Alone

Tags

Adoption. Adoptee, Alone, Gift, Graupel, Snow, Solitude, Winter

Of all the “A” words in the adoptee’s lexicon, one of the hardest is “Alone.” 

A venerable old tree on Canyon Road- photo by Beth Stephens

How often we may have heard the saying, “We’re born alone and we die alone,” and deep down we know that being sometimes alone is simply part of life.

To the adopted self, however, “alone” can conjure up feelings of abandonment and rejection. Our original parents could or would not keep us, and even though we may never have been actually alone, we did not feel that we belonged to anyone. I can speak only for myself, but as I meet others looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses, this  perception of “alone” seems to be common. However, one morning’s experience can change everything, which is what happened in the following episode…

Place: Santa Fe National Forest.
Time: A few days ago.
Action: Snowshoeing up Aspen Vista Road with my son.

The weather prediction was for clouds, sun, and “occasional showers.” We started at 9:30 a.m. up the winding uphill forest road that ended in five miles at cluster of radio towers. Our goal was not to reach the top but to be out for half a day. I urged my son to snowshoe on ahead…he’d easily catch up with me on his way down. Fresh snow festooned shrubs, grasses, big rocks. The air was frigid, the sky a combination of gray, blue and white.
My son disappeared around a bend and I was suddenly solo. Every five minutes or so, I stopped to listen to the solitude.  No apparent wind, but nonetheless the trees made a barely audible “shushing” sound. Whenever the sun came out, crystal-like sparkles appeared on snow billows that bordered both sides of the road. Minutes after an interlude of sunshine, it started to graupel.
Note: according to Wikipedia, Graupel refers to precipitation that forms when

The hushed stillness of a morning in late winter

supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm ball of rime. Strictly speaking, graupel is not the same as hail or ice pellets.
Neither snow nor rain, graupel is a phenomenon worth recognizing when it happens. That morning, it served as the perfect metaphor. Just as graupel is like snow but not the same thing, being alone is not being lonely. The thought filled me with inexplicable joy, as I realized that this was time to just breathe, snowshoe and soak up the beauty around me. The sky eventually cleared and turned from eggshell blue to deep indigo.
I reached the end of the hike having covered less territory than my son,  However, I felt that I’d been out for many, many miles. My take on being alone had flipped from morose to euphoric. In today’s noisy, overcrowded, frenetic world, solitude is increasingly a luxury. In the hours of one morning I came to realize that one can be alone without being lonesome, and that was a gift.

Join Elaine  for observations about adoption and life!

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Drifting

Tags

Alone, Escape, Novel in progress, Orphan, Southern India

The incoming tide delivered Arundati to the beach. Bruised, cold, and barely conscious, the child lay by smooth gray rocks, clumps of seaweed, shells and driftwood. In the half-light of late afternoon, she could make out only  dim shapes. When she tried to cry for help, a rasping sound came from deep within. She was too exhausted to form words.

Arundati struggled to rise to her feet, collapsed, moaned. By now she was breathing with effort. From a distance she was indistinguishable from other sodden heaps of the ocean’s detritus. Closer inspection revealed an Indian child. Tiny and delicate, she was clad in the shreds of a coarse muslin gown. She might have been five years old. It was hard to tell, as Indian children were much smaller than their counterparts in America or Europe. Waves lapped gently around the girl’s splayed arms and legs, revealing dark ugly bruises and dried blood from knife slashes. Apparently, her light brown skin had served as the canvas for a madman’s rage.
Floating, as if still in water, the child dreamed. It was the beginning of Holi, the festival of colors. She was her Mama and her Babu. They, along with aunties and uncles, were singing. Someone played a tambourine and shook bells.  She and her brother Shubi ran from tree to tree playing tag . Once you touched a tree’s bark, you were safe. If you got tagged before reaching the tree, you had to be the monkey with no home.
As the tide receded, the girl grew even colder. Shivering, she burrowed into the rocky sand, hoping for a bit of warmth. She had traveled a long way and would need many hours to regain her strength. Though she had been thrown into the ocean and presumed, dead by the shipmasters, Arundati somehow  lived. Night was falling.  She breathed in hungrily, filling her lungs with the damp, humid atmosphere of southern India, exhaling in raspy bursts. It would be a long night. Arundati prayed to Ganesha that it would not be her last…

Elaine’s novel Arundati begins in Tamil Nadu…Read an excerpt!