Some weeks are golden. The sun has been out, the sky has been blue, the kid hasn’t threatened to behead me and roll my noggin around like a soccer ball (I remind myself that he is three and doesn’t really understand what he is saying; we just made it through two weeks of attempts at hitting and melodramatic preschooler threats without much incident). I’ve gotten a chance to talk to other grownups besides my husband, even went out for a drink with a friend. There is a lot of good in my life.

About a month back, a new blogging friend, Melinda, wrote about saying her gratefuls. That’s what I’d like to do today, focusing specifically on this strange and wondrous virtual universe, the blogosphere: I am eternally grateful for the recognition and support of my fellow bloggers.

Last week, Karen of The Pitfalls of Life passed two awards my way.

and

Karen has another blog, Five Little Kids Named Larrow, where she writes stories about a very difficult childhood with an amazing clear-headedness, capturing the child’s innocent point of view. I think she's courageous, too, as well as a fine writer and photographer. Through the struggles of the past and present, she always finds a way to rise above. Thank you, Karen. You really are a good friend.

Also last week, Dori of A Yellow House in England passed the I Love Your Blog award along. Dori’s blog is about her adventures as an American expat married to a Brit. Written in a breezy conversational style with tales of little towns she visits and other stories from her life, A Yellow House is a fun read with some nice photography as well.

Finally, Susan Helene Gottfried of West of Mars not only received a bunch of awards (no shock there!), but she also gave a shout-out to blogs she enjoys reading, including writing to survive. Go to her blog to read her always-engrossing fiction, to peruse book reviews, or just to join in on the conversation.

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump lately, not feeling creative or chatty enough to leave comments. I’m getting tired of dropping my Entrecard all over the place. I haven't had much to post about. Even in my current ennui, I recognize that this virtual universe has helped bring me back to life. Blogging and the support of fellow bloggers can take a large part of the credit for connecting me with the world again, not only after a hard year in a strange place, but also after many years of keeping most people at a polite distance, years of sitting on my secrets and keeping my mouth shut.

This wasn't even the point of starting a blog for me initially. Building a community was far from my mind. I just needed an impetus to start writing. In that sense blogging has helped me connect back to myself, has helped the words flow.

I’m not sure where I’ll be going with this space. Starting next month, I will be taking a writing course in which will entail writing every day, including holidays and weekends. I hope this little push will not only help me find a local community but will also propel my writing forward. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging or commenting, but it does mean that I will have to cut back. Or maybe I'll bring you all along with me on this new venture with updates and postings of my half-baked work. I don't know exactly how it will work.

What I do know is that I am grateful for my blogging friends. You have supported me on my journey and I look forward to having you along for the rest of the ride.

Thank you.

Tags: Awards, Comments, writing

I never knew.

I had no idea as I blithely googled my friends and neighbors and looked up various topics on the Web that anyone would be keeping track of my searches. But then I started this blog, became interested in the statistics, wanted to know how many people were coming, what they clicked on, etc., and discovered that these searches were logged. Google doesn't tell me who has been searching (thank goodness!), but it does list the search terms used to get here.

Some of the searches are from people who are struggling, for example: “why keep trying to survive in this world” or “writing to survive life’s struggles.” Did they find the answer here? I don't know. Most people don’t go beyond the first page. I wish I could hold out a hand for them, help them along the narrow and rocky path.

Then there are the more bizarre queries. Yes, the term bloodworms and marine do come up in close proximity in this blog, but probably not in a combination that the searcher was expecting. So, in the interest of lightening things up around here, I've listed some of the more interesting searches below.

• Hangover existential angst
• Underwater handstand
• How to survive traveling with a crazy boyfriend
• Brain nubbin
• Capricious father
• We have nothing in common but love – can our marriage survive
• Flim flan recipe
• Marine bloodworms
• Submissive Louise
• Teen girls baptized in diapers

What were these folks thinking as they read my blog? Hopefully they left entertained in some way.

Next post: acknowledging awards from two wonderful bloggers, Karen and Dori.

Tags: Google, internet searches, search strategies, irrelevant results

The meeting with Golden Cradle Adoption Services was surreal. After months of concealing my shame, suddenly I was carrying a wanted commodity. There was no ambiguity in my decision, no noble sacrifice. I resented the baby. I could barely take care of myself. They could have it. Mom, as an adoptee, was conflicted.

So there my mother and I sat, sunk into opposite ends of a comfortable couch, leaning forward to tell the social worker our feelings, sketching out my genetic profile. We filled out reams of forms, information about family health problems, questions about my diet, my drug and alcohol use.

Who knew what mysterious weaknesses I might be carrying? My father’s side of the family had endocrine problems, heart disease, diabetes and a tendency toward dark moods. When the veil of depression fell, some family members took to alcohol or other substances with an addict’s zeal. An affinity for darkness and a desire, a need, to obliterate myself in its face are part of my hardwiring.

What about my maternal lineage? My mother’s family history was a big blank, an open field where the quality of the soil and provenance of the plant life was a mystery. Like my biological grandmother and my mother before me, I had gotten knocked up young and out of wedlock. Only my mother had chosen to marry, to keep me in the fold. This predilection for teen motherhood, the easy and careless ways of our womenfolk – did that count against me?

