Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life's Darkest Hours
Page 5
My grandmother was a woman of few words. She let her actions speak for her. I always knew that baking for others was her way of showing love. Grandma was always teaching me new recipes. Her favorite sugar cookies (when she turned away, I sprinkled mine with extra Red Hots); the tiny blueberry muffins she called “cupcakes”; her special zucchini bread (it was my job to shave the zucchini and squeeze out the liquid, which I still love doing when I make her recipe in my own kitchen). We usually baked until lunchtime. Then, while my grandfather read or watched a Yankees game on TV (he was a die-hard Yankees fan), my grandmother and I went to town to her garden club, where she had her own vegetable patch, and weeded and picked whatever was ripe to use for dinner that night. By around 4:00, when my grandfather, who was head usher at his church, headed out to Mass, my grandmother and I would be just getting back home and ready for our afternoon nap. We’d curl up on the living room couch and I’d rub her neck to help her fall asleep, but I was the one who usually dozed off first. Before we knew it, Grandpa was walking back in the door, all spiritually refreshed, and it was time for dinner and Jeopardy! Once he passed, I made a point to go to his church so I could experience the place that had been so important to him.
Those times with my grandparents were some of the happiest of my life. I wish they could have lasted forever. My grandfather passed away while I was in college. It was my first experience with losing a loved one, and the pain of realizing I would never look into his loving eyes again, or feel the warmth of his smile, was numbing. Three years later, my grandmother followed him. She suffered with Alzheimer’s disease, and every week when I visited her she seemed to have less of a grasp on reality. She’d often be confused and have trouble verbalizing her thoughts. Yet she never forgot me, her granddaughter. And she still called me Kaitlin Mary.
Whenever I start to feel the void left by their passing, and it is vast, I close my eyes and imagine those times on Snowberry Lane. When I do, I can see my grandfather, dapper in his suit and hat, walking out the door to usher at his church. I see my grandmother, standing over the kitchen counter, patiently teaching me how to whisk batter, or grease a cookie sheet, or squeeze the juice from a zucchini. Those simple acts had so much meaning for me. They were life lessons.
My grandparents taught me that a well-lived life is one in which we take what is best in us and use it for a higher purpose. That was the way in which they chose to see life. That was their perspective. Be kind to others. Give them your time, which is your love. Whether that means working through God, as my grandfather did with his church, or making homemade baked goods to bring joy to someone else, it’s all the same. It’s about finding the love from within and sharing it.
In his book The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren wrote: “When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time. It is not enough just to say relationships are important; we must prove it by investing time in them. Words alone are worthless. ‘My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action.’ Relationships take time and effort, and the best way to spell love is ‘T-I-M-E.’”
I can count on one hand the times my grandmother said the words “I love you.” But my grandparents gave me a part of themselves and that said more than words ever could. It’s similar to the end of every school year, when my students move on to the next grade. They’re leaving my classroom, but the time we spent together, the feelings we had for each other, the memories we made, will never cease to exist. Those relationships become a part of who we are.
When I look at the picture of the moon on my wall, that’s what I see. Not how much I miss my grandparents now that they are no longer physically with me. But the time we spent together, the memories we made, and how grateful I am to them. For sharing their precious time. For showing me the meaning of true love.
For being a part of who I am.
Twenty Miles
My dad always knew my birth mother’s name. He’d read it—along with her age and the hospital where I was born—upside down on the paperwork as he and my mother sat across the desk from the woman who was handling my adoption. When he got home that day, he wrote down the information so that if I wanted to learn more about her someday, at least I’d have a starting point.
For as long as I can remember, every so often, Dad offered to help me find my birth mother. The offers always came out of the blue. Each time he asked, I politely declined. “No, Dad. I’m fine,” I’d say. After a few years of my father asking me this, I started becoming exasperated and, after a while, usually just shrugged him off. He had good intentions, but I knew everything I wanted to know about my birth mother, or at least what I thought I knew—that she’d had my best interests at heart when she gave me away—and I had no interest in knowing anything more. Then, when I turned twenty-three, my birth mother found me.
Talk about out of the blue. I was living on my own by then and had gone back home one afternoon to have lunch with Mom. We were out on the deck, eating the sandwiches she’d fixed for us, when, without even a transition from whatever small talk we were making, she asked if I planned to tell my then boyfriend that I was adopted. At that point, I hadn’t told anyone. Not my boyfriend, not even my very closest girlfriends. My only reason for keeping my adoption to myself was to protect my parents from anyone thinking of them as anything other than what they were: my mom and my dad.
