You’re Not the Daughter I Thought You’d Be

I spent some time yesterday with my dear friend Karen and her daughter, Kelly, the one she placed for adoption 36 years ago. Theirs was a tumultuous adoption experience, yet things between them are good now. Karen was 18 when she learned she was pregnant, a senior at a suburban Delaware high school. It wasn’t uncommon for girls her age in her town to find themselves pregnant – but they all made one of the two other choices: they got married and parented their babies, or they had abortions. No one chose adoption, and Karen was ostracized for her decision.

Her mom didn’t help, insisting that her daughter give up her future plans for college and a career to stay home and raise this baby! Karen selected a new set of parents for her baby girl and placed her daughter with them in spite of her family’s protests.

Here’s the thing: adoptions sometimes go sideways, in spite of the birthmom’s best intentions. In Kelly’s case, her adoptive mom, Patricia, never quite came to terms with the fact that her daughter was not her biological child, so she didn’t take after her in looks OR personality. She was her own person, with different traits and skills and interests. Kelly said she understood very early on exactly what it took to please her mother – and that was pretending to go along with all of her mother’s choices, from clothing to food to hobbies and playmates. Eventually, though, Kelly tired of pretending. She realized the payoff of her mom’s happiness wasn’t enough reward to warrant faking it anymore. So she started to express herself – her real self. That didn’t go over so well. And as she hit her teens and it became apparent that she wasn’t going to look anything like her mother, Patricia lost all interest in parenting her.

Though Kelly didn’t say this, it was almost as though her mother treated her as a doll or a plaything: as soon as she could no longer make the doll do what she wanted it to, she tossed it aside.

Skip forward some years to Karen’s reunion with Kelly. Lo and behold, Kelly is a mini-Karen. She strongly resembles her birthmother in appearance, speaks like her birthmother, has similar interests to her birthmother. Meeting Karen was like coming home. And the mere thought of it devastated Kelly’s adoptive mom. Even though she was never close to her daughter the way she’d envisioned their relationship in her dreams, Patricia would be damned if she’d let this interloper (aka the person who GAVE BIRTH to her child) be the mother she could never be to her daughter. So even though Kelly was a legal adult before she and Karen had their reunion, she’s had to run the gauntlet of guilt trips and psychological terrorism to pursue a relationship with her birthmom.

As she’s gotten older, Kelly’s begun to learn better self-care – and that means fewer interactions with Patricia, regardless of the guilt her mom still tries to heap on her. It means conveniently forgetting to tell her mom when she’s been to visit Karen, or how much she and her half-brother resemble each other. Karen married 17 years ago and has a 13-year-old son with her husband, Henry.

Kelly is involved in politics, working as a grass-roots organizer and campaigner for several local candidates in New Jersey and other Eastern states. During her work on a recent campaign, she met a man a few years younger than she – a man she thinks she might like to marry one day. How to hold a wedding, though, when you have two mothers, one of whom refuses to acknowledge the existence of the other? It sounds like the drama straight out of a Lifetime movie of the week, but these are real people who are dealing with these emotions today, in 2018.

I’ll admit that given my place in the adoption triad, I generally have a natural bias toward the birthmother. But I cannot help but think that even if I had no stake in the adoption arena, I might see this one from Kelly’s and Karen’s perspective. And, if given the opportunity, I might tell Patricia that just because her daughter wasn’t her clone, didn’t fall in line or measure up to her standards, just because their relationship wasn’t what she’d imagined it would be in her pre-adoption fantasies, doesn’t mean her daughter doesn’t love her. It doesn’t mean she failed as a mother. And it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with her. But I would also tell her that it’s not her daughter’s job to make her happy. It’s not her daughter’s job to live up to the fantasy standards she dreamed up before she knew the real person her daughter would become. And it’s not fair to hold any of her shattered dreams against her daughter.

As I’ve written before and will, no doubt, write again, I firmly believe that because of their place in the relationship – older, more experienced, and hopefully more emotionally mature – the parent sets the tone and builds the framework for the relationship with their child. All the child can do is react and respond to whatever raw materials their parent gives them. If the parent gives them love and support, the child will likely give that back, in kind. But if the parent gives her child grief and guilt and emotional blackmail, it’s unlikely – perhaps impossible – for a healthy relationship to develop under those circumstances. The onus for that is on the parent every time.

Only time will tell whether Kelly and Patricia will ever find a bridge to a less combustible relationship. Stranger things have happened, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, and consultant who coaches other authors to make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.

