Letting Go of Letters

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoptee, Archives, Correspondence, Decluttering, Letters, memories, Nostalgia

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
January, a great month for new beginnings. Inspired by Marie Kondo, queen of the Declutter World, I once again vow to sweep through the entire house and prune the excess, reduce the redundancies, eliminate the irrelevant. It’s not the first time I’ve embarked a declutter campaign, but this time, I am being non-negotiable. My constant mantra: OHIO (Only Handle it Once). Years of selling stuff at neighbors’ yard sales, donating to charities, giving things away: I still felt hopelessly cluttered. The “things” grew back, multiplied, maybe even reproduced at night while I was sleeping.
Correspondence collections are close to my heart, harder to part with than books, photos, or just about anything else. Because it would be tough, I decided to start there. I recently tackled a column of banker boxes that resided in a closet, unopened, for several decades. I’d do my heirs a favor by going through, keeping a precious few letters, and taking the bulk of them to the recycle bin.
As an adult adoptee, I’ve always believed that the best way to know where to go, one must see where one has been.
“The past is not dead. It is not even past.” —William Faulkner
Not surprisingly, most archived letters were from my parents, both biological and adoptive. Giovanni Cecchini, the birthfather I got to see three times after I was adopted, was a Navy photographer during WWII. When he and his new wife Margaret moved to Amelia Island, Florida, he became a well-known photographer in the town of Fernandina Beach. He gardened and photographed for many years before his death in 1998. I travel yearly to Amelia Island to visit Margaret. On 12/29/91, Giovanni wrote “Another letter from me — lucky you (I guess).”
My birthmother Velma and I had a long correspondence, and I came across her epistle of 2/13/94. She wrote “Dearest Daughter, I had to peek at my Valentine on Friday (I sent one to her every February) but put it away until Monday…Your four parents are very proud of how you grew up to be beautiful with many talents.”
My adoptive dad’s WWII letters provided the material for my book From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard (published in 2002 by Texas Tech University Press, due to be re-issued by Pajarito Press in 2020). He also wrote to me every Sunday until his death in 1997. His letters were filled with reports of his life with my adoptive mom Reva, observations about everything from world events to the weather. On February 18, 1990, he wrote “Dearest Elaine: This week has featured several wonderful springlike days, but today and to some extent yesterday were more like typical February weather. It has been dull, overcast, and just cold enough to be raw and uncomfortable outside — I know, I tried walking around the lake and even the Canadian geese looked discomfited.”
I am reading through the boxes of letters, keeping a precious few but relegating most of the epistles to the recycling bin. Typed and penned words from the past made time fall away. I was reminded of a time when letter-writing was the way to keep in touch. Those missives kept us close despite the miles in between. Now, with Email, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and other channels of communication, letters are nearly obsolete. With their passing, we will have lost something irreplaceable. On the other hand, think of that person who’d love to hear from you, not instantly. Perhaps it’s not too late to revive the custom of letter-writing.
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Join Elaine once or twice a month on Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Do you enjoy writing letters? Comments are welcome!

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

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Goodbye, old Home

Tags

adoption, Beginnings, Endings, memories, Moving, Nostalgia, Timeliness

I’m saying goodbye to my home of 45 years. Hard for me believe, but I’m selling the house that’s taken care of me all these decades. The housing market here in Santa Fe, New Mexico is excellent. I can do without five extra rooms to heat and clean, without two acres to tend and without closets for a family of four. Last month I located a nearby townhouse, still in my same neighborhood, but with charm and virtually no maintenance, I decided the time had come. My realtor and I made an offer and it was accepted. The die is cast…

I’ve loved it but I’m leaving.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve been endlessly decluttering. Or at least since January. Purging and more purging, but still way too much of everything. But the need to upgrade my current house to put it on the market: that’s a motivator. As the saying goes, I am putting the pedal to the metal.

