Growing up my family was always open about how our family unit was formed. Its become such an embedded part of our lives that I have to remember to talk about it with my children sometimes because I forget they weren't born knowing that their mom and their uncle (and their dad too) were adopted.
When I was old enough to ask, I was given all the information that they had, and when I got older and said that I wanted to search, I got nothing but support. I hope never to take this for granted, because I realize not every adoptive family is this way.
Every so often, at a Sunday dinner or over cocktails, we'll talk about my sister or my cousin. There was a time, after I found my birthfamily, that my dad would ask "Have you talked to your mother at all?" My mother and I would glance at each other and I would once again remind my dad that "my mother" was sitting right there in the room. I think he's finally understood that I reserve the title of "mother" for only one person in my life. She is not the person who gave birth to me, she is the person who had the much more difficult job of raising me to adulthood, of instilling a moral code into me, loving me, protecting me, helping me to learn my value and place in the world, of finally, reluctantly, releasing me. When you think of all that being a mother encompasses, you can't help but think that the title is completely oversimplified for the job it entails.
Mom and her parents, Ketchikan AK circa 1942
Mom, California, 1945
Back in Ketchikan, 1950
Kay-Hi Graduation, 1955
Mom grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska in the 1940's and 50's. She went to Seattle after graduation to attend the University of Washington, but met and married my father just shy of her four year degree.
The road to parenting is easy for some, harder for others. I understand because of my own struggles with infertility in my twenties and early thirties, the quiet panic and desperation when biology doesn't work quite the way the instruction manual tells you it should. For my mother, the journey came with more than its fair share of pain and difficulty. After trying to conceive for a while, they adopted my brother, then when he was a toddler my mother lost two babies. The first was at 18 weeks, and the second was even more painful and devastating at 27 or 28 weeks. And so they adopted again, and their family was complete.
Family Life, 1966
My brother was the odd man out in family portraits. Mom and dad were both brunette, dad with gray eyes and mom with brown. With my brown hair and gray-green eyes, unless someone knew our family history, they had no reason to think I was anything other than my parents offspring. My tow-headed, blue-eyed brother was the one who was clearly the swan in the nest. I remember laughing with my mother when some poor innocent who was just meeting us for the first time would say "You look just like your mother!" or "...just like your father!" Our peals of laughter would elicit confusion, then we would explain, and just like that confusion morphed into a wonderful teaching moment about the different ways families could be made. We tried not to be elitist about how special we thought our family was, but we really loved those moments of solidarity. We were US. And we really did know we were special.
1967
Its not just that she comforted me when I hurt, that she nurtured me and tried so hard to share her values with me. Its not that she saved and sacrificed her salary to make sure that not only did I get a college education but that I got to do the extra things too, like join a sorority and go to concerts and dances. Those are the things that make her a regular mother. We all do those things. My mother is so much more than that, though. My mom believes in her deepest heart that our family unit is the most important thing in the world, and that it is her job to nurture and protect her family. She treats my brother and I as special and unique people, gives us her undivided attention when we need it and when we talk to her, she really truly listens. All of my life the one person I can always count on to listen to me, to afford sympathy, to give me hugs, to understand more than anyone else what's bothering me, is my mother. There have been times that her instincts were so attuned to me that even when I have been miles away from her, her "momdar" has gone off and she has known that something in my life was wrong, picked up the phone, and called me at exactly the time that I needed her most.
Mom's always been active and engaged in the life around her. She's been a city dweller, a hobby farmer, a fitness buff, a hiker, a world traveler and a working woman. At the age of 73 she still walks 3 miles almost every day, goes line dancing, lifts weights, and recently started doing another, even more complicated dance class. She is an incredible grandmother to my children, the kind who cuts paper dolls, bakes cookies, does puzzles, blows bubbles, has fudgesicles in her freezer and reads stories. And yet this is the woman who, when I received the Congressional Angels in Adoption Award in 1999, told me that I was HER hero. Imagine that.
It is said, with a fair amount of accuracy, that Mother's Day is a made-up holiday, that every day is Mother's Day. All I know is that every day in some little way, my mother touches my life in a million different ways. From emails to babysitting to shared meals, small gifts and mementos, hugs and smiles and genuine caring and concern, my mother is the one person in my life who has always been there for me and who has loved me with the kind of whole-heartedness that only a mother can understand. Our relationship, which has forever meant the world to me, became even more rich and meaningful when my own children entered my life. I think only when I felt that breathtaking surge of fierce, protective, die-for-you mother love, did I truly understand the depths and breadth of the love that mom has for my brother and me.
On Mother's Day, mom, and every other day of the year, I thank you and I honor you for everything that you mean to me. I could not have asked for a better mother, mentor, fan or friend. I love you so much.