The Angels of April

Tags

Acupuncture, Adopted daughter, adoption, Angels, Dealing with Adoption, Granddaughter, Seasons

NOTE: Taking a brief blog-cation, as I’m immersed in novel-writing and ongoing downsizing of stuff. (See The Great Photo Purge, published last Monday. I’m happy to report that CLARA AND THE HAND OF GANESH is moving forward. Enjoy one of my favorite posts from the past, and have a beautiful April, a month with very special gifts.

“April is the cruelest month.” T. S. Eliot

April is full of dazzling sunlight and the earth seems greener

“April, the Angel of Months.” -Vita Sackville-West

April is full of surprises: one day sunny and mild, the next day snowy.
Here in northern New Mexico, April is luminously beautiful. Fruit trees blossom, our deciduous trees turn that electrifying shade known to painters as “sap green.”  Darkness diminishes as our own special Season of Light increases in strength.

Like many in the adoption world, I’ve learned to “flip the script.” On the one hand, I will never know what it is like to have blood-related family. My biological parents were a fact essential to my being in the world.  In the final analysis, however, they were distant figures who I ostensibly got to know, but actually merely encountered. On the other hand, I was fortunate to end up with wonderful adoptive parents.

It’s been said that every problem is also an opportunity. April has proved this to me. When I recently pulled a back muscle during a yoga class, the pain was excruciating. I went to Urgent Care, then to my regular medical doctor…nothing helped. It was hard to walk. All I could think about was how much my back and leg hurt. This led to a most fortunate discovery: a community acupuncture clinic. After five consecutive treatments, the pain had nearly vanished. What’s more, the clinic’s doctor (of Oriental Medicine) prescribed various supplements and minerals.  The alternative measures, in addition to relief from the injury, cured leg cramps and dietary imbalances. I was given a regimen of back-strengthening exercises. What might have been a disaster turned out to be a blessing.

Easter brought the best gift of all. My granddaughter, age 12, chose to visit me during her spring break. She is not a granddaughter I get to see very often, as her mother and father, my son, are divorced.

Angels can arrive as the young ones in our lives.

During the week this lively pre-teen spent with me, we went to see “Cinderella,” lunched at favorite restaurants, read together, toured the local botanical garden, visited art galleries and museums.  The paints and drawing supplies I’d put in her room were put to good use. I gave her my favorite Walter Farley Black Stallion books. She had such a good time, she wants to come back this summer for another visit.

Since the publication of The Goodbye Baby, I’ve heard from hundreds in the online adoption community—adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, men and women who are still searching for reunions with their original parents. This response has deepened my understanding of why people are seldom happy that they were adopted. Even though adoption may have been “for the best,” it leaves one with  the feeling of a shaky foundation. Despite all that, it is possible to create happiness.

Is April cruel or is it, as Sackville-West maintains, the angel of months? I’ll let you decide. In the meantime, the angels are there. Even for adoptees!

Join Elaine every other Monday for a look at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

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Adopted by the Cat

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Anticipation, Cats, Comfort, Dealing with Adoption, Hiking, Injury, Patience, Purring, recovery, Rescue

Cats make the best nurses. -Author Peggy vanHulsteyn

Cats create purr vibrations within a range of 20-140 Hz, known to be medically therapeutic.

A cat purring on your lap is more healing as the vibrations you are receiving are of our love and contentment. – St. Francis of Assisi

If you put a cat and a bunch of broken bones in the same room, the bones will heal.
-Old Veterinary Adage

*******************************************************************

Mr. Charlie Chapman,
Cat Practitioner

I’ve always loved Autumn in Santa Fe, New Mexico-my hometown since 1967. In the past I’ve hiked my way through October, November, and early December, enjoying the crisp air, golden aspen leaves, the first snowfalls. It was a time full of anticipation, as I looked forward to skiing and snowshoeing. Not this year, however. Today marks two months since a serious hiking accident that twisted and sprained the muscles of my torso and resulted in a lumbar vertebra stress fracture-> https://tinyurl.com/yb2ruz3k Since then, I’ve been consumed with recovery.
During this long, lonely recuperation process, a surprising hero has come to the rescue: Charlie Chapman, who’s promoted himself from ordinary house cat to NURSE CHAPMAN. Ever since I came home from the ER, broken in body and spirit, he’s been by my side. He’s watched as I’ve gone from barely being able to walk from room to room in the house, to leaving on short walks around the neighborhood. He’s witnessed my exhaustion at performing the simplest tasks. If I have to flop on the bed to rest, he naps next to me. His purrs often lull me to sleep. He cuddles on the side of me that’s currently suffering most. It’s as if he’s trying to inject cat love into my aching torso. He’s on duty all day, all night, week after week, month after month.