Adoption was a closed affair when my mother was born. In 1950, the presumption was that a “chosen baby” would grow up satisfied, would never want to know the story of her beginnings. The privacy of the birth parents was paramount. Mom, however, did want to know and set out in adulthood to find her birth mother. Through a third party the woman revealed the depth of her silence: she hadn’t spoken about her first child at all, even keeping the secret from her husband and subsequent children. She wanted no further contact, no dramatic revelation, no recognition of reunion. When pressed on the name of the birth father, she was especially vehement. She would “never, never tell.” It stung.

In private, we speculated, joked about the freedom bought by ignorance. Her missing history provided a unique vantage, a way to step outside of the American obsession with ancestry. We could build a story about her origins outside of the confines of family fact, but the story never got very far. Polish or German? (My orthodontist, after assessing her facial structure, was pushing for Polish.) Catholic or Protestant? (Well, she did seem to have a thing for Catholic guys.)

To imagine too much seemed self-delusional. Of course, her parents might have been love-struck, two highly intelligent beauties who consummated their love after much deliberation in a sacred act of commitment and rebellion. Imagining what could be the truth – sex forced upon a young woman not ready or pregnancy as the inevitable result of one night between two clueless teenagers – led to a sense of hopelessness. Her birth father was the silent partner in this transaction. A ghost.

The adoption process had changed in 36 years. My child would know my name, would be able to trace his genetic strengths and frailties back a generation or two. His new family would send me pictures. I would be permitted to write him letters. But when we were in those Golden Cradle offices, he was another existence created to be denied. I was young and angry, and what was happening didn't seem real.

My biological grandmother, my mother, me: we all played a role in the conspiracy of suppressed connection. It was a gift passed along the generations. A present for my firstborn.

Tags: adoption, Mom, teen pregnancy, family, the stillbirth

First, the not so good: it was another week of sickness for the kid, which meant he missed two (out of three) days of school. We spent several days in an atmosphere of shared crankiness. His minor cold has now moved on to H and me. Brain fuzziness and physical weariness don’t do much for the process of writing. I’m burned out.

Then, the unknown: my father found this blog. This is not a shocking development, since there is at least one link out there with my full name that points to writing to survive. What does it mean? I don’t know. I hope it means an open line of communication. And that’s all I’ll be saying about it here. Some things are meant to be – yes – private.

Finally, happily, the wonderful: two fine bloggers gave awards to writing to survive in the past week.

John of Storied Mind passed along the Brilliant Blog Award, which is quite an honor from someone who I think has a brilliant blog! The premise behind Storied Mind is that writing and creating stories about one’s experience with depression can help break through its deadening effects. Storied Mind also aims to create a community, a place where people can gather and discuss their experiences with depression. All of this is beautifully done, with thought-provoking posts that dive deep into the experience of mood-related disorders and what may work to reach clarity. Thank you, John. I am truly honored.

Kimmy of The Eagle The Lion and The Dove passed another award my way, the I Love Your Blog award. Kimmy’s blog is all about focusing on the light in darkness, seeking the beauty in the world and ourselves, knowing that none of us is perfect. It’s a great dose of daily inspiration. Thank you, Kimmy – I’m so happy we found each other via Entrecard!

As a way to share the love and highlight some outstanding blogs that are part of my daily reading, I am planning to have monthly reviews, with a feature on my sidebar linking to the Blog of the Month. Stay tuned for the October selection.

Tags: Awards, sick kid

The Little House is nothing fancy. My grandfather and uncle built it in the early 1970s, two rooms slapped up over a concrete slab. A suburban shack with aluminum siding and a roof of grey shingles on tarpaper, it has no heat, plumbing or telephone line. Inside, the chemical tang of cheap paneling and indoor/outdoor carpeting competes with the earthy funk of mildew. Spores thrive beneath the floor squares, bloom underneath the pattern of brown and gold fleur-de-lys, while black colonies spread on the dark side of the faux wood walls, invisible hordes that constrict my lung passages. I always keep an inhaler nearby.

My first memory of the house is from the summer of 1972. I am three, walking the 20 feet from the cottage to my grandparent’s place, planting my sturdy feet in thick grass and clover. I take off in a run when the ball of my right foot meets something small and sharp. It burns. I begin to cry. Someone – my aunt? my grandmother? – whisks me into the main house, probes tender flesh with pointed tweezers to remove the bee’s stinger. Afterwards, I lie on the family room sofa in cool air conditioning, injured foot propped on a pillow, a thick paste of soothing baking soda drawing out the pain. I watch cartoons, sucking on a straw to get at the last of Coca-Cola over ice.

That was over thirteen years ago. My grandmother has been dead since 1979 and the Little House is now my home. I spend my days waiting for darkness to fall. Bring on the night, I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight.

Inside the main house at 9:30 p.m. sharp, my grandfather takes out his hearing aids and removes his prosthetic foot, trapping himself in bed for another night of muffled sleep. Four houses down the street my mother, blinded by man and money troubles, sleeps in a cocoon of sadness. My father is sixty miles away, a prisoner of debilitating depression; his kindly wife is totally focused on his well-being. Unheard, unseen, and seemingly unimportant, I slip into the night or let the night slip into me.

