Heartlines

by Susannah McFarlane

  Let’s dig it down again, kindly we hope, where it can’t hurt.

  All will be well

  Hold on.

  And so life goes, everyone walks at least a little wounded.

  Calls come from below

  A hopelessly blank medical form starts a wonder

  A glimpse-seeking Dryburgh Street dash (who me? Curious? Not at all …) tilts you downwards

  A baby on the breast takes you very close.

  Little tugs, pulls at threads.

  Holes appear.

  And then, in a calm carved out from the storms, something opens.

  This time it’s allowed out and followed.

  New threads weave easily into the blanket with a joyful constant clicking.

  But the gaping, weeping wound also wakes.

  We’re on it. Clever words sent swooping to rescue, with a brave but horrible honesty, casting, recasting to fix this.

  Too many, too much.

  Run, retreat, close this, forget this, fuck this.

  But can’t. Don’t want to. Walk back up. Go back inside.

  Go home. To her.

  But no more words, no more clever. Just be quiet. Go back to the start.

  Lie down, back together, open. Heartbeat to heartbeat.

  Bold, beautiful. All will be well. Wonderful.

  Keep crawling back to

  Whole.

  I decide to take the poem to Robin rather than just email it, but I’m a little scared about how she will react. I’m worried that she will be angry about my being angry, upset that I am upset, and that she might decide I’m too much hard work, not worth the effort. After all, it’s only three weeks since we met.

  On the way to her house, I think I might buy Robin a bunch of roses to go with the poem. I hope that might help: soften the blow, maybe. I am telling her that she has hurt me and I buy her flowers? That’s messed up, isn’t it?

  I stop and buy the flowers.

  Robin

  Susannah is at my door with a bunch of white roses. I exclaim over them, how beautiful they are, and go to find a suitable vase. We sit on the couch and she tells me she has brought me something else – a poem she has written.

  ‘Do you want to read it?’ she asks.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  It is an amazing poem; she writes with such beauty and clarity. And what is clear is that she really does finally get it – the truth that I knew she had to get, that I wanted her to get even though I feared the outcome. She had not been wanted; she had not been welcomed into the world by her mother. How terrible; I start to cry.

  ‘Susannah, I’m so sorry for hurting you, for deserting you. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  I am so grateful for her courage and willingness to keep following after love, despite the pain. I know she wants to forgive me; I hope that deep down she really has.

  Susannah

  I feel better having shared the poem with Robin. I said I forgave her. Somehow, I thought it would be harder.

  VI

  TAKING REFUGE

  Longleaf – 1

  Susannah

  Robin, the reunion, everything has been doing my head in and, I suspect, hers. I feel we need to get away, spend some time away from the demands of our families and just focus on trying to get this relationship, if that’s what we are calling it, on to some sort of even keel.

  I ask Robin if she would like to come up and stay for a few nights at Longleaf, our farm. She is at first reluctant, then unsure, but finally agrees. I am happy for that. I plan what I hope she will think are nice meals, buy a teapot for her morning tea and pack my adoption folder and some photo albums from when I was little, which Robin has asked me to bring. Then, on a beautiful spring morning, feeling both excited and a little anxious, I pick Robin up from her house and we drive to Longleaf.

  Robin

  On our first afternoon at Longleaf, sitting together in the sun on a wooden bench away from the house, with a view down the hill to meadows and gum trees, Susannah shows me her adoption folder. It gives me a shock to see my 23-year-old handwriting on letters I had written from Perth to the social worker in Melbourne.

  Do I know the girl behind that small, immature script? Does she have any connection with me now?

  Then I read the Form of Consent; I look at my crimped little scrawl, signing away, sight unseen, my child, and something gives way. From some contained, interior sea, tears leak out through the cracks in the stone fortress; but the structure holds.

  Susannah

  It’s weird showing Robin the adoption folder. She doesn’t seem to remember much at all and seems genuinely surprised when she sees copies of the letters both she and her mum had written to arrange the adoption. It was indeed, as she had said, as if she had buried everything deep, deep down. Forgotten.