The doctor prescribed rest. Here! Follow my example.

The Neurologist predicted that it would take three months for my injury to heal, and in the meantime I’m trying everything to relieve the relentless pain: physical therapy, water workouts, Reiki, acupuncture, various medications and salves. They help temporarily but don’t seem to speed healing. What IS helping? My cat!
A couple weeks ago, I took “Nurse Chapman” to Cedarwood Animal Clinic for an ongoing gastrointestinal problem. The vet sent a stool specimen to the lab to see if there was an infection. Nothing showed up. Finally, it was concluded that kitty’s diarrhea was due to stress. I realized that by not getting better myself, I was upsetting HIM! At that point, I decided to act as though I were better, to do an extreme attitude adjustment. It was bad enough that I was under the weather. I didn’t want to make my cat ill as well. So far, it seems to be working. Chapman’s problem has cleared up; I can only hope that my vertebra is mending. The lumbar stress fracture one of those things that can and probably will knit back together. Hopefully, both Chapman and I will be well by the end of next month. Then he can go back to his role as adored house cat, not a nurse on duty 23/7, and I can go back to longer walks and HIKING.
That would be the PURR-fect Christmas present for us both!

****

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on the world as seen through adoption colored glasses.

 

Adopting the airwaves–>I’m on the radio today!

Tags

adoption, Dealing with Adoption, India, Novel-in-progress, The Writing Life, Walking

At 4 p.m. Mountain Time, 101.1 F.M. KSFR–Wednesday afternoon I’ll be talking about my six published books with show host Abigail Adler. Please tune in!

The Last Word

Wednesdays at 4:00 pm

• Hosted by Abigail Adler

• 

For people who read, for people who write, for people who want to publish, or for people who are just curious…What do writers think? What do writers really do?  Find out – listen to THE LAST WORD: Conversations with Writers every Wednesday at 4 pm with host, Abigail Adler

 

Once Again, It’s Poetry Monday

Tags

adoption, Beginnings, Dealing with Adoption, Endings, English Romantic Era, Finding Home, Harvest, John Keats, Poetry

It is possible that I may always be searching for adoption recovery. Does this quest never end? Maybe the yellow brick road leads nowhere? Perhaps, as Dorothy discovers

Escaping is sometimes the best way to find oneself.

in The Wizard of Oz, there is no place like home? In the case of the adoptee, it seems necessary to come home to oneself. To do that may require devious methods, even escaping. Today, I’m proposing that escapism is not only allowed but beneficial. Rather than further lamenting my lack of completing the adoption recovery “final exam,” I’m celebrating the end of warm days and the prelude to Winter. Revisiting a past literary love, I summon British poet John Keats.

John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821, created some of the most beautiful poetry of the Romantic Era. His tribute to Fall has been called “the most serenely flawless poem in English.” Read, imagine, and savor…

Autumn is a great time to lose oneself in the world of poetry.

Ode to Autumn
by John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Lost and Found

Tags

Above the clouds, adoption, adoptive parents, birthparents, Dealing with Adoption, Gratitude, Hiking, Mother/Son, Mountain weather, Planning, Raven's Ridge, Santa Fe National Forest, Winsor Trail

“Not all who wander are lost.” -J. R.R. Tolkien

(Note: But some are. The good news is that even if lost, the lucky ones will be found.)

My 40-year-old son  was visiting me for the weekend. Since we both love hiking, we

A brief period of sun before the clouds lowered.

decided to climb to Deception and Lake Peaks, located in Santa Fe National Forest, both above 12,000 feet. We had just one day available for the hike. This particular Saturday was iffy, threatening rain and cold mountain top temperatures. An early start was mandatory. Fortified by Starbucks, we drove to Santa Fe Ski Basin and were forging up Winsor Trail shortly after 7:30 a.m.

A few hours after embarking, we’d traversed Raven’s Ridge and were above the treeline. The temperature had dropped from 50 degrees to below 40. Wind picked up; Cloud level lowered. Reaching Lake Peak, which is just beyond Deception, involved scrambling over a rocky ledge. Because my son is stronger and faster, I told him that Deception would be my final destination. I’d wait while he went on to the more technical destination of Lake Peak. Then, when he’d gone the difficult extra half mile, he’d turn around, come back and we’d reunite forces.

He instructed me to wait on a boulder near the grove of trees next to the end of Raven’s Ridge and at the base of Deception. He’d be back, he promised, in 30 minutes or less. Though this seemed like a fine plan, that’s when the trouble began.

