I don’t need to impress Catherine. Meeting her isn’t a contest or a job interview.
IN THE MAIN terminal of Portland International Airport, I am surrounded by a stream of travelers—arriving and departing.
I hold a bundle of roses cut from my back yard. They are the best of the year, buds the size of extra-large eggs. I’ve added sprigs of rosemary and lavender. The arrangement is wrapped in a white silk scarf.
This is a perfect demonstration of the kaleidoscope of conflicting emotion within. I hate the mother who gave me away. I love her enough to bring her the best from my garden. Hate and love work inside my skin—a tug of war between primal survival habits and the call of a higher consciousness. It’s a miracle I am functioning at all.
At the inbound waiting area, I sit.
I check the time on my cell phone and then I check the time on my watch. There is a five-minute difference between the watch and the phone. I readjust the time on the watch.
Inbound travelers fill the corridor, people with busy expressions and quick strides. A businesswoman pulls a wheelie travel bag and talks on the telephone. Another woman, with a baby in a stroller, goes by. Next is a teenager listening to his iPod—jeans around his hips.
I shift to the edge of my seat.
Did she change her mind? Was her flight delayed?
I check my phone. No message.
A tall woman in high heels walks my way. She’s wavy in my field of vision, like a mirage in the desert.
I stand up.
The woman wears open-toed strappy heels and slim-fitting jeans. She has narrow hips, a lean body, and wide shoulders she rolls back with the stance of a trained dancer. She has high, round cheekbones and her hair is a lovely shade of auburn.
“Jennifer?” she asks.
I nod. I think I nod.
We embrace but it’s not like a hug, it’s more like a magnetic slap against her body and on pure instinct, my arms go around her back, my chin digs into her collarbone, and I inhale the smell of her almond perfume. A flood of primitive relief moves through me. This is my mother. She is the one.
Catherine is more restrained. Her side of the embrace is brief and stiff. I’ve heard it is that way when the first mother has been found—they feel exposed and embarrassed. She has lived all my life, and most of hers, in shame and secrecy.
She is the first to break away.
While I make a mental note to give her room, an arms length is all I can allow. I keep my hand on her shoulder and feel the shape of her bones and even the texture of her muscles and skin through the fabric of her silky blouse. My mother is utterly familiar—like a dream I’ve been having all my life.
I regress as if I am one of my own children when they are in proximity to my body. I assume ownership of this stranger, my mother.
“My God, you are amazing,” I hear myself say. “Look at you.”
I take her in from the top of short auburn curls down to her toes painted a shining red. I touch her arms, to her elbows and wind my fingers into hers. “Do you play music? ” I ask.
“No, no,” she laughs.
I touch her hips. I turn her right to left and then left to right. I go around her, full circle—one way and then the other. “Look at your fucking legs,” I say. “They are so incredibly long.”
She laughs out loud.
“Look at your fucking legs,” she says. She does this flashy gesture, opening her hands like a game show hostess.
I look at my own hands, which are just like hers and I see them in a new way. I have my mother’s hands.
“How tall are you?” she asks.
“Five nine.”
“I’m five ten,” she says.
She holds out her foot. “What size are your feet?” she asks.
“I’m a nine,” I say, kicking my foot out of my sandal.
“Me too,” she says.
We laugh as if our shoe size is hilarious.
I TAKE CATHERINE to breakfast. A pancake and coffee place called Zells. We order the same thing, eggs on toast. While we eat, we talk fast. My words spill over hers and her words spill over mine. We are the same that way. We are talkers.
We drink cup after cup of coffee, reaching for the cream at the same time and then crack up when our hands collide.
We use our hands when we talk. We make windmill-sized gestures to get our points across. Our voices rise and then fall in the same vocal range.
Catherine and I are so alike—after a while, I cannot track the similarities.
WHEN WE HAVE wiped our mouths with our napkins and our plates are cleared, Catherine reaches into her purse and takes out a photo. She places it on the table between us—as if relieved to unburden herself. “It’s the only photo I have of him,” she says. “It’s not very good.”
The photo of my father is on a large sheet of color copy paper and he wears a military uniform. He poses next to a cannon six times larger than he is. He looks like a child playing dress-up in a grown man’s clothes.
“I don’t know a lot. We were just kids. I know his mother was divorced. She moved around a lot. I didn’t really know her. She was called, what? A barfly? I don’t think they were close.”
Catherine searches over my head, as if more memories live there. “Um, he came back to Reno not long after you were born—we kind of fell back in together. Eloped when I got out of high school. I got pregnant on our honeymoon. After that, he was stationed in Germany. I had our son. It was a bad marriage. I missed my family. I left him in Germany and came back to Reno with the baby. I never saw him again. I wish I could tell you more. You know he’s dead now? ”
“Yes,” I say, “I heard.”
Catherine shrugs her pretty shoulders. She seems uncomfortable, even embarrassed as she delves into the past.