Time is of the essence. My life has become all about de-acquisition. Packing to move. Room by room, I am emptying every shelf and cabinet. But then there’s the question: “What to do with EVERYTHING?” A garage sale here and there, some things put on consignment. A lot of donating. Once I started to dig, I learned who can use what. Barkin Attic, a charitable resale store that benefits homeless animals, has been wonderful. So far, I’ve given them two desks, a large bookcase, two couches and boxes of kitchenwares. The Barkin volunteer staff is very professional. Two muscular people and a U Haul truck arrive exactly when scheduled, give me a receipt for tax purposes and – voila- the stuff is gone!

Every possession is a responsibility.

Casa Familia, a local homeless shelter, has also been the recipient of my excess. Perfectly fine clothing, in good condition. Office supplies, cleaning stuff, cds. The public library in Los Alamos, NM, has a thriving Friends of the Library resale store. A volunteer named Kevin drove here to pick up 100 of my favorite books. Though it hurt to see them leave, I loved the fact that someone else would read and appreciate them and that the money made by the Library Friends would help.

Speaking of friends, last weekend, Richard and Kathy came over to help me pack. We all worked for hours and finally had to take a break. Richard relaxed in the recliner and I told him that he could have it. Turns out, the couple had been thinking of getting a recliner, and mine (barely used) was perfect. It fit in their car and off it went. One less item to shed.

Still mountains of possessions to review, metaphorical miles to go before I sleep…so I’ll bring this post to a close. The next yard sale will be Saturday, August 24. We’ll offer rock-bottom prices and some giveaways. Wish you could be here!

Homeless and a Vet

Tags

142 General Hospital, Adopted daughter, adoption, Alzheimer's, Calcutta, China-Burma-India (CBI), homelessness, memories, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, University of Virginia, Veterans, World War II

An icy wind chilled the March day. Dressed in torn jeans and a threadbare blue parka, the tall, blond beggar kept watch at the grocery store entrance. In his gloveless hands he held a crude cardboard sign that read, “HELP.” At his feet was a second sign, “HOMELESS VET – Will work for food.” Exiting, I handed over a few dollars from my wallet. The man smiled, thanked me, and asked, “Do you have an extra blanket? Someone stole mine last night.”
“No,” I replied, “but I’ll try to bring one next time I shop.” Of course he probably wouldn’t be there, I thought ruefully. The man’s face though young, was deeply etched with worry lines. A handsome face, old before its time.
I cried as I drove home. The cold spring day was a carbon copy of the time I opened the dusty box of my father’s World War II love letters. He had been a proud veteran, and in a way he had become homeless, and now he was gone. I blamed my melancholy on the homeless man, but it was deeper than that. The tears were for my father Richard, who had died of Alzheimer’s Disease decades earlier. At the end of his life, he was sentenced to the dementia ward of a nursing facility, shut away from my mother, his children, and all he’d known. Like the hapless grocery store sentry, he also was “homeless and a vet.”
We like to think that those we love will pass away quietly and with dignity. Certainly my father did not deserve such a harsh ending to his exemplary life. Richard, so dutiful and devoted during World War II, a distinguished college professor, was now a man without a country. Mentally alone and bewildered, he might as well have been back on the streets of Calcutta. Renamed Kolkata, that teeming city was where he’d served for 18 months as a clinical psychologist in the 142nd General Hospital. He wrote to his beloved Reva, my mother, every day. Years later, I would turn those letters into a book. Unlike his overseas stint during the war, however, this isolation could not be relieved by writing letters.

My father documented his Calcutta experience by writing daily letters to mom.