Deception Peak lives up to its name.

You might say it was my fault. Instead of just sitting on a boulder near the grove of trees, I decided to keep warm by temporarily joining some hikers who were headed toward Lake Peak. My plan was, after the 20-minute trek to keep warm, to take the same path down to the tree line and wait for my son.

At the top of Deception Peak, all paths are just slight demarcations in the rocky dirt, one resembling another. Shivering from the cold wind and realizing that it had been MORE than 30 minutes since I was to meet my son, I mistakenly started down a path that led to another ridge, NOT Raven’s Ridge. Thus began a scary interlude of searching. I tried my smart phone. No voice reception. Panicking, I decided to start sending texts. Here, transcribed, is our broken conversation….

ME: I’m here at the top
SON: Top of what? Went past treeline yelling and I didn’t see you
ME: I went back down and I’m headed toward the trees on the path…go down the path
ME: I;m headed right to the trees where you told me to wait…down the path
SON: I am already down a ways. Head down and I’ll wait
ME: Okay, I’m coming down
SON: Make sure you are on the right path. Stay on the ridge
I’m down about a half mile on but where it starts to go up again…

At this point, texting failed, and I was practically running, not at all sure I was headed toward the right landscape. When you’re lost in the wild, everything can begin to look alike.

Then a minor miracle! It came in the form of two other hikers, total strangers, who were there when I needed help. The first hiker was a man with a long white beard who looked as though he’d stepped from the last century.

“I’m headed toward Raven’s Ridge,” he said, after I’d explained my plight. Another five minutes and we were at the grove of trees where I’d been told to wait. I learned that the stranger’s name was Paul, then hugged and thanked him for being a Good Samaritan. He went on toward Lake Peak and I hurried toward the path that my son was already partially down. Another hiker appeared from nowhere, a young man named Jason and a few of his friends.
“Are you Elaine,” he called out.
“Yes, I’m sort of lost and I’m looking for my son.”
“He’s looking for you,” said the young man. He escorted me a half mile down the trail where my son, who’d hiked two extra miles, was awaiting. It turned out that Jason and his pals were doing field work to qualify for the local Search and Rescue Team. After thanking him profusely, I made a feeble joke:
“Well, at least I gave you a case study.”

My son was relieved but furious. As we hurried down the trail, it started to rain. “I

At the top of Deception, Lake Peak in the background.

can’t leave you alone for a minute,” he grumbled. “You’re a terrible hiker.” Thoroughly chilled, we reached the car in record time. Fortunately, my son’s a forgiving soul and reneged on his decision never to hike with me again.

In retrospect, the episode reminded me of my adoption, of how I’d been lost but then found. It was fate that my birthmother was not able to be a parent. Figuratively and literally, she lost me. My adoptive parents, by a series of fortuitous events, found me and my brother and provided us with a stable home and good childhood. Above all, what I gained from this memorable day, was a sense of gratitude. Oh yes, and this as well: follow directions. and pay attention to the landscape.

Portal to the Past

Tags

adoption, Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Back to the Past, Dealing with Adoption, Expanding horizons, Family trees, Randall Davey, roots, Self-realization

por·tal
ˈpôrdl/
noun
noun: portal; plural noun: portals

1.
    a doorway, gate, or other entrance, especially a large and elaborate one.
    synonyms:    doorway, gateway, entrance, exit, opening; More
    door, gate, entryway;
    formal egress
    “the portals to the palace were heavily guarded”
    2.
    Computing
    an Internet site providing access or links to other sites.

*********************************************************************

My granddaughter agreed that Randall Davey’s home was really cool!

 As an adult adoptee, I agonized about not possessing an authentic family tree: biological roots, a list of same-DNA folks to whom I could trace my origins, blood relations. How to invent your own family tree? A forest of trees? A juniper that sends its roots so deep into the earth that it cannot be easily uprooted? Pretend that the whole family tracing mania is a waste of time and really doesn’t matter? No, no, and again no.
Of course ones origins matter. To pretend otherwise is unsustainable. No matter how far my adoptee recovery journey takes me, I’ll wake up every morning and still be adopted. However, the issue no longer causes that dark night of the soul that plagued me for so many years. Life is simply too short to agonize over the past. I’ve decided to transcend the question and open my mind to studying the pasts of others.
 Last weekend, I visited the estate of the early twentieth painter Randall Davey, one of the most colorful figures in the cultural history of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was a prolific painter, son of a well-heeled east coast family who wanted their son to become a lawyer or an architect. Instead, Davey studied painting in New York and moved to Santa Fe to become a full time artist. He bought 135 acres of land at the end of Upper Canyon Road and converted an old mill to his home and studio.
He was a bon vivant, fast driver, musician, married to first Florence and then Isabel. Very much a local character. Davey died in an automobile accident, en route to see a girlfriend, near Baker, California on November 7 at the age of 77. His son William and Kate Cullum (sister of Isabel) bequeathed the property to the Audubon Society for their national headquarters. The Audubon Center & Sanctuary has preserved the home of Randall Davey and opens it to the public once a week. Last Friday I traveled to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and signed up to see the estate.
A guided tour through the artist’s home transports one to another era. It’s as though Mr. Davey would come back at any moment

The artist’s touch graces every room.