I study the photo of my father with more intensity but also find myself taking sides with Catherine. I feel embarrassed too, as if it’s wrong to want to know him.
Catherine reaches to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“I can’t get over being here, together,” she says. Her voice is different, soft and a little sad. “I’ve missed your whole life.”
She drops her hand into her lap. Questions I may have about my father vanish and there is just the touch of mother. It was so fast, I wonder if it even happened. Did I make it all up?
Sometimes, when I stroke Spencer in a casual way—running my hand over the shape of his head or rubbing his back—and then stop, he’ll take my hand and put it back on his body. It’s his way of saying, “Keep touching me, Mom.”
I want to take Catherine’s hand and have her touch me again but I don’t. I am too shy.
WE LEAVE THE restaurant and go to a house that has been offered by a friend. The kitchen has been stocked with cheese, fruit, bread, chocolate, wine, and teas.
Catherine and I spend our day on the back deck, surrounded by vines and passionflowers. We drink pots of tea and eat dark chocolate in the September sun. She likes dark chocolate as much as I do.
We perform an awkward dance of togetherness with steps we don’t know how to execute. If I were a baby, I’d be naked in her arms and she’d touch me everywhere. She’d count my toes and press her face into my belly. But I’m a grown woman and neither of us knows how this is supposed to be. The threat of intimacy between us is overwhelming and intoxicating. She holds my hand for a long time and then, without warning, pulls back and crosses her arms over herself. I lean into her, closing my eyes to take in the sound of her voice and then scoot away, a twist of queasiness in my stomach.
“DO YOU WANT to see my photos?” I ask. A thick manila file holds images that go back to infancy.
“I want to see everything,” she says.
I move through my life story with a casual swiftness, using each photo as a marker on the timeline. I can’t linger on the losses or the pain or the loneliness. I want my mother to see the good things, the accomplishments and the success. I sit close to her while she looks at younger and still
younger versions of me.
“This is me in high school,” I say. “Can you believe the size of my nose?”
“You have your father’s nose,” she says.
“Really?”
“It suits you,” she says. “I like it.”
I am down to two photos, baby pictures. Both are of Janet holding me.
In the first, she poses in front of our little ranch house on Mary Street in Carson City. I’m swaddled in blue and yellow and have a bonnet on my head. Janet wears a matching outfit with a big yellow hat tilted at a jaunty angle.
Catherine removes her glasses and looks at the picture as if trying to find a way to pass through and go back in time.
“She’s not holding you close enough,” Catherine finally says. “What’s wrong with her? I thought she was a mother already? ”
I don’t answer.
During my work with Nancy, I learned that Janet’s attempts at closeness were rejected by me—as a part of my biological code. Janet didn’t pass the sensory tests of sound, smell, and touch. In the photo, I’m being what is called a “stiff-armed baby.” She’s not pushing me away. I’m pushing her away.
How can I tell this to Catherine and not hurt her?
Catherine looks up and I silently pass her the next photo.
She makes another sound of disgust. “Why isn’t she holding you closer?”
A stab of anger flashes, a bolt of lightening on a dry, hot night. I want to say, “Where were you? Why didn’t you come? ”
But I can’t form the words. I don’t want to be angry.
THE SUN ARCS over the house and a squirrel leaps from branch to branch on an old maple tree.
My photos are fanned out on the patio table. She holds the ones of me as a baby and studies each one for such a long time.
When Catherine finally speaks again, her voice is so low I have to lean closer still.
“I don’t remember going into labor at all. I don’t even remember that much about being pregnant with you, but I do remember being in the hospital. I was lying down. There was a doctor with a mask on his face. He just came in, took you out, and that was it.
“I think I looked up,” she continues. “I wanted to see you but someone pushed me down again.” She presses against her own shoulder, as if to remind herself of that moment and what happened. Her hand drops to her lap. “Then you were gone and I was taken to another part of the hospital where there were no babies. I was put into a room with an older woman who had been recovering from some surgery. She asked, ‘What are you in for, Honey?’ like I was in prison.
“I told her I didn’t feel well,” she says. “That’s when the lies began.”
She looks at me as if I could or should understand and I suppose I do. I want to understand.
“I went home and the birth was never mentioned again,” she said. “I was so depressed. I kept getting lower and lower. My family was watching me all the time. Maybe they thought I would kill myself?”
She looks at me with the question, as if I have the answer.
I can only shrug and shake my head.
“When they finally left me alone in the house, I kicked the screen out of my window and walked to a mental hospital. A nice Indian doctor took me into a room and I talked about being depressed.”
“Did you tell him you had a baby?” I interrupt.
She shakes her head. “I just told him I was depressed and he gave me some lithium. I threw away the pills and went home. I never got caught for sneaking out and I never told my mother.”
She lays the photo of my infant self on the table and leans back. Her face is sallow. Her lips are curved down. The beautiful and confident woman at the airport and at breakfast has slipped away and the true Catherine is here—tormented, confused, and angry.