The Last Emotional Tentacle

When I met Tony, he was working on the sports desk at the Arizona Daily Star. His job was coding agate – the scores and stats now readily available online that you could once find only in the newspaper. The dress code, if you could call it that, was lenient – T-shirts and jeans were OK for non-reporter staff during the week, sweatpants on the weekend. Tony took the art of sloppy dressing to the greatest heights.

So it was odd to hear him say, that one afternoon we spent wandering around the World Trade Center shops the day after he drove out to the NYC area with me, that he might like to have one of those white-collar jobs that required a suit and tie. And as soon as he moved out there, he got one – all buttoned down with cufflinks and wingtips, just like the big boys. Funny thing is, while I could do without the whole torn/wrinkled/grunge aspect, a casual guy in a t-shirt and ballcap was always a lot more attractive to me than a business type in a three-piece suit.

There were so many things about Tony that made him the least likely guy for me, his 180 in apparel choices the least among them. First was his taste in music – Guns ‘N Roses, AC/DC, and Jimi Hendrix were never at the top of my playlist. The baseball was good, but not so much with the basketball. He was a Celtics fan; I thought they were an overrated team full of cheaters and crybabies. He’d done one semester at the UA before dropping out; when we met, I was getting ready to graduate with my BA. Not only wasn’t he Catholic – he was basically irreligious. He had to ask his mom whether he’d ever been baptized. She was pretty sure he had been.

And yet we flirted, and I found him mesmerizing – probably because he was a “bad boy.” But falling in love with a bad boy isn’t everything Footloose and Dirty Dancing make it out to be. Typically, they’re ill-behaved for a reason: they prefer not to be encumbered by a relationship, or encumbered just enough for regular sex, and no more. Every girl who falls for one thinks she can change him – to her peril. Most of us wind up eventually giving that old dead horse a break, even if it’s many eons down the road.

Tony and I did the constant push-pull dance cycle for years and years. Whenever he wanted distance from the relationship, he’d do his well-practiced disappearing act. Sometimes, I would hunt him down and confront him, perhaps even weasel my way back into the immediate picture. It’s kind of strange to think of myself being so needy – but that’s how our whole relationship worked. If I hadn’t been needy, he might have changed to meet me in another space, or he might not have stuck around at all. We’ll never know – unless I can somehow figure out how to jump to that alternate universe and then come back and tell myself in this here-and-now.

While I was in Tucson over the weekend for the book festival, I was telling my friend Justin – my social media guy who’s just a few years older than my son – that I avoided Tucson for pretty much the first 10 years after I moved back to Arizona. Another behavior that seems so “not me,” but it was me, at that time. The problem was that everything in Tucson reminded me of Tony – how we’d met, where we’d lived, where we’d worked, where we’d played. Although I don’t think of myself as a particularly sentimental person, I still found myself triggered by the sights, sounds, and reminders that seemed to have been cast so casually and thoughtlessly about the town where I met and began dating my son’s birthfather,

I was telling Justin about all of this – feeling rather cocky that I no longer experience the emotional roller-coaster when visiting my once-hometown. Then we found ourselves on our way to the store, and out of nowhere, a feeling of anxiety began stealing into the pit of my stomach. Minutes later, we drove past Clicks Billiards, one of those very same places where I’d gone to track Tony down all those years ago. The memory was hazy, but complete – a memory I hadn’t even know was there.

I once read that memories are the thoughts that come to us from the past – regret doesn’t arise from them. Regret comes from the thoughts on which we dwell, day to day, week to week, month to month, year after year – those thoughts that never have the chance to come to us because we’re so busy going back to them, time and time again. It would make sense that this blog is dredging up some long-hidden, perhaps still-unresolved emotions. I thought I was done – the last of the emotional tentacles unwound years ago. Looks like there might be a stray hanger-on or two. Good news is that I’m finally OK enough to just swat it down and snip it off, without worrying it will grow sibling tentacles that could come and threaten to strangle me again.

I’ve never regretted my relationship with Tony, primarily because my beautiful son came out of it. But I have, on occasion, beaten myself up for not doing things differently. So it’s good to have a loving, supportive husband, wise counsel from friends, and the self-awareness to realize that the entirety of my past paved the way to my present.

