Adoption Series: The session
“What can you tell me about your relationship with your family?”
Strange is the first word that comes to mind. I adjust myself in the chair, knowing Lana sees right through me, afraid I’ll sound ungrateful if I say what I think.
I was adopted. They’re all dead. I’m angry. And I feel guilty being angry. That’s it. But I don’t say it.
I wish I was elsewhere.
And then I remember my good feelings when I was with Mom and think, “It wasn’t so bad.”
(I think of my adoptive parents as Mom and Dad. They did raise me, after all.)
I picture Mom ironing, looking at me, and smiling at something I’d said.
Lana cocks her head to one side, and the look says, “I’m waiting.” So, I answer.
“I just finished reading Primal Wound.”
I pause, wonder if she knows the book, and ask, “Do you know the book?”
“Yes, I recommended it.”
And I think, “My denial must be in high gear.”
And in what I think of as a quick recovery, I say, “That’s right, you did recommend it. It took me a while. I think the title scared me.”
Lana smiles and says, “What was it that scared you?”
“That the wound was too deep. That I’d never recover.” And I picked up Noir, Lana’s little black dog, feeling relief from the knot forming in my chest with the distraction of that sweet little doggie body pressed close. I know Noir won’t stay in my lap for long. I hope long enough for me to think of something to say that won’t diminish me further.
Lana is wearing an overwhelmingly floral dress. Daisys and tulips dominate. I note, the pattern is a close match to the pillows beside her on the couch.
“So, my birth mother –– her name was Hazel, Hazel Beeching, did I tell you that? Anyway, the file from the social worker said Hazel didn’t want to give me up. She’d signed the papers weeks, maybe months earlier, but with my birth, she didn’t want to let me go. When I read that, I felt a little lift in my chest. It read as though they strong-armed her into giving me up.”
Noir jumps down from my lap. The thick Chinese rug –– mostly black –– softens his landing, and I squirm in my chair a bit more and suddenly feel like telling. Not sure why.
“For whatever reason, no adoptive parent is available, so I’m given to a ‘care mother.’ Tom, my first therapist –– this was years ago –– told me that my ‘care mother’ must have really cared because without love and attention those first few months of life, I would have been severely damaged.”
“How long were you with her?”
“Five months, then the Leonhardt’s adopted me and took me back to Seattle on a train.
“In fact, after my mother died, I found a baby book that had been filled out almost daily by that ‘care mother.’ It was full of observations of my growth, what I ate, and my attention to her.”
“Finding that book must have been thrilling.”
I nodded, picturing that little book and wondering where I’d put it. I’d moved three times since leaving my wife, I have a habit of leaving things behind, including two wifes.
“So, you suffered two primal wounds in the first six months of life.”
Now I scan Lana’s face for some indication that I’ve suffered permanent, unrepairable, psychological damage, or maybe not. And, stalling, I take a sip of tea. It’s cold.
I note how the mid-day light in Lana’s room brightens her glass collection. Is it Chihuly? I wonder.
Double primal. And I think, “But wait, there’s more.”
And I remember. No more than remember. I picture. And in the picture, I’m standing in a box car as it starts to move. The Leonhardt’s are standing below on the train platform. They are dressed in their finest. A man in a postal uniform is standing behind me. His hands are gripping my shoulders tightly, and I’m screaming bloody murder.
“Mother told me later that I was three when that happened.”
I must have been telling Lana, not realizing it, because she said, “You must have been terrified that you were being given away again.”
I thought about it for a minute or two. We were changing trains in Chicago on our way to the East Coast so Dad’s family could meet me when a kind postman, knowing the train would only move a few feet, thought the little boy would like a ride. So, Dad had lifted me up.
Then it came to me: We remember things that have strong emotional impacts on us. I don’t remember anything else from that trip — just that short ride in the mail car with the man in the postal uniform. It was in August –– I’d turn four that September.
I check the time. Half my session still to go. Shit.
Lana must have noticed me checking my watch, not trusting the clock on her wall. She broke the silence with, “So at three, you were not going to be given away a third time. No more primal wound for you.”
Am I haunted by the memory? No, I suppressed it mostly. Maybe my denial of it, my submersion of it, and then its resurfacing is haunting.
I notice I feel like crying, but I don’t cry.
Now, I’m eager to tell. “Dad loses it. Something sets him off. I remember him breaking plates with Mom crying in the kitchen.”
And I find myself rushing through the story as though if I can get it out fast enough I can be rid of it for good.
“Dad was committed, Mom took a teaching position in Olympia, and I’m sent off to live with, first, her mother, a strange-smelling grandmother, who walked with the same cane she poked and threatened me with.
“Later, I’m boarded out in two other homes during the school year. Living that way from kindergarten through the fourth grade. Home for summers and some weekends. Lonely and alone in strange houses during the school year.
“Wondering always why Mom didn’t take me with her.”
Lana rises from her couch and asks, “Shall we meet again on Friday?”