  Then Robin reads the Form of Consent. She looks up, eyes tearing a bit.

  ‘I feel sad,’ she exclaims.

  I run to get some tissues from inside but by the time I get back, she seems to have recovered, and is on to the next page, declaring the whole thing ‘amazing’.

  That’s it? I wonder. That’s the reaction?

  The rest of the afternoon passes easily – Longleaf is a beautiful place to just be – and we eat an early dinner and watch Mamma Mia, the ABBA movie with the ability to heal all pain. Robin seems to enjoy it, so that’s a good sign: I do judge people on how they react to ABBA.

  Robin goes to bed but I stay up a bit longer. I’m tired, it’s been a big day, but I feel rattled again, this now too familiar feeling of upset and slight panic creeping up on me. I hate it, it messes things up and is too much – too much feeling, unprocessed and raw but powerful – too powerful for me to handle. It seems Robin is not the only one who has buried stuff, but my stuff seems to have no problem coming out and beating me up, determined to be heard and felt.

  So I sit, sipping my wine, a baby Buddhist, trying to watch the feeling come and swirl and hoping I can then watch it go again. But tonight the feeling of sadness persists and pulls at me and I can’t shake it. A tear falls, again. Get a grip, Susannah – it’s been a good day, just calm down, it’s all okay.

  But it’s not. I feel sad, really sad, the same heavy sadness I felt at Robin’s house. Looking through the adoption folder and my baby photos with her has taken me back again to that abandoned baby and now her sadness is swelling up in me, building like a huge wave.

  What am I going to do with it? I have one thought on what I could do, but I immediately dismiss it. It’s dumb. No way. I’m not doing that.

  But then it’s back, this time with a rationale. Why wouldn’t you wake Robin up and tell her? You’re sad because of what happened, what happened with her so, why not tell her?

  Because, I tell myself, trying to wrest some control, because she has gone to bed. Because she is my guest. Because she is old and because, actually, I don’t really know her. It’s embarrassing. I can’t just unload on her like this, show that much vulnerability.

  But the other voice is persistent: aren’t you here to deal with this stuff? And she’s not just a house guest, is she? She’s your birth mother. What are you going to do in the morning? ‘Morning,’ she’ll say, ‘did you sleep well?’ And you’ll say, ‘No I didn’t, I cried thinking about me as a baby, the baby you left, but I didn’t want to wake you, you know, not your problem.’

  But it is her problem, isn’t it? If this thing is going to go anywhere don’t we have to go to the hard places? How can we have a future if we don’t look at the past, however painful, together?

  So, I take a deep breath, get up and go and knock on her bedroom door.

  ‘Robin?’

  No answer. She’s asleep. Okay, there’s your sign: it is a terrible idea. Close the door, quickly before she wakes up.

  ‘Robin?’ I say a little louder.

  Robin

  I wake and become aware of Susannah standing at my bedroom door saying my name. She is clearly upset. She
says she needs to be with me: the little child coming into Mummy’s bed.

  How can I refuse her? I take her in, put my arms around her – and she breaks wide open. The tsunami of her sadness and longing has no trouble sweeping away the barricades of adult reserve and etiquette, and she cries and cries and cries until she is empty.

  Even in my tired and taken-off-guard state, I am not such a fool as to not recognise that this is a serious watershed moment; how I respond to it is crucial to the future of our relationship.

  But the situation is very challenging. Although at heart our reunion is the redemption of a lost mother-and-baby connection, on the surface now Susannah is not the newborn baby I gave away; we are – on one level and at this point – two adult strangers. Add to this my awkwardness with showing physical affection, and it is doubly difficult. But I do deeply feel the pain of her loss and abandonment and I want to comfort her. So I cuddle her, speak soothing words, and fetch a glass of water and tissues for her runny nose. I do my best, but it’s a bit like jumping into a river to save someone while wearing a lead suit.