I heard the story a number of years ago about a therapist who worked in the mental ward of a prison. He made a practice of meditating/praying over each patient’s file, using a mantra that went something like, “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I thank you.” Within a year’s time, every one of those patients who’d previously been diagnosed as criminally insane had been returned to the general population, and the mental ward at that prison was closed. It could be a wives’ tale for all I know – although you can google the man’s name (Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, Ph.D) and find lots of alleged proof.

The point is the lesson under the message: We actually need to forgive others a lot less, sometimes, than we need to forgive ourselves. I’m not using this mantra with any regularity – though perhaps it would be a positive thing to do. But when I get stuck, when any sense of regret or not-enoughness starts to occasionally invade my thoughts, it’s a good tool to have at my disposal. Including those invading thoughts of the “Why did you put up with him so long?” variety.

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Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, and consultant who coaches other authors to make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.

Relationship with a Functional Alcoholic

A significant sign of sleep deprivation – or depression – is calculating the hours until you’ll next be able to sleep, upon waking. From observing the behavior of several people I have known, it seems alcoholics function much the same way – counting the hours until they’ll be able to drink again.

My relationship with my son’s birthfather was always challenging. While I could always see his role in the problem, it took hindsight for me to see my part: chasing and begging and pleading, instead of just walking away or behaving indifferently. The thing is, I was competing with a ghost I could never best. Sure – there was the occasional other woman (Gina, the Las Vegas blackjack dealer, and his sister’s married best friend, Gwen, come to mind). But the real “other woman” in Tony’s life was booze, more specifically, beer.

We didn’t own a car for most of the time I lived in Jersey City – but once every six weeks or so, we’d rent one. And although we did occasionally go out and see a sight or take a drive to another part of the state, the one thing we did without fail when we had a car was go to the liquor warehouse on Route 1/9. And stock up. How was it that this seemed normal to me? He even bought a small, college-dorm-size fridge he kept fully stocked under his desk so he wouldn’t have to walk the extra 12 feet to the main fridge in the kitchen.

It wasn’t until I moved back to Phoenix and saw a copy of Liguorian Catholic magazine lying on my folks’ coffee table that I began to stitch together the reasons behind Tony’s near-constant absence in our relationship. The cover article was a portrait of a functional alcoholic. When people think of a problem drinker, they tend to picture someone who is constantly drunk and whose life is falling apart because of their drinking. However, that’s only one segment of alcoholics.

Others, like my son’s father, can work at high-level careers, earn good money, have a regular family life, even cultivate social bonds. Some successfully hide their drinking for years. Tony didn’t hide his drinking – it just wasn’t until I had the clarity of distance that I could see how much more alcohol meant to him than I did. No wonder nothing I did could ever grab his attention for longer than a fleeting moment – I couldn’t have won that competition no matter how hard I tried.

So they say we date and follow relationship patterns. When I look at my relationships with Tony and John, the two men couldn’t be more diametrically opposite. Except for one thing: my husband has struggled, on and off, with addiction issues for most of his adult life. The distinct difference is that I know how much I matter to my husband – even on the rare occasions when he still struggles, I know he loves me more and that he wants our relationship to succeed. I never once felt anything close to that kind of love or commitment in my relationship with Tony.

John more than likely inherited his addictive tendencies from his mother. Even after spending 10 years together, I’m not sure where Tony’s originated. But knowing, as I do, how big a role heredity can play in traits like addiction, I’m hoping that Eric takes after me on this one.

Valentine’s Day with “The One”

Today is my 9th Valentine’s Day with my husband, and I have lost track of the number of cards and gifts he has given me in the years since we met. Such a stark difference from my relationship with Eric’s birthfather. I told John the other day that I can probably count on two hands the number of gifts Tony gave me over the 10 years we were “together.”

“Really?” John asked. “Even including birthdays and stuff?”

Yep. Including birthdays and stuff.

I still remember what may have been the only Valentine’s Day gift I ever received from Tony – a Chieftains CD the year Eric was born, 10 days before his birth, to be exact.

Looking back now, there were so many clues that Tony wasn’t “the one,” and yet I clung to that relationship for dear life. I had a loving father and (through no real fault of her own) an absent mother. I remember realizing how similar my relationship with Tony was to my relationship with mom. Although I lived in the same house with her, it was like she wasn’t really present. And though I was in a relationship with Tony, he was never really around. One of first things I had to get used to with my husband was being able to go to the movies by myself by choice, as opposed to going alone because he didn’t happen to be calling me back that week.