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t really thought about it much. But if he and I were to get engaged I would tell him, for no other reason than if we planned on having children I’d want him to know that I didn’t know my familial history.” Mom nodded, and without saying a word, she stood up from the table and went inside. A minute later, she returned, holding a large manila envelope in her hand. “Well, I think you can know that,” she said, handing me the envelope. “Here you go.” I sensed my mom’s discomfort. In retrospect, I understand what she must have been feeling. She is my mother and I am her daughter and she didn’t want anything to get in the way of that. At that moment, though, I didn’t have a clue about what she was handing me. If anything, I thought that maybe the envelope contained copies of health records she’d gotten from my birth mother’s doctor and held on to until I was old enough to have them.
I put my hand in the envelope and pulled out the contents, a stack of letters, all addressed to my mom, all with the same Westport return address. I looked at Mom, pulled out one of the letters, and started reading.
“Many times over the years I’ve tried to look for you and Kaitlin, but have never been able to find you. I was told early on that you had moved out of state. I never thought I could find you.”
Mom sat there quietly as I finished reading and opened a second letter. “I wanted you to know her birth father and I married and live only a few miles from you.”
Then, a third letter. “Kaitlin has a sister.”
I looked at my mom blankly. “Hmm. That’s interesting,” I said. My dispassionate reaction might seem odd, especially to people who are not familiar with adoptees, but I really wasn’t feeling much. I think that, had I not been so loved by my parents, maybe the letters would have tugged at me more. But I had my happy family. I didn’t need another mother or another father.
I was intrigued that I had a sibling. I’d always wondered what it would be like to have a sister to share things with, and I’d even fabricated one back in the fifth grade. “Kristy” was a central character in many of the entries I made in the weekly journal we kept for Mrs. Beaulier’s class. “Kristy and I went to the mall over the weekend. Kristy and I went to see a movie with our parents. Kristy and I went on vacation to Maine with our cousins. Eventually I was found out when my parents attended a parent-teacher conference and Mrs. Beaulier asked how my sister, Kristy, was doing. You can imagine my parents’ surprise. “Kristy? Kait
lin is an only child. She doesn’t have a sister.” (That story came in handy many years later when I asked about the sister of one of my first-graders and her flabbergasted parents told me there was no sister. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I did the same thing when I was little.” That seemed to appease them.)
In one of the letters, my birth mother floated the idea of meeting me at some point. “So when do you think you should meet her?” Mom asked. I felt like I was walking a tightrope. I feared that if I agreed to meet my birth mother, my mom might feel hurt. That was the last thing I wanted. On the other hand, I didn’t want to push my birth mother away if she needed to see me. Who was I to deny her? And I confess, I was curious about my sister. Does she look like me? I wondered. Does she have a similar personality? Does she know about me? “Well,” I said, “if she wants to meet me, I’ll meet her.”
My mom set up the meeting by e-mail. The arrangement she’d made was that I was to meet my birth mother at the restaurant where my family celebrated Kate’s Day every year, as well as birthdays and anniversaries and other special occasions. It was halfway between where I lived and my birth mother’s home in Westport.
Two weeks later, I was walking through the door of the restaurant, looking for someone who looked like me. The restaurant was crowded, and I probably wouldn’t have known my birth mother if she hadn’t stood up to greet me. I don’t look anything like her. I felt strangely ambivalent as we hugged.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
She nodded and smiled. “I can’t believe how tall you are! Your sister is short and tiny and I’d just assumed you’d look the same way.”
We sat down across the table from each other. She started the conversation by asking questions about my life, questions she’d been storing up for twenty-three years. She asked about my childhood and what it was like growing up. What kinds of things did I do? Had I played sports? Had lots of friends? What were my high school years like? My college experience? What was my favorite food? She seemed nice and she was easy to talk to.
When I’d answered everything she asked, she volunteered the details of my adoption. She said she was in high school when she became pregnant with me. Times were different then. Having a child out of wedlock could bring unwanted attention to a family, and she had younger siblings as well. Her mother and she discussed and agreed that it would be better for her to go away until it was time for her to deliver me. It was all very quiet, and shortly after my birth she had returned to high school to finish up. She’d eventually married my birth father, and they had my sister nine years after she’d given birth to me.
“All these years, I wondered about you,” she said. “I wondered if you were okay, if you were happy, if you had the life I envisioned for you.”