As a light snow began falling, I somehow managed to get home and put the groceries away as I pondered my father’s leaving. With Alzheimer’s Disease, we lose our loved ones before their physical deaths. Triggered by the homeless vet, my thoughts travelled back to the last semi-lucid talk I’d had with dad.
For years, I flew every spring from New Mexico to see my parents in Virginia. On the morning of this particular visit, I found my father Richard dressed to go to the UVa School of Education. For 35 years, he’d been a professor. Prepared to teach his classes, he wore slacks, coat and tie, nice-looking oxfords, and on his balding head, a dapper felt hat. Only there was something wrong with this picture. My father had retired eleven years earlier.
In the bizarre manner of someone no longer in touch with reality, he sat in a livingroom chair, staring into space. As the saying goes, “all dressed up and nowhere to go.”
My beloved dad was a shadow of himself, a hollow mockery. Mostly silent and confused, he expressed an occasional insightful comment. My heart aching, I sat before him, hoping to communicate. He did not know the Me of now but remembered the orphan I’d been when he and my mother decided to adopt me.
“I remember you as a little girl,” he said. “You were running around and around, like a wild pony.”
Memories have it in their power to hurt or heal us. This recollection cheered me. I was five years old when I first saw the man who would become my father. After World War II ended, my brother and I were shuffled from foster homes to relatives, a haphazard arrangement at best, and we were officially “up for adoption.” Apparently sensing that I could trust the kindly man who’d come to the unwanted children’s home, I put on my best “Please Adopt Me” act. Reva’s health was fragile, and they’d planned on one adopted infant rather than two older children (My brother Johnny was 17 months old.) I imagined Richard, his heart full of love, sweeping aside his misgivings and agreeing to take us home.
Later during that same Virginia visit, Reva said that Richard liked to go for walks but needed accompaniment. Outdoors we went, but soon it became clear that he couldn’t walk more than a hundred yards. As we sat to rest on a wooden bench, he began talking about Calcutta and his work with rehabilitating soldiers suffering from shell shock.
I wanted to shout, “Dad, it’s me, your daughter Elaine.” I wanted him to be there with me. But he was too far away and I was too late. We walked very slowly back to the retirement home, our arms locked. He had, it seemed, grown smaller. He felt light as a child.
A character in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust says “…one has to be very determined to withstand – to stand up to – India. There are many ways of loving India, many things to love her for: the scenery, the history, the poetry, the music, and indeed the physical beauty of the men and women. One should never allow oneself to become softened like Indians by an excess of feeling, because the moment that happens, the moment one exceeds ones measure, one is in danger of being dragged to the other side.”
My father was on the other side, floating further and further away from me. I could not bring him back.
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Elaine Pinkerton’s From Calcutta with Love – The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard was originally published by Texas Tech University Press in 2002. Currently, the book is being acquired for republication by Pajarito Press. You’re invited to comment and to share your adoption stories on The Goodbye Baby website.

BOOKS and My Father Richard~Adopting the Past (Part 2)

Tags

adoptee, adoptive parents, Alice in Wonderland, Bedtime Stories, Books, Family history, memories, reading

My father at age five. Even then he was a bibliophile.

As one who was adopted at age five, I grew up with two family trees -1. the biological genealogy and 2. the relatives who comprised my adoptive family. Today I’m talking a look at family history from the adoptive side. This is the second installment of a tribute to my late adoptive dad. In my new home, my brother (adopted with me) and I were treated like royalty. Our father Richard read to us every night. I recall listening to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. No one had read to me before. I’d never seen a book. What luxury it was to fall asleep to my dad’s deep, rich baritone. I would have been happy if the book had gone on forever.

All his life my father read eclectically, enormously, exuberantly. An English teacher for many years, a professor of guidance and counseling for most of his career, he collected mysteries, history, poetry, biography, and the classics. My brother and I were encouraged to indulge our love of books. Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, we somehow built up our own book

collections.

My mom would outlive my dad by several years, and she diligently sent me not only

My dad pursued photography as well as collecting books.

his World War Two letters (collected in a volume titled FromCalcuttaWithLove), she also packed up his books and sent them from Virginia to my home in New Mexico.
I’ll never forget that last cardboard box of literary treasures. Inside were leather-bound copies of The Pickwick Papers, The Brothers Karamazov, Maupassant Short Stories, Twain Short Stories, Tom Sawyer Abroad, A Tale of Two Cities, The Trial and The Works of Poe.

Mark Twain was always one of Richard’s favorite authors. Looking through the Twain volume, I saw on the inside cover, his handwritten “7/28/32,” the date he’d acquired the book. It’s no accident that when I was earning my Masters degree in American Literature, I chose to write my thesis on Twain. Specifically, I wrote on Determinism in Puddn’head Wilson.