I long ago gave up trying to figure out the low self-esteem that must have driven my willingness to stay and stay and stay through the years. I’m just grateful for the day I finally had enough and decided the only way we were truly going to move on from each other was by putting physical miles between us. When I originally moved to New Jersey, it was with the thought that Jersey would be just a pit stop; ultimately I would make my way to Boston. Though I visited Boston a couple times, I never made the move there. Interesting, it’s where Eric chose to attend university.

By the time I was finally ready to leave Tony, I had neither the money nor the emotional stamina it would take to start over somewhere new, so instead of moving to Boston, I moved back home to Phoenix – even though the desert has never, ever really felt like home to me. Those divine plans being what they are, it still took nearly 10 years for me to disentangle all the tentacles from my relationship with Tony so that I could finally be open to meeting John. We met though a blind date via Craigslist in July 2009 and have never looked back.

And just as there were all those signs that Tony was not the right guy, there were many signs that John was. For one thing, he had a cat. A single, 30-something guy had taken it upon himself to head to the Humane Society in search of a four-legged friend. He told me he had originally intended to adopt a dog, but when he saw Libby, she told him she was going home with him, and she did.

He was also the first one in our relationship to give the other a greeting card and a gift. Long was my habit to be the first to make such a bold move, but on our third date, John brought me a card and some flowers. He’s sentimental like his grandmother was. When she passed away in June and we cleaned out her house, we found what appeared to be every greeting card she’d ever received, going all the way back to high school. Whether it’s his birthday or Christmas or our anniversary, John sets the cards out on the coffee table or his desk in his office and displays them for a while.

Most importantly, though, John was where he said he’d be when he said he’d be there. He had a job that required him to be up before dawn, so even on weekends he went to bed early. I remember going to his apartment one Friday night around midnight to leave a surprise on his car. I wrote messages on a couple pads’ worth of heart-shaped sticky notes and stuck them on the back windshield of his car in the shape of a large heart. As I made my way over to his place, the old doubts started creeping in. Would he be home? Would his car be in its regular parking space at his apartment complex? Man, what a sigh of relief I breathed when his Corolla was right where it was supposed to be.

Over the years, he has surprised me with concert tickets, flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, jewelry, and seemingly countless other thoughtful gifts, big and small. Today will be no different, I am sure. The best thing about Valentine’s Day with John is that it’s not that big of a deal because every single day with him is special.

One of the best relationship books I’ve ever read is The Surrendered Single, by Laura Doyle. In it, she explains that the right guy will never make you wait for his call or wonder if he cares about you. He will treat you like a queen, and you will always know how much you mean to him. I spent a lot of years giving the wrong guy the benefit of the doubt. He was the right guy for just long enough, though, or our son would not be here. Nevertheless, I couldn’t be happier that I moved on and gave the actual Mr. Right a chance.

When You’re Not Invited to a Party You Didn’t Want to Attend Anyway

My friend Cecelia and I worked together at Lehman Brothers in the 1990s – I for the Fixed Income Division, and she in the facilities/design department. We weren’t particularly close, but our work paths crossed with some regularity and we occasionally had lunch together.

I think it was an off-the-cuff comment about my former roommate and Tony’s best friend, Mike, that led to the idea of fixing him up with her friend, Annette. Now Mike is a big guy – tall, somewhere in the neighborhood of 6’4”, and also a large man, girthwise. He’d been single for a while, having married and divorced his high school sweetheart when they were both 20. Eventually moving East to get out of the Iowa sticks where he and Tony had grown up, he was soon to become our new housemate; I was less than thrilled at the news.

Mike was a liberal and much more politically aware than I was back then, but we had some really interesting conversations. I could talk with him for hours about all manner of subjects, whereas Tony’s interests were generally limited to baseball, blackjack, his CD collection, the Boston Celtics, and all things Macintosh (Apple). Tony’s political persuasion was nonexistent – but he would have been a Libertarian, if he’d cared enough to get involved. I still remember him arguing that seniors didn’t deserve any kind of price break at a movie theatre or on a bus, as they didn’t take up any less room than anybody else. To be fair, it was sometimes difficult to tell whether he was serious or kidding. Mike eased my mind when he, who’d known Tony for about 16 years at the time, told me he was never quite sure, either.

The thing is, my friendship with Mike seemed to rattle Tony. Years later, Tony explained to me that he was a master compartmentalizer – and it just hadn’t computed for these two disparate parts of his life (his childhood best friend and his adult girlfriend) to overlap in the way we had. At some point it became obvious that Mike had feelings for me – but I never saw him that way. It wasn’t just loyalty to Tony – I was never romantically attracted to Mike. Damn, I’d wished I was – would certainly have made things easier!

