My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

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

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

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

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

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My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

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

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

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

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

The Joy and the Sadness

Tags

"lost daughters", adoptee, Benefits, birthmother, Keeping Positive, Regrets, reunions

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final installment of birthmother Pat Goehe’s

Pat’s life is now enhanced by both daughter and a new granddaughter

accounting of a reunion with the daughter she’d never met. Like layers of an onion, each addition to her story revealed more of what’s “underneath.” Pat’s constructive attitude and refusal to let “might have been” hold her back: these are an inspiration to me, an adoptee whose reunion with my birthmother was actually not fulfilling. I have learned a great deal from “journeying” with Pat, and it is our hope that her story is an inspiration to those still searching – lost sons and daughter, birthmothers and fathers, adoptive parents or parents-to-be.

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

In Pat’s words…
Some of the most difficult things I had to, and actually at times, continue to have to deal with about this whole experience relate to my decision not to see my baby after she was born.

First, the Doctor involved told me I had the choice of whether to see the baby after she was born or not.  He discussed that seeing the baby for the time I was in the hospital might make it more difficult to give her up.  I thought about this decision for some time.  Knowing myself as I did, I knew if I saw her, I probably couldn’t give her up.  So I elected not to see her.   When she found me many years later, one of the questions she asked me was, “Where was I from the time you gave birth to when my adoptive parents brought me home?”
It seemed that this was very important to her.  But, what could I tell her?  Only what I had been told.  The baby would be with someone for a short period of time and then given to the adoptive couple.  But where or who that was, I did not know.

Also, the fact that I never saw her, haunted me later because of the “lack of bonding” for her.  I remember at one point a nurse started to bring her into my room and I immediately said, “No, I’m not to see her.”
In retrospect, I don’t know if I would have changed that.  I do believe I would have had the difficulty giving her up.  But seeing Linda as she asked that, I could tell how horrible that must have been.  No bonding, abandonment issues, and on and on.

The social worker came to my hospital room before I was dismissed and before she got the baby to deliver her to a home until adoption.  While I have always been an emotional person, I was not prepared for the surge of emotion which came over me.  I cried steadily with the social worker there for what must have been close to an hour.

I moved on with my life and was content that I had done the right thing, and that my daughter was going to a family who couldn’t have children.  I was giving them a wonderful gift.  It was not until I had the experience in my workshop that I thought anything else.

The only advice I might give to birth mothers would be that we make the best decision we can at the time.  Then we live with it and deal with whatever happens in the future.  One can’t go back and “redo” that decision.  I was fortunate to have, so to speak, a “happy ending”.  From Linda’s work with ALMA (Adoption Liberty Movement Association), I know that isn’t always the case.  She told me some very sad stories.  On one occasion when I was in LA she was to meet with a birth mother and asked if I’d be willing to go along as well.  I agreed.  This Mom’s story was the daughter found her.  She had sent a letter and  a picture and wanted to meet her birth Mom.  This Mom in telling us her story said she didn’t want to meet her.  She talked of having “married up” and now had two adult sons and life was good.  She showed us the picture.  Her daughter was covered with tattoos.  The Mother said, “I just can’t tell my sons about her.  I rose from  the trailer trash I was, and I can’t see my current family being destroyed.”    Later I asked Linda what had happened.  This Mom and daughter corresponded  for several years and eventually the Mom flew out to be reunited.

My Mother had a saying “Just give it time.”   That was her advice and I find myself using it often.  I also find myself shedding a tear each time I hear, “Somewhere out

there……..”

Adopting my Collateral Damage

Tags

adoptees, birthfathers, cultural heritage, healing, Italy, literature, Mexican roots, reunions, Searching

Wouldn’t it be grand if painful childhood and adolescent memories could be tucked

Book cover by Joe Cepeda, used by permission of Scholastic

away in a mental closet and never opened again? For me, and for other adult adoptees suffering from early “collateral damage”, I suspect that is not possible. I seem to be forever seeking clarity about the demons released when I was “transplanted.” My conclusion: dealing with the original wrenching—being separated from birthparents—is the work of a lifetime.