My birth mother said she had tried to find me over the years, but she had nothing to go on and my adoption records were legally sealed. When she’d asked the adoption agency for help in finding me, they told her we’d moved out of state, they couldn’t say where. Of course, we hadn’t gone anywhere. I lived in the same house my whole life, as it turned out, just twenty miles from her. When her search for me hit a dead end, she’d stopped looking for me. Then, as my sister got older, and she prepared to tell her about me, my birth mother resumed her search, this time with the help of the Internet and better luck. A few months before she’d started writing letters to my mom, someone she’d met online had provided her with information that finally led to me. My birth mother said she was thankful that my mother showed me her letters and that I’d agreed to meet with her. “I wanted to meet you to see if I’d made the right decision,” she said.
I thanked her for reaching out to my mom and for being curious about how my life had turned out, and I assured her that my childhood couldn’t have been better. Relatively speaking, it was idyllic. “Honestly,” I said, “if you had never looked for me, we would never have met, because I wouldn’t have looked for you.” I wasn’t trying to be callous or insensitive, and my birth mother didn’t take it that way. She interpreted my statement exactly as I’d meant it: You can rest assured that you made the right decision. Thank you for that. I have had a blessed life. “That’s the best gift you could ever have given me,” she said. I smiled. “And thank you for the gift you gave me,” I said.
We left the restaurant that night promising to stay in touch, and we have. I’ve met my birth father, but they have since divorced, and my sister and I have developed a friendship. I’ve met most of my blood relatives and my birth family has spent time with our family. I like having all these new people in my life. It’s as if I’ve inherited a whole new group of friends.
I think I miscalculated the impact that meeting my birth mother would have on my life. What it did, and I’m not sure why, was give me the freedom to tell people I’m adopted. Of course, when I told my friends, most of them already knew because my dad had mentioned it to their parents somewhere along the way. My parents had never kept my adoption a secret.
But even more than feeling confident about talking about my adoption, meeting my birth mother confirmed what I had chosen to believe all along: that the reason for my adoption had nothing to do with rejection or a lack of caring on her part. My birth mother let me go out of selflessness and love. And in doing so, she opened the door for me to have the beautiful life I have.
Just recently, I asked my birth mom to reflect for a moment on that first meeting. This is what she wrote:
One of the best moments of my life was when you walked in. I still remember like it was last night.
Loved seeing you, I think part of me expected you to be a little girl as the only picture I’d ever had of you was when you were one and here you were, walking in . . . TALL and beautiful, not the sweet little girl from the picture I’d looked at every day for the past 20+ years but a young woman and you were blonde, like my sisters.
Everyone always asks me about our first meeting and they always assume that I cried . . . no tears for me, just pure happiness . . . I couldn’t stop smiling.
Loved that we just sat and talked and talked . . . meant the world to me.
What stands out the most from that evening was how completely content you were/are. Made me so happy.
And one of the best things that you’d said to me was that if I hadn’t found you, you didn’t know if you’d ever have looked for me . . . this made me happy for so many reasons! I knew from that comment that you had/have wonderful parents who loved you so much that there was never any doubt for you, that you didn’t feel resentment towards me. For the previous 24 years before we’d met, I would think of you every day and offer a prayer that you were happy, loved, well cared for and didn’t hate me.
And in that moment, I knew you had been/were. I knew that I’d made the right choice for myself and, most importantly, for YOU! I knew.
I often think about how different my life might have been had my birth mother decided to keep me. I can’t even fathom it. I would never have known my parents. I would be an entirely different person. And I think about how, all those years before she told me the circumstances of my adoption, I could have chosen to believe the worst, and where would that have gotten me, except perhaps bitter and angry? Instead, having been guided by my parents, I made the choice to take what life gave me and find the abundant good in it, and to be grateful for the blessings.
Just recently, my dad found a card my birth mother had written and sent along with me. “Please don’t be scared,” she wrote. “All my love and happiness to you always.” With those words, my birth mother sent me home to my family. I wouldn’t be who I am today without them and the life they gave me.
And I know that I am exactly where God intended for me to be all along.
MY DARKEST HOUR
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
—HENRY S. HASKINS
December 14, 2012
As I pulled out of the driveway to begin the drive to Newtown, my thoughts returned to the previous weekend when my mom and I traveled from Greenwich to Westhampton to make wedding preparations. It had been a magical weekend.
First, we’d met with a florist and chosen all white roses and dahlias and hydrangeas for the flower arrangements, then we’d gone to the beach and booked the date for the following August at a beautiful place called the Oceanbleu. The restaurant is built high on the dunes and, standing there, looking out over the water, I had pictured my dad and I taking that long walk down the beach to where Nick and our guests would be waiting. The following day, we’d met Dad and Nick for our annual Christmas brunch and gone over all our plans. I could hardly wait for summer to come, but first we had the holidays to look forward to.