So Mike was lonely. I don’t think he had any particular ideas about the physical description of the woman he wanted to meet – but she had to be relatively smart, at least able to carry on a good conversation. At 6’2”, Ceclia’s friend Annette was tall for a woman. And so it was based on that very foundational commonality – height – that Cecelia and I arranged The Blind Date. If I’m not mistaken, Mike’s first comment when I asked how things had gone was that she had horse teeth.

“But did you like her?”

“Enough, I guess. We’re having lunch again later this week.”

Within a couple weeks, they were seeing each other regularly. Since Annette was Cecelia’s friend, I’d never met her, so Mike arranged for the three of us to have dinner at South Street Seaport so that she and I could get to know each other. I still grit my teeth recalling that ridiculously uncomfortable meal. Annette was the first to arrive at our appointed meeting place. I arrived a few minutes later. We were both about 10 minutes earlier than Mike. Aware that Annette was working in the art department at Estée Lauder, I tried to start a friendly conversation with her. I opened by asking if she paid particular attention to her competitors’ TV commercials and magazine ads. Her answer, through clenched teeth (and, I imagine, looking down her nose) was, “Oh, I don’t watch television.” All right, then. Eventually Mike showed up to break the silence that had ensued – and we walked over to the Seaport together. We must have looked quite odd, me at my full 5’2” stature, walking with this pair of Goliaths.

As long as I’d known Mike, he loved pizza – would willingly eat it seven days a week. Adding peppers and onions to it was as close as he came to ever eating healthy food. He and Tony had devised a weird gastric concoction, a combo of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and Hormel Chili that they called “Domestic Violence.” One of the funniest things I remember was when one of them bought a bottle of habanero pepper sauce. The instructions on the bottle said: “CAUTION: Do not add more than a couple of drops of this sauce to your dish.” These idiots added almost a teaspoon and then tried to eat it. The stuff was so hot, even they – who were used to eating food so spicy that all you could taste was the hot – couldn’t eat it and had to throw it away. So we were at this seafood restaurant – Mike, his new girlfriend, and I. Imagine my surprise when he ordered a salmon sandwich.

Again trying to further the conversation, I asked whether Mike had told Annette about the adoption. Annette said she had no idea what I was talking about – so before I continued the conversation, I gave her a quick rundown about having placed my son with Kathy and Bruce a year or so earlier. Later during the same meal, Annette made a comment that indicated she had known about the adoption prior to my telling her. Christ, this woman was a piece of work! I’m still not sure why she had me tell a story she already knew, but I went from being uncomfortable with her to intensely disliking her, and we were less than two hours in. We made it through the dinner – and within a few months, Mike proposed to her.

This was all happening at a point when Tony and I were definitively OFF. Not dating, rarely speaking. Of course he would be Best Man. It took me a long time to get over, but even though I was one of the two people responsible for the blind date through which Mike and Annette met, I did not receive an invitation to the wedding. Damn, was I pissed! It just seemed like such a thoughtless, graceless thing to do. I’m sure they were worried I might create a scene and mar their special day – but obviously they didn’t know me very well, because I just wanted the courtesy of the invitation. I had absolutely no intention of actually attending the wedding. Isn’t that ridiculous – to be upset not to be invited to an event you didn’t want to attend in the first place? But perhaps you can relate.

I heard from Mike after the wedding that Annette had forbidden him from bringing anything from his prior life – other than his clothes and computers – into their new house. It was as though she wanted to eradicate anything from his life that pre-dated her. I understand wanting to start fresh, but for crying out loud, the man was nearly 30 years old when he met her – of course he’d had a life before her! That worried me at the time – but they’re still married, so who am I to say?

The last time I spoke with Mike was September 12, 2001. He worked in Building 7 of the World Trade Center and was among those fleeing the rubble from the Twin Towers. I called to make sure he was safe – thankfully, he was. Social media changes everything, though. Peeking through his Facebook posts a few days ago, I learned that Mike’s mom passed away just this past November. It would be quite odd for me to reach out at this point – but I send love and good wishes through the ether, ever grateful for his friendship all those years ago.

What do you think the chances are that my invitation just got lost in the mail?

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do – So Why Not Drag It Out for Years?