“If I ever asked about you and how you were, my mother would tell me to forget the whole thing. She told me no good could come from thinking about you. When I thought I might search for you, my mother told me I would just mess up your life and to let it go.”
The sun is bright in her hair now, making it shine all different shades of reddish-brown. She looks so tired and so sad.
“I think about that,” she says. “Why didn’t I just search for you anyway? Why didn’t I defy her? I went against her wishes other times. I married Bill right out of high school. I got pregnant and went to Germany with him after he was drafted. All of that was pure defiance. Why didn’t I defy her when it came to you?”
“Did you ever talk about me while you were married to Bill? ” I ask. My question sounds so small and pathetic as it emerges. I feel so needy. I cross my arms over my stomach, as if to hold on and comfort myself.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “Bill said we would make more children—lots of babies—and I just put the past in the past.”
She waves her hand as if dusting something off the side of her neck and smiles her pretty smile. It seems so easy for her, so effortless.
A robin drops from the tree and lands on the fence. The color of his plumage is a rust and sable brown. The bird regards us with a tilt to his head, a shine in his small black eyes.
I cannot fathom how she went on to marry my father and how they had a son, who they kept, just three years after my own birth. I cannot understand how they didn’t talk about me—at all.
How do I not take it personally? How do I not make a leap and say it must have been me—that I was lacking or worthless in some essential way? How do I overcome these feelings of lack in order to find my true human value when my own mother placed no value on my presence in the world?
I know I cannot ask her these questions. She is just too damn wounded and to ask that she help me sort things out—when she cannot even sort herself out—is impossible. It’s a formula for failure. Or perhaps it is me who is too wounded. I have learned, early on, to hate myself for being needy and wanting to be wanted. I have cut those aspects of my personality away, in order to survive. And I do it again, as I sit here with Catherine. I tell myself to be stronger and get over it.
The bird does a small stutter step on the edge of the fence and drops into the neighbor’s yard.
“You can have those baby pictures,” I hear myself say. “I don’t need them.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Catherine says. She stacks the photos in a little pile and tucks them into her purse.
If a mother’s welcoming embrace is the core to human satisfaction, then the rejection of a mother must be the root of human dissatisfaction. I am wholly dissatisfied at this moment. I feel as if my life has no value—none at all and I want so much to take her to the airport and go find my children as fast as I can. I want to go home to a steady source of original love that won’t break my heart.
“You know, I can’t get used to calling you Jennifer,” Catherine pipes in.
“What?” I say, not really listening.
“Your name,” she says again. “When I was pregnant I called you something else.”
“You named me?”
“I did,” she says, “but I guess it’s silly.”’
I shift on the bench, putting distance between my mother and myself.
“So? What was it?”
“No, no, you’ll laugh.”
“Come on,” I say.
Catherine rolls her shoulders back and sits up taller. “Well, I was a huge fan of Gone with the Wind. I read that book like a hundred times and I just loved how strong Scarlet was—unstoppable.”
“You were not going to name me Scarlet?” I interrupt.
“No, no,” she says, waving me off. “I named you Tara, you know, after that plantation. I just thought it was such a wonderful name but you know, I was just a young girl ...”
She laughs and shakes her head at herself. “Isn’t that silly? My mother always said I had my head in the clouds.”
She was going to name me Tara.
I cannot laugh with her and I start to cry.
“What?” she asks. “What did I say? ”
We hold hands while I drive Catherine back to the airport.
“What will come next?” she asks.
I am taken aback by her question. It seems foolish in retrospect but all I anticipated and expected was today. What else could there possibly be?
“I don’t know,” I finally manage to say. “What do you want?”
Catherine tugs on the hem of her silk top and sits taller in her seat. “Well, I want to know you,” she says with the authority of a mother. “I want us to be in each other’s lives. You could move to Reno. That would solve a lot of our problems.”
I pull into the airport parking lot and laugh as if that’s a good one. Reno!
She’s not laughing.
I turn off the car and tuck the keys into my purse. “Well,” I say, clearing my throat. “My life is here, in Portland.”
Catherine pouts a little, as if I have burst her bubble, and did she really think I would move to Nevada?
The engine ticks as it cools down and we sit in the quiet for a long time.
The experts who specialize in reunion between first mothers and adopted children suggest a slow and careful “getting to know each other period.” Birth parents are warned to be cautious and respectful during reunion. Adoptive children must learn how to believe again. Bridges of trust must be built. Old wounds need to heal.
Of course, I have read all these books. Catherine has read none. I’ve spent a lifetime in pursuit of healing. Catherine has spent a lifetime in pursuit of hiding. A few days ago, I had been a secret she planned to take to her grave.
With the way I am feeling at this moment—unwanted, rejected, and forgotten—what comes next should be this: Catherine should go away and I should continue with my life. The end.
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