Furnishings, paintings on the walls, books, studio and paints – all seem to be frozen in time. The highlight of my August, the Randall Davey excursion was a reminder that adoption recovery allows an expanding  of ones horizons. Pondering the pasts of others, I’ve learned, can sometimes prove more worthwhile than pondering ones own!

Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Are You Listening?

Tags

adoption, birthmother, Children's Author, Communication, Dealing with Adoption, Guest Posting, Personal development

Note from Elaine: Adoption issues, my theme for the past several years, has allowed me to focus beyond “recovery” and move toward ways of reaching a more fulfilling life. To listen more to others and less to the same tired song of myself. Guest blogger Pat Goehe, past contributor to The Goodbye Baby, knows a lot about the art of communication.

If you’re always talking, how can you hear?

*********
ARE YOU LISTENING?- PART ONE
To begin this posting, I must tell you that over the years I have taught semester courses in listening. Additionally, the numerous courses in Interpersonal Communication that we all teach in my field contain major units in listening. Why must I tell you this? Because it is extremely difficult for me to narrow the topic down to briefer comments. But I will try!
Whether it’s a class or a speech I usually give demonstrations (because I continue to be an actress!) of three commonly observed interactions where supposedly we are listening. First we have what the psychologist Tournier called “dialogue of the deaf”; others refer to it as “talking past each other.” What happens here are people who believe they are communicating with each other, but often a person will ask a question , then is immediately formulating another question before the recipient can complete responding to the first inquiry. Another example of this type of listening problem is where one person in the conversation is talking. The listener hears a “trigger word or phrase”. Example: Sue says “I made the greatest recipe last night. It was….” And before she can complete this statement, Mary says “Oh my gosh! I forgot to take out the frozen chops I’m planning to fix tonight”. While both Sue and Mary think they are listening to each other, they are engaged in the dialogue of the deaf.
Next we have the type of listening where one person, or maybe both, listens only to dispute/argue whatever has been said. That is debating, not listening!

Tomorrow: PART TWO of “Are You Listening”

Pat Goehe is a children’s author and birthmother. Her newest book is Annemarie and Boomer wait for Grandma.

Adopting Simplicity

Tags

adoption, Dealing with Adoption, Garage Sales, Simplifying, Stuff

The past few weeks in this high desert city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, temperatures

When customers weren’t buying, we ended up trading with one another.

soared from the sixties to the eighties. Spring suddenly turned into Summer. Along with newly blooming roses, colorful signs for neighborhood garage sales began popping up. Like many others, I’d been saving all manner of possessions to “repurpose” them after our long, cold winter ended.
Yep, you guessed it — I decided to join neighbors in staging a two-day yard sale. It happened last weekend. Labeling, putting up signs and balloons, advertising in local papers, schlepping everything over to my friend’s house…it was a ton of work. True, a lot sold and I made a decent amount of money. Toward the end of the sale, I simply gave a lot away. We all did. But, to be honest, it was exhausting and ridiculously time-consuming. I vowed to quit letting stuff creep into my house.
.
 Every possession, it’s been said, is a responsibility. Even after the recent sale, I still have too many books, clothes, shoes, housewares, books, office supplies, garden supplies…too much of EVERYTHING.
Writing my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption gave me

Hard to believe no one wanted my Salton Yogurt Maker.

the reality check I needed. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could also be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There is no turning back.
Nature abhors a vacuum; my perpetual need to purge is living proof. But, I will gain the upper hand! Just as I’ve replaced my old negative thinking about adoption (healthy acceptance is the aim), I’m revising my attitude toward possessions. De-acquisition-ing is my new goal. Divesting. Streamlining. Simplifying.

Less time organizing and caring for things and more time to simply LIVE. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:
*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL

Join Elaine most Mondays for reflections on Adoption and Life.