Turning to an underscored section in Tom Sawyer Abroad, I read the following quote by Tom:

“As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won’t take people’s advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them.”

Tom’s words so perfectly reflected Richard’s homespun, down-to-earth attitude toward life that I laughed through my tears. A bittersweet reminder of the wonderful man he was.
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Join Elaine for Monday Blog Posts on adoption and life. Please check out her archived

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

posts and feel free to add your comments. She is currently seeking first-hand accounts by other adoptees. Subject to review, she will publish your submission as a guest post. For more information, send an e-mail query to deardiaryreadings@me.com

BOOKS and My Father Richard ~Adopting the Past

Tags

Adaptation, adoptee, adoption, adoptive parents, Bedtime Comfort, Books, Enrichment, Family history, memories, reading

 I grew up with two family trees -1. biological 2. adoptive.

My father at age five. Even then he was a bibliophile.

Years after being adopted, I met my birthparents, and that was helpful if not completely rewarding. I was fortunate to end up with my adoptive parents (family tree #2), and in that vein I’m talking a look at family history from the adoptive side.

My father died on a May morning in Virginia, the state where I grew up and he had lived for 40 years. Richard Leonard Beard was my hero, my role model and — after I moved from Virginia to New Mexico in the 1960s — my favorite pen pal. Before the cruel dementia that ravaged his mind and memory, he was a brilliant and much-loved college professor first at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and then at the University of Virginia (UVa). Of the many gifts my father imparted to me, I cherish most his love of books.

Since that sad, raw Tuesday when Richard gave up his battle for life, I’ve savored memories of this wonderful man. None have been more heartwarming than those provided as I go through his books, which my mother sent me, carton by carton, over a period of three months.

My father was a lover of the written word, a true bibliophile. The oldest of four

Fifties Family -Growing up in university towns.

children growing out in rural northern Ohio, he was the only one who went to college. The family moved from a farm in Hancock County to Findlay, Ohio, and there for the first time he had access of a library. He started reading voraciously and never stopped. In high school, young Richard was president of 38 clubs, including the book club, the drama team, and the debating club. Ultimately, my father became professor of guidance and counseling, before which he was a high school English teacher. His love of books was conveyed to a multitude of fortunate students, and later, to me.

Times were tough for my biological mother, and-never mind books- she had enough trouble housing and feeding me and my brother. In fact, she couldn’t, and that’s when my new Mom and Dad came into the picture. I can’t recall seeing a book before my “rescue” from grim foster homes and what I considered an orphan’s life.

In the wonderful new home where my brother and I were treated like royalty rather than unwanted burdens, I recall our father reading to us every night. There must have been other bedtime stories, but my most vivid memory is of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Night after night, I would fall asleep to my father’s rich baritones, with visions of the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Jabberwock. He instilled in me a passion for reading and transformed what had been a bleak, booklets childhood. I grew up rich in words, finding through books fantasy, adventure, edification and a world apart that seemed to make up for the first five years of my life.

During the mid-1950s, In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Richard established an

Ahead of his time, Dr. Beard spearheaded a book TV program in the 50s.

educational TV program in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, based on books and reading. He was the host and I was a frequent guest. In the meantime, his personal book collection was growing. In thirty years, it would reach over 5,000 volumes. (To be Continued)

Next Week: “Books and My Father Richard,” Part II. Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on adoption, adapting, and life.

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Adoption Blues, Invisible wounds, memories, Poetry, recovery, Robert Frost

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

It seems that no matter how far I’ve come, the ghosts of my “adoption past,” unbidden, come back to haunt me. What to do about the attack? I realized that it might be a good idea to do some re-naming. Instead of “Blue Monday,” I’m choosing to call today “Poetry Monday.” The choice of whether or not to go with the painful memories or to push through them and then move on is always available. Pushing, shoving, dislodging, climbing up out of the depths. Along those lines, I offer you a poem that has provided me with great solace throughout the years…
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Do you recall roads not taken in your life? What choices and twists of fate have shaped your destiny?