In spite of my habit of deserted friendships, I’ve never been one who can just cleave a romantic relationship, as one of my mentors, Chuck Trautman, refers to it. It would definitely be easier, but it’s just not my way to end things in one fell swoop. When it came to breaking up with boyfriends, every one of those splits was a long, drawn-out process. Not because the guys wanted it that way, but because I just held on and held on until I was finally able to let go.

New Age classic, The Celestine Prophecy, explains the reason for the difficulties in disentangling from a long-term relationship. Our aura – or personal energy field – becomes entangled with that other person’s aura, each one forming tentacles that intertwine and fold in on each other. Even though you break up – literally and figuratively disconnect from one another – it takes time, deliberation, and focus to peel back the tentacles in order to fully free yourself, energetically, from the other.

I continued this habit of prolonged good-byes with Tony. Good gawd – I dragged that out for a loooonnnnng time. Understandable, perhaps, as it was my longest-term relationship and we did have a son together. I finally managed to wean myself from trying to contact him after close to a year. Then 9/11 happened, and we started talking again. Before I knew it, I was making plans to go back to New Jersey over Valentine’s Day weekend 2002.

In the two-year interim, Tony had dated a woman named Molly. In a case of what I might charitably call “what comes around goes around,” she strung him along for a while and then finally dumped him to get back together with an old boyfriend. But not before he helped pay her child support for a number of months, took her and her boys on an expensive tropical vacation, and shelled out a lot of other cash for her and her family. I’m not saying she was a gold digger, but he certainly made life quite comfortable for her until the other guy gave her an ultimatum.

So the Valentine’s trip back East was eye-opening. Seeing the apartment I’d shared with Tony looking so different was startling. It was clean and neat and organized. When I lived with him there, we’d had a third roommate – his childhood best friend, Mike. Mike was one of the coolest guys I’ve ever known. We had the most amazing, hours-long conversations – discussions that Tony and I could never have. But to call Mike a slob is like calling a marathon a casual jog. At the time he lived with us, he was a VP at American Express. And it wasn’t unusual for him to need to dig through the empty pizza boxes littering his bedroom floor to find his tie or suit jacket. I’d never seen anything like it … until I met my husband, John. The interesting thing is that I found in John a guy who seems to embody the best parts of both Tony and Mike.

As I write this, John and I are preparing to move. I was packing today and came across a slew of old journals, written on yellow legal pads. The following undated entry was the top page on one of those notebooks – but based on the contents, it must have been written the first week of February 2002.

Was thinking about Mike B. on my way to work today. I asked Tony the other night if he’d talked to Mike lately. “Not for a few weeks,” was his answer. I asked him if Mike knew about Molly’s departure. Negative.

So then I got to thinking about how much things changed over the years. I went East. Tony followed. Then Mike showed up. Followed by one year of hell living with him because I couldn’t find the voice to tell him that we didn’t live in a fucking pigsty and my title was NOT maid! Then I moved out. Got pregnant. A few years later, the whole Gwen thing. A couple more years and I moved back to Phoenix. Oh yeah – and somewhere in there, Cecilia and I fixed Mike up with Annette, and they got married.

So now Mike’s got this life out there. Wife. Kid. House. Real job. I’m not sure it’s what he wanted. Envisioned – yes. Wanted? I kind of doubt it. She makes all the rules and he follows them.

Then you have Tony and me. Tony got started down the treacherous path toward a normal life – and I could tell the house of cards wouldn’t stand for long. Gee – how many different ways have you said, “I told you so?” Another unflattering realization.

And what about me? My life? What does that even mean? I’ve got so much enthusiasm and so many ideas, and yet I feel like I’m moving through mud trying to achieve them. Here I am with a ticket to go back to NJ/NY next week. Why do I have this sinking feeling that I’m moving BACKWARDS??

Things were OK until last night, when Tony wanted to chat with someone named Kelly more than talk to me. But why am I jealous? I don’t even know if I want to consider seeing him again, but I’m still upset at the thought of him talking to someone else.

The only thing I know is that I don’t want to stay single. But I’m not convinced that my partner is lurking anywhere in my immediate vicinity. Back to trusting the Universe, I suppose. Nothing else ever seems to work.

Come to find out that even though the two of us had done a bit of growing up over our two-year break, Tony and I were together for one lovely night before we began pushing each others’ buttons in all the same old ways. I continue to think that if I were to run into him again tomorrow, he and I would find that same initial, comfortable simpatico we’ve had since we met in 1989 – but long-term, it was never meant to be. Fortunately, we both moved on, married other people, and seem to have embraced our respective lives.