Marvelous May

Tags

Adopted daughter, Aorta, Christus St. Vincent Hospital, Dealing with Adoption, Friendship, Gratitude, Operation Recovery

The month of May casts her magic spell as spring’s promise is finally fulfilled.
 – Sarah Ban Breathnach

As an adult adoptee, I’ve always looked at the world through what I call “adoption colored glasses.”  In my experience, we adopted ones seem to invite drama and extremes into our lives, maybe even more than those raised by their original parents. Take, for example, a milestone event that befell me three Mays ago. One of my worst challenges—life-threatening surgery—turned into a blessing.

May is a time to appreciate everyday epiphanies.

May is magical for me not only because of spring’s blossoming, but because it is the month that kept me alive. I was given a new lease on life. Allow me to explain…

The surprises began in late May. Just as I was retiring from my job as elementary school librarian for Santa Fe Public Schools, I contracted an intestinal flu that resulted in multiple visits to the doctor. Blaming my “bug” on elementary school germs, I assumed that I would eventually get better. Despite antibiotics, however, I felt worse by the week. My primary care physician ordered a CT scan, and the scan revealed a seriously advanced abdominal aortic aneurism. It would have to be repaired; time was of the essence. A few days after the diagnosis, I had surgery.
I vividly recall operation day. I felt a deep sense of impending doom. As I traveled into the surgical theater on a gurney, I noticed all the details—shiny surfaces, lots of white. Soon, anesthesia took over, and I was OUT. Working for several hours, the brilliant surgical duo Doctors Poseidon Varvitsiotis and Gerald Weinstein replaced my defective aortic section with a dacron stint, sutured it in place, and sewed me back together.
My next moment of consciousness was in the Intensive Care Unit, where I would spend the next two and ½ days. Despite exhaustion and a morphine-induced stupor, I was amazed and grateful. My life had been saved!
After six days at Christus St. Vincent’s, I was allowed to go home. Friends rallied, a different pal spending the night in my guest room for a couple weeks, just to make sure I was OK. For a month, I was very feeble and could get about only with the help of a walker. It was a chore to eat, to dress, to do anything at all. Following doctor’s orders, I took a siesta every afternoon. When I was at last able, I took a daily half-hour walk outdoors. Along with resting and walking, I edited, proofreading the final galleys of my memoir, The Goodbye Baby. Though later than I’d intended, the book was finally ready for publication.
So, my surgical event is history. The operation and ensuing months of recovery made me realize that, in the big picture, it does not matter if I meet personal deadlines exactly as I’d envisioned. After my brush with mortality, I adopted a new attitude. Every day, I celebrate the gift of life. And it all happened in the month of May.

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on adoption and life!

Traveling the Chamisa Road

Tags

adoption, Chamisa, Dealing with Adoption, recovery, Restoration, Split at the Root, the goodbye baby, Walking

Chamisa, also called Rubber Rabbitbrush: a perennial deciduous Native shrub, with aromatic, blue-green-grey, feathery foliage in Summer and dense clusters of bright-yellow flowers in early Fall. Deciduous shrub, 3-5 ft. tall & wide. Can prune strongly – blooms on new growth. Sow anytime.

October brings Chamisa into full bloom.

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Though I loved growing up in northern Virginia, with its lovely green deciduous trees and grassy lawns and hills, I willingly adapted to living in a dry land. Here in my adopted state of New Mexico I find myself surrounded by Chamisa. It is scruffy and hardy; it attempts to cover the hard dirt fields, it is everywhere. Though occasionally planted in gardens or used in landscaping, Chamisa’s favorite place is bordering roads.
Many Octobers ago when I first moved to the Southwest, this ubiquitous plant was abloom with small yellow blossoms. I made bouquets and put several throughout the house. Soon I was sneezing my head off. Lesson learned. Too pungent to be used in the house, Chamisa is best left outdoors.
This lowly “rabbitbrush” seems to symbolize the adoptee’s journey of forgiving the past and being in now.  Not resignation, but rather, acceptance. The “Chamisa Road” is about moving beyond invisible wounds, those injuries that are hardest to heal. It’s about traveling from “how to have what you want” to “how to want what you have”
In my experience, the wounds of adoption may never really go away; they simply change form. I’ve written about this in my confessional, The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption.  Similarly, in her excellent memoir Split at the Root, Catana Tully indicates that restoration may be a lifelong process. The “wounded heart” of the adoptee overrides intellectual decisions. At any time, the feelings of being not quite OK, of not belonging may reappear. They rear their ugly heads and must be stared down.
Adoption recovery, it turns out, is not accomplished by simply writing a memoir and then declaring “OK, I’m healed now.” It is a Sisyphusian undertaking that must be faced afresh every morning.  It is about walking The Chamisa Road.