  My poor baby, trying to get blood out of a stone, and haemorrhaging on the stone. It’s painful for both of us.

  But I do love her.

  Susannah

  I don’t know how long I cried for. I didn’t think that was going to happen and it was pretty weird. All the sadness of that baby just burst out of me. The intensity scared me: it was as if I, grown-up normal me, had been swallowed up in a darkness of tears and I couldn’t stop. And at times I could hardly breathe.

  I remember Robin comforting me (what if she hadn’t? That would have finished us!). And I remember she got up a few times, to get more tissues, to fetch me a glass of water. I remember feeling exhausted; at some point I must have fallen asleep.

  When I wake up, I’m still exhausted and now also embarrassed, yet there’s a palpable sense of lightness. Something has been let out, let go, that clearly needed to be let out but I still don’t quite know what to make of it. Do I apologise? No, I don’t think I did anything wrong – confronting definitely but not wrong. Instead I decide to thank her.

  Longleaf – 2

  Robin

  The next morning, Susannah brings me a cup of tea in bed – something I will never cease to covet and appreciate. She sits on the side of the bed to drink her coffee and it is all very companionable and easy.

  But something in me is still un-eased. My heart does want to express how sorry I am for causing her such hurt, for not wanting her back then, neither in the womb nor out of it. I badly want to be able to pour some ointment into those wounds in her soul and spirit.

  Susannah

  Robin enjoys her breakfast and I enjoy the return to more normal-person behaviour. I am a little anxious to make light conversation, so I begin a discussion of the importance of getting the butter-to-vegemite ratio right (that’s me, tackling the big issues head-on) before there’s a slightly heavy silence. I’m looking for a bridge back.

  Then Robin speaks.

  Robin

  Jesus is the only person I know who I believe can really heal our wounded souls. So, I ask Susannah if I can pray for her, with her.

  Susannah

  No, that wasn’t what I was thinking of in terms of a bridge. I really did not see that one coming.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘Do I have to do anything?’ I hope not, I really hope not.

  ‘No, just be with me.’

  Phew.

  ‘And only if you want to, Susannah.’

  No, I don’t want to. Of course I don’t want to. I feel like I’m about to be initiated into something. It’s going to be weird and confronting, isn’t it, but – and of course this is the big but – will it be any more weird and confronting than my waking her up, crying half the night and wanting her to comfort me?

  I can’t possibly say no. It would be rude. No, that’s not even it. It’s not a manners thing. She is showing me who she is, something that’s important to her and she’s taking a risk, just like I did. I need to say yes.

  Robin

  Susannah agrees and I hold her as I go back to the beginning, asking God to bless that un-blessed conception, pregnancy and birth; to redeem and heal. I thank Him for her childhood, for her parents, for who she is now.

  As I talk to my Father, pour out my heart to Him for both of us, my tears flow unrestricted, as if drawn up through an artesian well that has been sunk deep, deep down into the earth, opening up a direct line to my heart.

  Susannah

  At first I feel uncomfortable. I close my eyes – am I blocking or concentrating? A bit of both maybe. It is weird, it is unsettling, but Robin is so brave and honest. She speaks with such clarity and openness and love. When she cries, I cry too. It is much, much more beautiful than it is weird.

  And then she finishes. I tell her it was beautiful and I go to make the tea and coffee.

  The rest of the morning is easy, relaxed, fun. We talk – and we talk so easily – and laugh. Topics range widely and change quickly, there is a verbal play that flows easily and delights.

  Is it easy because of what has happened or in spite of it? I’m not sure but for now I also don’t care – for the morning we can just enjoy the ease of the conversation, the connection, without over-thinking, over-feeling, over-anything.

  Robin

  This rather extraordinary night and morning have, I think, been cathartic for both of us. We can move more freely and lightly into the new day – starting with breakfast and, of course, more tea!