Details Have Not Been Changed to Protect the Innocent – or the Guilty

I’m pretty sure it was Newsday, a daily newspaper in New York that now primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens. In the mid-90s, it was also published and distributed throughout Manhattan. She must have gotten my name from the adoption agency, the reporter who called and asked if she could interview me about my adoption. I think Eric might have been two by then.

I don’t have a copy of the story and remember only the faintest details – particularly that this reporter got two things wrong. One might have been a spelling mistake, but the other was an error in a factual detail. Although I’d come out of a journalism minor and nearly eight years at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, this was early training that reporters twist words, whether out of deliberation, laziness, or carelessness.

The thing that stands out most to me, though, was my desire to protect Tony’s identity. He didn’t want his family to know about the adoption for any reason. And though it was unlikely that anyone he knew would read the 20 lines of my story in a full-page article about adoption in a New York City newspaper, I spoke only on condition of anonymity and revealed only our first initials.

I shared his trepidation about telling my parents for a while, but I got over it before he did. And it wasn’t too long after this that I decided that I didn’t owe him any protection or anonymity from the facts. At the time, Oprah was the biggest thing going, and I had dreams of her interviewing me (about what, I have no idea now). Damned if I was going to stay silent if Oprah asked for details about my son’s father!

I suppose this nonchalance about sharing personal details is still at play in my decision to reveal as much about Tony as I have in the posts on this blog. I know there are libel laws and that memoirists must take care about whom and how they characterize people in their true stories. While my aim is not to tempt fate here, I also know that Tony couldn’t – and probably wouldn’t – take issue with any details I’ve revealed about our past thus far. And what I’ve shared to this point is really as bad as it ever got. No further skeletons (from his side of the family) are likely to be uncovered.

Again, it’s not my goal to instigate or rabble-rouse. Just to share my side of the story. He certainly has his side, and if he wants to, he can start his own blog.

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Laura Orsini is an author who works with other authors to help them make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.

The Folly of Proving “God” Wrong

There were a lot of signs that dating Tony was a bad idea. Things that, had I followed my intuition – or common sense – would likely have taken me on an entirely different path. Of course, I often come back to the premise of the movie Sliding Doors, with Gwyneth Paltrow doing her best British accent, where two very different paths lead to the same outcome.

The first sign was that I called him to check on the status of our first date. I’m not really one to dwell on what if’s, but I occasionally indulge and wonder how things might have been different if I’d just left the fucking phone alone. We worked together at the newspaper in Tucson. I was nearing graduation from the University of Arizona, and he was loafing in the sports department. Our flirtation began over his ridiculous taste in basketball teams (the Boston Celtics) and music, or so the pretentious 20-year-old me thought at the time. He had a stack of CDs on his desk which he listened to on a Walkman while coding agate for the sports section (e.g., game scores, stats, etc.). One was an AC/DC disk and another was Guns ‘N Roses. Now I’m still not really a fan of either, but having since married a musician whose current taste in music has some overlap with what Tony’s was then, I’ve learned to at least develop an appreciation for those classic rock bands.

So we flirted for a few weeks, and then he asked me out for New Year’s Eve, 1989. I said yes. And waited to hear more. Because of his job, he had a late schedule and typically slept till 11 a.m. or noon. But when I hadn’t heard from him by 4 p.m. on the day of our scheduled date, instead of making other plans, I called him. Plans were finally made, and we went on our first date to the movies – War of the Roses – another red flag, for those who are counting.

Things were fun for a time, but before long we settled into that horrible push/pull, chase/flee, clingy/leave-me-the-hell-alone pattern that so many immature people see as normal. Many years later, I read a book called The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle, in which she spelled out very clearly that the right guy never makes you feel clingy or needy. He makes you feel loved and treats you like a queen. It was strangely reassuring to hear that no matter what I had done, all those years I spent trying to get Tony to notice me and to love me even half as much as I loved him were never going to create that result. It just took me the better part of a decade – a baby placed for adoption right in the middle, there – to figure that out.

The signs were so in my face that I remember going to sleep every night for six months or more hearing a little voice whispering, “He’s not the right guy for you.” Instead of listening to that angel, God, the Universe, or whoever you think might have been talking to me, I dug in, determined. “I’ll prove you wrong!”