My grown son recently commented, “Mom, I don’t think we ever truly get over our childhood wounds.” He may be right. In my memoir The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption, I documented my own growing up adopted. Writing my story was helpful, but that was just the beginning.

Another resource in my pilgrimage was the Internet. Cyberspace is rich with adoption websites. The sites comprise a vast network of adoptees, adoptive parents, birthparents, people searching, families seeking to adopt. Look, and you will find an entire tribe of men and women, young and older, communicating about how adoption personally affected them.

What does it mean to have a father who was never there for you, an “original” dad who disappeared from your life?

Answers can be found in literature, for “Adoption” as a theme abounds. I recently finished the wonderful young adult novel Becoming Naomi León by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Scholastic, 2004), a heartwarming story of a young girl who overcomes obstacles, finds her voice, and connects with those most important to her. In particular, the book shows how finding ones father and getting in touch with ones roots provides direction and clarity.

Naomi León Outlaw, the plucky heroine of Becoming Naomi León is being raised by her great-grandmother. She wears “clothes that matched her great-grandma’s polyester wardrobe” (Ryan, p. 58) and feels like a misfit at school. When her birthmother Skyla, definitely not parent material, decides to take her back, Gram, little brother Owen and Naomi escape in the “Beluga” van to Mexico. There, they locate birthfather Santiago León. Santiago, a fabulous carver, is competing in La Noche de Rábanos (Night of the Radishes). Naomi is also a skilled carver, not of radishes but soap. Though she meets her father for just a short time, the two form a bond. He advises her to be brave and assures her of his love. For Naomi, it is a turning point.

When Naomi, Gram and Owen return to the United States, a judge rules in favor of the children staying with Gram. Naomi is transformed by connecting with her father and embracing her Mexican roots. The school librarian, one of her best adult friends, says “Before you were a mouse, but now you have the countenance of a lion.”

I was lucky enough to have a brief reunion with my birthfather. A few years before he died (at 83), we met and I was invited to travel with him to his birthplace in Abruzzo, Italy. During our two weeks in Italy I met my cousins, shared in the extended family’s daily life, and hiked the hills and valleys around San Martino. Like Naomi, I was able to get in touch with my cultural background.

As I travel the journey to understanding adoption, I’ve found  enlightenment in wondrous places. Increasingly, light pours forth from novels.

More on Adoption and the Internet

Tags

adoptee, adoptee rights, adoption, birthparents, friends, Internet, personal rights, reunions

Adoption and the Internet-
Pandora’s box or mentally healthy?

“Information wants to be free,” said Stuart Brand, author of The Whole Earth Catalog. He added that the right information in the right place and at the right time can change one’s life. According to Adam Pertman, director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the Internet has transformed adoption. In Pertman’s words, “The Internet obliterates laws and barriers that have prevented people from knowing each other, so…the era of closed adoptions is really coming to a close.”

Turn back the clock, if you will, to a time when people were not able to connect by using the Internet.   At the end of WWII, my birth mother, overwhelmed by adversity, relinquished me. I was five years old, my brother and I went from foster care to very stable, loving adoptive parents, a professor and his wife. Despite the improved circumstances, however, I longed to know about my original mom and dad. The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption relates the pain of not being able to have a reunion  with my birth parents until it was almost too late.

Elaine waited 38 years to meet her birthmother.

Recently I learned that my birth mother had wanted to contact me when I was ten years old, five years after I was established with my new family. At the time, I knew nothing about her thwarted wish. Had the Internet existed, I have no doubt that I would have found HER; probably we would have met then rather than 38 years after she gave me to my new parents.

What if I’d known that my birth mother wanted me back when I was ten? What if the Internet had allowed us to get together sooner rather than years and years later?

It is possible that I could not have handled a gradually opening adoption. But it’s certain that the secrecy surrounding the history of my birth mother was a negative influence.Today’s adoption scene is undergoing a revolution of openness and transparency. I’m profoundly grateful for the Internet, especially for the way it provides an adoption community of support.