  Susannah

  Robin and I seem to have reached a place of calm, in a bubble containing just the two of us. But, of course, it isn’t just the two of us: there are many other people who are about to join this reunion and, as we return home, this will be the start of something completely different.

  VII

  THE RIPPLE EFFECT

  All in together?

  Robin

  Precious and important as our time at Longleaf has been, I am keen for Susannah to integrate with the wider family. For me, the story of our reunion has always been about making things real (both mentally and emotionally), as opposed to dreamlike, and I feel that integration will help achieve this. I want to normalise the situation and establish the validity of Susannah’s place as one of my children – like taking the new plant out of its pot and planting it in the permanent garden. Acknowledging my four girls: each one unique and wonderful and secure in her right to belong.

  Actually, this inclusiveness has been my vision from the moment I reconnected with Susannah – to gradually (who am I kidding?) gather everyone in the extended family in to welcome and enjoy her return. It is a vision that has its roots in early childhood. Around the age of eight, there was one daydream I savoured: I used to picture a huge bed taking up all the floor space of some sort of corrugated-iron shelter, one side of which was completely open to the elements; on this bed I and all my family were snugly ensconced, watching the pouring rain outside and hearing it clatter on the tin roof while we remained dry and cosy. A final element of bliss was added by the fact that we were all feasting on pies and tomato sauce (I’m an Aussie, through and through).

  My idea of Heaven has evolved since then but the essence is still the same: everyone I have ever loved all included and together, enveloped in love, joy and peace, safe home, forever.

  Susannah

  Outside of Oskar and the kids, I have told no one in my family about contacting Robin and have no plans to. I can barely explain what is going on to myself let alone anyone else. In the rare moments where I yank my head out of my reunion bubble, I can see poor Oskar struggling to keep up with my slightly crazed pace and I am scared of how others might react. Also, I reason, if I can just find my balance with Robin I can then deal other people in later, a lot later. But I haven’t counted on Robin’s family vision …

  Robin

  My other three daughters have always wanted to meet their lost sister Susannah, and when my niece, Florence, wa
s on her Google mission – Operation Finding Susannah – they were avid recipients of any information unearthed. There were moments of doubt: Anna expressed authenticity concerns on the basis of Susannah’s blonde hair (‘We are all brunettes, aren’t we?’), apparently forgetting the paternal side of things, but they were grassroots disciples of my vision of family inclusiveness.

  In an excess of zeal to bring everyone together, I start to pressure Susannah somewhat to cooperate: ‘Would you like to look through the family photo albums? No?’ ‘I just took out these couple of photos – look how much you look like Anna!’ ‘Look, here’s one of Tim’s mother – quite a striking similarity, don’t you think?’

  Poor girl: she is polite but I’m not sure how she really feels about my vigorous integration campaign.

  Susannah

  I am struggling with Robin’s enthusiasm for me to meet other members of her family, and I’m still adjusting to the fact that I am not just meeting Robin, but a whole family.

  Robin, though, is persistent in suggesting that I meet my sisters. Sisters. Even saying the plural is weird to me. Two months ago I had one younger sister and an older brother; now I have five sisters and two brothers and I am torn between trying to realise Robin’s comprehensive vision of one big happy family and being scared out of my wits about meeting them all.

  I tell Robin that I’d like to take things slowly – although slowness has hardly been a signature trait of this reunion – and not meet anyone else yet. She says she understands, but I don’t think she can help herself and she continues to press. My ever-present and pesky inner child is keen to please Robin but I can’t even contemplate the photo albums, let alone the real people: I am curious, of course, but also a little unnerved by looking at the lives that went on without me. And if I did meet them, what would they all make of me? Would I be welcome or an intrusion, a novelty or an irritation that distracted Robin from her ‘real family’? I don’t think I want to know, but I do have to do something to stop Robin bringing them up all the time. I reckon if I look at some of the albums that will keep her satisfied for a little while and I can win some more time.