Then one night, on my 28th birthday, the voice went from a whisper to a loud, clouds-parting, Charlton Heston bravado. We were living in New Jersey at the time, again working for the same company. Our son was a year old by then, though we rarely spoke of the adoption. At this point, Tony was still determined he’d never tell his parents. Things were definitely in the valley part of our typical peak-and-valley cycle. So naturally, he blew me off for my birthday. I went out to dinner with some friends (where were they on New Year’s Eve 1989?!) and had a few drinks. I’ve never gotten drunk in my life – personal preference – but this was the closest I ever came. A bit buzzed, I made the stellar decision to stop by Tony’s apartment on my way home and give him a piece of my mind. That went swimmingly.

I was around the corner, less than a block from his front door, tears streaming down my face, when I asked out loud, of no one in particular, “When are we going to fix this?” That’s when I heard it – the voice from ABOVE. Literally, as clear as day, I heard a booming male voice say, “It’s done.”

Of course, my interpretation of “It’s done,” and the Universe’s interpretation were completely different. Because it took me another two-and-a-half years to finally get my shit together enough to decide to leave. There was no other way to do the split than for one of us to geographically relocate. Otherwise, I could see, we’d just keep doing the same dance for another decade, or more. So in December 1999, I packed up my dog, my cat, my computer, and a few clothes and headed back to the desert. I cried most of the way – but they weren’t all sad tears. Every several hundred miles or so, I’d actually manage to be grateful, knowing this move was the best decision I could make.

He has since apologized for being such a shithead, but one of the most galling things Tony ever did was say to me, as I was getting into the car to drive away, “I don’t understand why you’re leaving. Things between us have always been pretty good.” The other was telling me, the day after I signed the adoption papers, that he would have stayed if I’d kept the baby.

It seems a bit unfair to pile on him now, after all these years have passed. But we lost touch and I don’t know that our connection will ever resume. I know he got married, and she seems like a nice enough person from the little Facebook stalking I was able to do. His sister also seems pretty cool now (we never really got along when Tony and I were dating). And if my husband is any proof that an angry, alcohol-fueled twenty-something can morph into a pretty great guy, I like to imagine that Tony might have made a similar transition.

Beginnings

I was 27 when I got pregnant. I’d been dating Tony for about five years, and he was a righteous asshole. To be fair, I was also a mess – a needy, clingy woman who made bad relationship decisions, presumably out of some sort of self-loathing I didn’t realize I was indulging at the time. Also to be fair, my husband told me once, “When I was in my 20s, I was probably a lot like your Tony when you knew him.” Meaning that people grow up. Guys who were assholes at 25 aren’t necessarily still assholes at 45.

At the time, I wanted to marry Tony more than anything in the world. Thank the stars and angels for looking out for me, because he wanted no part of marriage. He asked me to at least consider abortion – which I did, for two torturous days. No doubt the fact that I was still a practicing Catholic at the time had something to do with why it wasn’t ever really an option for me. That left single motherdom or adoption. Thing is, I’m not sure I’d make a different decision today if I found myself pregnant and unable/unwilling to parent.

I started what I thought would be a book about the adoption a long time ago. It was handwritten on one or two yellow legal pads. I remember getting about 80 pages in before it got too hard to write. I was still too close to the experience, too raw. Over the years I’ve thought about resurrecting the book, but the will, enthusiasm, desire just hasn’t been there. I’m thinking now that the story may turn into a blog. In part, it’s self-indulgent. I’d just like a place to put the thoughts ping-ponging around in my head. But it’s also possible that my story might help somebody else. I don’t know that it will, but I don’t know that it won’t, either. And, perhaps my son might one day read it. That would probably be a good thing. Someday.

I don’t really want to write a chronological story. I also don’t want to be beholden to anyone about finishing it – the way I would if it were a book. I’d just like a place to put the random stories, ideas, thoughts, and memories that come to me.

It’s possible, if I publish this online, that other people – including my son’s family – will stumble across it, and read it. Which means I may have to occasionally tread lightly – or at least more thoughtfully than would necessarily be my initial instinct. It’s not that I have anything bad to say about them. They are all amazing people, and I am truly blessed to have such a good connection with all of them. It’s just that my perspective is mine – and it probably differs from theirs in places, and I have no desire of any sort to step on toes, create hurt feelings, or to convey any ingratitude. So, that said, we’ll see how it goes.

This might be Post 1. Meaning there might be another post tomorrow. Or in a couple weeks. If you’re still up at 1 a.m. pondering the past 23 years of your life, maybe we’ll connect again soon.