, and my daughter who is beautiful and loved very much. Pictures are like prizes, I tell my daughter—they are things we can hold, and they take us back into the wonderful experiences of our lives. I’ve started to make my daughter her own photo album, and I will give it to her when the time is right. I want my daughter to have her own prizes and the ability to go to the wonderful times of her life with just a look.

  It is important to make good memories and to appreciate the people that care about you. In my life, I was fortunate enough that two warm, loving people took me into their lives with no conditions. I might have been a forgotten child without them. Dennis and Annette might not be my biological parents, but they are my real parents. They are my real parents because they loved me, and because they gave me a second chance to build a real history for myself—a second chance to become someone: a woman, and now a mom.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DEAR MOM

  Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

  —Pearl S. Buck

  Dear Mom,

  If you find this, you have been rummaging through my stuff again. I think it sucks that you can’t respect my personal space. You’ve meddled in my life for years, and this will be the last time. I’ve felt this way every time you’ve gone through my room, criticized my friends, or told me that you don’t like how I look, act, or dress. This is my life and those are my choices. I’m glad I don’t have to live with you anymore. I just think you should know that you are a shitty mother. I wish you would leave me alone forever. LEAVE MY SHIT ALONE, BITCH.

  Jen

  This letter sat, folded up, with “Mom” written on the outside, underneath my bed for two and a half years after I went away to college. I left with no particular goals in mind. I just wanted to get out of the house, away from my boring small town, and away from my mom. I wanted space to be myself.

  It’s not that my mom had done anything to injure me or put me in danger. I was the middle child of three, so I felt like I was being disciplined every time I turned around. That, and Mom was especially protective of us. When my younger brother did something wrong, I was responsible for not having watched him or not having been a better example. When my older sister did something wrong, the blame would always seem to carry over. My older sister, Sofia, was the favorite in my mind—it was like she really couldn’t do anything wrong in the eyes of my mom. Sofia was the valedictorian of her high school class and won every beauty pageant she ever entered.

  My mom disapproved of my friends and the way I dressed. She caught me with pot in the house, and I repeatedly broke my curfew. It just seemed like we could never get along. We maintained sparse interactions, more negative than positive, and I grew to barely tolerate her presence.

  The day I left for college was not a momentous day. I felt a relentless, stagnant exasperation toward my mom that day, just like I felt on any other day.

  I thought writing the note would shock my mom. I thought it would give her the message that I was independent and that my mom’s interference in my life would stop now that I’d gone to college. So there the letter sat, under my bed at home, as I sat in the quad in front of my dorm, enjoying my new life at college.

  A year into my college experience, Sofia was killed in a car crash. An SUV swerved across the highway and collided head-on with the Honda Accord she and her friends were driving. The driver may have been intoxicated, but he, too, was killed on contact. As our friends and acquaintances learned of the tragedy, they called me or my mom, offering their condolences and sympathy. The news had a profound effect on our entire community because my sister was well known for her intelligence, positive spirit, and caring attitude.

  At Sofia’s funeral, I didn’t speak to my mother. Even though we hugged at the beginning of the evening and occasionally became part of the same conversation, the same old silence remained between us. I had my mind made up about my mom—she had overstepped her bounds, so I was punishing her. Sofia’s death would not change anything. My mom was persona non grata to me. Even after we finished putting Sofia’s body to rest in the ground, we did not communicate. We only went through the motions.

  A few months passed.

  I kept my grades up, and I was meeting all sorts of new and interesting people at college. I had all sorts of classes, from political science to astronomy, and I decided I might major in political science or criminal justice—I was inspired to take on endeavors that might make other people’s lives better.

  Many of my attitudes and tastes changed as a result of the new social and academic experiences I had that year. My life was exciting and held so many possibilities. I was so engrossed in my new lifestyle that I thought no more of my mother until spring break. Only then did I realize I was running out of the money I had saved from my job at home.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how I would pay to keep my car on the road, pay for food, or pay for anything, let alone finance my upcoming semesters. I thought of calling my father, but my father divorced my mother long ago and now was distant and usually unavailable. He had been notoriously late with child support payments in past years. I knew how that phone call would go—he would sound happy to hear from me, make a whole bunch of promises, and then disappear again. He always seemed to like me and my siblings, but he was just not reliable.

  I was wrecked by this conflict. Could I call up my mom after saying those things? It felt impossible. But I was running out of choices. With much reluctance, I dialed my mom’s number.

  My mom was overjoyed to hear from me. She was more than willing to help me out, and I was grateful, but I didn’t know quite how to show her that. I wanted to tell her about all of the great experiences I was having, but I was only confident enough to give scant details. This was partly because of guilt and partly because I felt I had to keep up appearances—keep up the appearance that I was exasperated with my mother and didn’t really want her in my life.

  The next week I called my mother again. We talked about what sort of money would be required for upcoming semesters and how much money I could use to live on while I was at college. I learned that my mother had put some money aside for each of us for a rainy day and that I might be able to get through college with a bit of financial aid. I quietly thanked my mom and told her I would call again the next week.

  The next week, we talked about what was happening in our small town. My mom told me about my old friends—some went into the army, some got married, and some were just the same. We even laughed a few times about the antics and escapades that used to go on in town, and we decided at the end of the conversation that we would try to talk every week.

  Soon after that, I told her about a man that had entered my life. He was six feet, two inches tall with short blond hair and blue eyes. He played soccer, and he was politically active. He had ambitions of owning his own business. I was so excited, and my mom was excited for me. It made her proud to see me become a conscientious,
productive, happy person.

  Our weekly conversations continued over the next few months. We eventually got to sounding like we actually got along with each other. But there was still this one area in my mind that wanted to shut my mother out. I still felt like things were so broken between us that we could never really have a “normal” relationship —keeping her at arm’s length might be more comfortable.

  In late November, my mom invited me to come home for Christmas vacation. It would be the first time in a year and a half that I would be back in my old small town.

  I decided to accept the invitation, but after hanging up the phone that night, I thought about that note I had left under my bed back home. I felt like the note embodied feelings I could not take back. And if my mother ever read it, I felt it really could mean nothing would ever be the same between us, no matter how much things had changed.

  If the note was still sitting under my bed, I decided I would get rid of it. With it gone, that horrible feeling of guilt for having said those things would go away too, I thought.

  On the day I pulled up to the old house in my Toyota Tercel, I jumped out of the car without taking any luggage with me, burst in the door without saying hello, and went straight to my old room. I pulled some binders and stuffed animals out of the way and looked in the place where I’d left the note for my mother to find.

  The note was still there.

  As soon as I held it up, my mother appeared in the doorway. She came over and hugged and kissed me. She was so happy to see me. But I had the note and wanted to get rid of it before anything else happened.

  I tried to quickly leave the room. “Mom, there’s just something I have to do really quickly, before we do anything else,” I said.

  “What’s that, baby?”

  “Well—,” I held up the note. “I said some hurtful things to you in the past, and I’m sorry for saying them. There are a few things I said, though, that would make you think I was a horrible daughter if you ever read them. I’m going to make those words go away.” I started down the hallway to throw away the note.