Adoption Series: Mom’s diaries
My mother’s thoughts and feelings from the past.
The covers are leather. Dark red leather. Green leather. Occasionally, pink leather. A few had little straps to hold them closed, with a lock. All worn from years of handling. All smelling of old paper slowly breaking down. Little books with lines and dates. Some had places to record the weather, the temperature, and whether it rained. Some were simply notebooks –– Mom put the dates on the pages herself.
She filled in her diary every day during the first year or so that I was with them. Later, long periods passed without entries.
There were decades-long stretches of her life in which I know she was carefully dairying, but she discarded them. Thankfully, I do have some from my early years.
In my few photos of Mom from those early days with baby me, she is smiling widely. She often told me how happy she was to get me and to be a mother. And how much she loved me.
It was February of 1946, and I was only five months old. World War II had just ended. Dad was home from serving in the Pacific. All the men in the neighborhood were home. Mom often described a feeling of new beginnings after the horrible dark war years. And the baby boom was on. It seemed to Mom that everyone had a new baby.
Just after bringing me home to Seattle from Centralia as her newly adopted baby, she wrote….
“Mrs. Sodano and Mrs. Peck helped me with Teddy today. Both have three children. Mrs. Sodano has a fourth on the way. Both have far more experience with babies than I do.
“Teddy has a rash. The social worker thought it was from the anxiety of a new home. She thought it would disappear in a few days. But it seemed to be getting worse, and he is not eating. He can’t keep the evaporated milk down. Mrs. Sodano gave me some cream to put on the rash. If we don’t see an improvement, I’ll get someone to help me take him in.” (Mom didn’t drive)
A few days later…
“Mrs. Sodano got me some soy-based formula. It works better than evaporated milk. It’s been two days now, and he keeps it down.
“He’s such a happy baby. Smiles a lot. Smiles when we pick him up and when the ladies come over.”
And a week or so later, Mom noted…
“The rash is mostly gone now. Mrs. Peck has a scale, and we weighed Teddy today. He is sixteen pounds again. That is what he weighed in Centralia two weeks ago. He has regained the weight he lost. And he is sleeping better. Both Ted and I slept through last night. A relief for both of us.” (My adoptive father was named Ted.)
Mom’s connections to the neighbor ladies were strong in those years. She was thrilled to have me, enjoying the community’s support and the celebrity of having the newest baby on the block.
Perhaps my earliest memory is from that period.
The soft, comforting, whirring, buzzing sound of Dad pushing the lawn mower gently awakens me. I’m on my back under a blanket in my crib. A lacy curtain floating in a light breeze is just above me, and out the window, the sky is blue. I reach for the curtain, but it’s beyond my grasp.
The scent of newly cut grass drifts in, and I pull myself up by the crib rail, blanket falling away, and I hear Dad speaking to a neighbor.
Then, the sound of a small plane buzzing by on its way to landing at Boeing Field captures me.
I must have just turned three. We were still living in the little house on Dawson. Soon, we’ll move one block to the north and the house I consider home at 12th and Pearl.
Mom explained the move as being required under the terms of my adoption. Apparently, the contract stipulated that I had to have a room of my own. The Dawson house was tiny, with only one bedroom. The new house had three bedrooms, two floors and a full basement.
Mom and Dad borrowed money from Mom’s mother to afford the new house. I learned years later from Mom’s sister, Aunt Barb, that Grandmother was violent, and when she and Mom were small, Grandmother would swing them around by their hair.
Grandmother walked with a cane. A cane I came to fear.
The loan deal included Grandmother having her own house nearby. Soon after Grandmother entered our lives and the move to the new house, Dad had what Mom always described as a mental breakdown, and she had him committed to the state mental institution. I remember him being angry, loud voices, the breaking of plates and then he was gone.
Mom’s diaries recorded the weather but not much else once Dad was committed. The warm loving notes about help from the neighbor ladies disappeared.
With me just three, Mom took a teaching job in Olympia. Far enough away that she had to live there. Grandmother moved into our house to care for me, and my period of living with strangers began. I don’t know how long Dad was in the mental hospital. But it wasn’t until I’d completed the fourth grade the first time that Mom quit her teaching job, and we were reunited as a family full time once again.