Remembering Cindy

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptation, adoption, Burnt Mountain, Cindy Bellinger, Dear Diary Readings, Los Alamos, memories, Paths, Santa Fe Film Festival

It’s been said that we do not truly die until the last person on Earth who remembers us is gone. -Unknown

On the long path of “adoption recovery,” I’ve learned a few things. One of the most important is this: memories have the power to hurt or to heal. At the loss of a friend who dies, I’m heartbroken and grief-stricken. These are demoralizing blows, painful and bitter. On the other hand, those who I’ve loved are in my heart. Even though they may be physically gone, the departed can still be part of our lives. They can even teach us, which is the focus of today’s posting.

Cindy reading about an old high school flame

My friend Cindy Bellinger died of cancer when she was barely sixty. A modern-day Renaissance woman, Cindy wrote, rode horses, taught, lived a fiercely independent life, and, a year before she died, fell in love with a wonderful man who became her soulmate. Recently, as I was cleaning my office, I came across a manuscript that I’d totally forgotten about. It was a draft of Cindy’s book Not a Rock Out of Place, and I recalled editing it for her and writing a recommendation. Before many people saw the final version, published by her company Blue Mesa Books, Cindy slipped away.

While living in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1980s, Cindy walked a forest path near Burnt Mountain. For four years, she did this nearly every day. In her “Pre-Amble” she writes, “The path that traversed Burnt Mountain didn’t take me deep into the wilds, but it brought me into some extraordinary happenings… On Burnt Mountain–with its trees, birds, butterflies, and grass–moments sparkled with the simplest wisdom, or the darkest truth. I’d take a question beneath a ponderosa and learn how to find the answer. I’d sit on a rock and the anger that accompanied me would melt away.”

Another aspect of Cindy that I cherish was her generously supportive nature. Cindy helped me during the first decade of this century by participating in my “Dear Diary” staged readings, benefit performances which we produced as fund-raisers for Santa Fe Film Festival. We held “cringe readings,” sharing selected excerpts from our adolescent diaries: Cindy, as she read from old diaries, was a star. Even as a young girl, she wrote with style and exquisite wordsmithing.

Dear Diary Readings 2009

I’ve adopted Cindy’s habit of walking the same path nearly every day. My route is not through a forest but up Sun Mountain. Thank you, Cindy, for inspiring me. And thank you as well for the reminding me not to wait to express appreciation. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you. Do it today.

Still Counting my Blessings

Tags

adoptee, appreciation, emergence, Forgiveness, Gratitude, memories, Personal evolution

The following excerpt is from The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about

Saying Goodbye to the “language of loss”

Adoption (Published 2012). After vowing to live life with an “Attitude of Gratitude,” a year later finds me still a rough draft, a work-in-progress. However, I’m closer to what philosopher Eckhardt Tolle describes as “becoming who I really am.”
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The younger me is teaching the older model. As I review the third decade of diaries, I face a few harsh realities: I never found the love of my life, or rather, I did, but never realized it at the time. I was not able to continue running into my senior years, much as I hoped to become one of the “ancient marathoners.” I’d not been exemplary as a parent, despite the fact that I aimed to do an excellent job. I’d often been unrealistic and impractical. Grudges at times had consumed me.
Forgiveness is hugely important in my recovery. I have compassion for the Elaine of the 1970s, trying to please everyone as a wife, to excel as a mother. I felt empathy for the Elaine of the 80s and 90s, living with an abusive job and an equally humiliating relationship, working so hard to do and be everything. I revisited the depression suffered during my writer/editor career at a national scientific laboratory. Despite the outward vestiges of success, at work I still felt like the outcast on the playground. My diaries revealed descriptions of higher-ranking women colleagues and their competitive dressing—silk suits, white stockings, and constant new outfits. There was no way I could match their expenditures, and it made me feel like I could never measure up. Those bosses, I realized, were, to my mind, grown up versions of the snooty high school cheerleaders, the Record Club girls whose families had more money than mine. Even as I recall my angst, I ask, “Did I waste my youth? Did I squander all those years? What else could I have done?” At least I survived. There’s still time to finally get it right.
Underlying everything else, I hope that my memoir serves as an adoptee’s guide to “How to Want What You Have.”