This is where my power of description seizes up.

Really, I’m on the road to forgiveness, and I don’t want to rehash the past in angry diatribes here.

But – the inevitable but – I am in the midst of the never-ending stillbirth story, attempting to write about my time in the Little House, a companion piece to my biological grandmother’s experiences and as I try to get my mind around it I find myself asking: WHAT IN THE HELL WERE MY PARENTS THINKING?

When reality broke through, when my pregnancy became apparent and ended a month later in a stillbirth, in dramatic labor occurring in the Little House, when it became clear that I needed parenting, WHY DID NOTHING CHANGE?

These are not new thoughts, but the underlying feelings have changed. My anger before was mainly self-directed, anger at my family turned inward: what evil in me brought on their rejection? But now I am reaching a different conclusion: my mother and father had so little respect for themselves, for their power as parents, that they gave up, figured I was fine on my own, or maybe even assumed that they would only make things worse. My mother stopped parenting; my father never even started. They deserve my compassion. It's no use getting angry at those who don't see their own worth.

Now I have to work through the feelings, unpack the meaning of the Little House, dense with suppressed emotion, so much a part of who I am. I’ve left it almost completely out of most other versions of the stillbirth story because it feels like an emotional bomb. As I try to get back into that time of isolation, loneliness, self-hatred and anger, my self-protection (or something) kicks in.

It is time to control the explosion through language, to capture the shards of the experience on the page.

I'm scared. But if I don't go back, the experience controls me.

Tags: writing, existential angst, grandfather, grandmother, The Little House, the stillbirth, teen pregnancy

My biological grandmother was still in high school when she got pregnant. Since she remains silent, a hidden participant in our family's history, my mother's origins are a mystery. Was my mother the product of passion, young love that couldn’t wait for marriage, clothes that flew off as kisses multiplied? Or was she the result of a moment – or more – of coercion, the forced coupling in the broad backseat of a car, the push to the ground, the inexperienced fumbling leading to blind acquiescence?

When my grandmother started to show, her parents sent her to the city. They dropped her off at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. I imagine her emerging from the black car alone, tattered suitcase in hand, looking nervously up the set of granite steps. Inside, somnolent girls in the late, leaden months of pregnancy, inward, deliberate, walk slowly through the gray halls.

It is the home of permanent in between; the suppressed energy of smothered potential thickens the air. The girls, all going by pseudonyms, make very little small talk. In the nursery, rows of bundled babies silent as dolls wait, neatly packaged in individual bassinets. Once retrieved, the babies seek out their mothers’ faces, liquid newborn eyes encountering guarded glances. Both mother and child have learned not to waste energy on tears or outward displays of emotion. The bonding and the break are inevitable.

This is how I picture my mother’s birth: hazy trauma of labor, discovery delivered as flat fact – “it’s a girl.” They undo the straps, let the drugs wear off. Hours later, my biological grandmother holds her swaddled daughter, names her Lois. Lois is tiny – less than five pounds – too little to be released to her adoptive family. Over the next six weeks the pair are entangled in the monotony of new life, the seemingly endless cycle of feeding, diapering, and sleep. They calm to one another’s warm, familiar scent. Their gazes become intimate. Bone-deep.

When the six weeks are up, Aunt Ruth, a go-between, my adoptive grandmother’s sister, comes to take the baby. Waiting in the home's entrance, the young mother frantically bounces her silent infant, dreading the break. Finally, Aunt Ruth appears, says her hello, and waits.

“It’s time.”

The mother hands over the baby. It is as clean as a guillotine strike.

Before she has time to reconsider, she races inside to the central staircase and runs up two flights of stairs to her room. Her breathing is contained, shallow, a precaution against tears. She’s been trying to memorize every inch of her daughter, the moon face framed by white-blonde hair, her blues eyes, dainty toes and impossibly tiny hands, but already the image is fading. She reaches her room and slips inside, leans against the closed door taking short, sharp breaths. A glass baby bottle sits on the bedside table, a remnant from the final feeding. The girl eyes it, finally reaching out. Then, the satisfying sound of glass irrevocably broken, the implied threat of jagged shards.

Taking several deep breaths, the young woman calms. She begins to push the glass into a pile with her shoe and decides to find a broom and dustpan.

There will be no tears.

Tags: Mom, adoption, grandmother, family

Thanks to the very helpful folks at HaloScan, my missing comments are back! I spent a long evening last night copying and pasting seventeen comments from one post. It's tedious work and I am very happy they were able to take care of the rest. I'm even more grateful because the mistake was originally mine and the fix optional. Thank you, anonymous HaloScan support staff!

Unfortunately, my elation at the retrieval of the missing comments has been tempered by the sound of one of the Neighbornator's offspring practicing the piano. Yes, it's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," though it's much improved from last year's attempts.

I am afraid that the annual jazz party preparations have begun. We have our bags packed in case we have to leave on short notice.

Tags: Music, Neighbornator, jazz, Comments