A few years into my grandfather's dementia, my mother decided what he really needed was a dog. My dad's dad had Alzheimer's, and my grandmother took care of him at home. He had reached the stage where he believed he was in prison and his wife was his jailer, but he hadn't reached the stage where it was taking a toll on his physical body yet. In short, he spent a lot of time running away from home, and my grandmother spent a lot of time retrieving him.
My mother saw an ad for a free, unwanted, adult dog in a local Penny Saver and determined the deal was too good to pass up. The people who were holding the dog said they had found him by the side of the road, so he had already been abandoned at least once before and, based on his behavior, abused as well. He snapped at people, he was incredibly thin, and there appeared to be something wrong with his skin that resembled eczema.
My mother gave the dog to her mother-in-law with the explanation that it was to keep my grandfather occupied. My grandmother accepted the unwanted dog graciously, I presume because she didn't know what else to do. Then every time my grandfather fled his "jail," Max the dog took off as well. My grandmother would drive after them, coaxing each into the car with cold hotdogs. Eventually she told my mother she couldn't do it anymore. Max created twice the work for her, and she couldn't take care of him anymore. He became our household's second dog. Our first dog, Angel, was a sweet dispositioned Cocker Spaniel who we had raised from puppyhood.
I don't remember if it was before Max went to live with my grandparents or after he came back to our house that he mauled me. He was still new to me, it hadn't occurred to me to be wary of him, and I had leaned down to hug him good night before going to bed like I always did Angel. I was nine years old. He had been asleep, I had startled him, and he had woken up taking a small chunk out of my face. My dad said something along the lines of, "Of course you got bit. He was asleep," and indicated he'd known exactly what was going to happen when he saw me getting too close to the dog sleeping at his feet. I wanted to ask why he hadn't said something. Why hadn't he warned me if he knew this would happen? Angel didn't bite when I did the same thing. I didn't know I "had it coming" by hugging the new dog. Our conversation was cut short when my mother took me to the hospital to get stitches.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
My Adopted Brother
Dante's adoption anniversary is the anniversary of the day our parents -- my mother and social father -- finalized his adoption in court. He was two months old and had lived with our parents since he was strong enough to leave the hospital.
Every year we celebrated Dante's anniversary by going out with our mother's extended family -- our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and many cousins -- first out for lunch at Pizza Hut and then to a movie or the bowling alley and ice skating rink. I loved spending the day with my cousins, almost all of whom were local and spent every major holiday with us, including nearly a dozen family birthday parties throughout the year. But I was jealous that Dante had an anniversary and I didn't. It was almost like getting a second birthday party every year, even if there weren't presents. I was jealous of Dante a lot, any time he got something I didn't, any time I felt things weren't equal. I think that's a pretty typical kid reaction to perceived unfairness.
When my mother told me I was donor conceived and immediately told me I could never tell another soul, including my dad or Dante, it cast Dante's adoption anniversary in a weird light for me. Why was his adoption, or the fact that our parents weren't biologically related to him, deserving of a party, while what I saw as a similar facet of my own identity -- being biologically descended from a secret parent outside our family -- was a dark secret? It didn't seem fair at all.
In hindsight, I think my mother was just doing what had she had been told to do (except for the telling me I am donor conceived part). Tell adopted children where they came from (to the extent that you know). Celebrate them. Tell them they are "special" and "chosen." That was where adoption had gotten to when Dante was born. Never tell children they are donor conceived. Never tell anyone where the donor conceived children came from. If anyone knows the truth, the intended father will reject the child and the child won't respect him as its parent. That was where donor conception had gotten to when I was born. "For god's sake, tell your child," has been the prevailing wisdom since the '90s, but when I was conceived, secrecy was king. Adoptions used to be dark secrets too, so it seems to me the prevailing wisdom of "what to tell the children" is a couple decades behind for donor conception simply because it's a newer phenomenon.
It seemed bizarre to me to treat us so differently when the goal was apparently to treat us both "as their own children." But the prevailing wisdom of the day was dramatically different for our individual circumstances, no matter how similar those circumstances appeared in my mind. Secret parents. God knows how many siblings. Falsified birth certificates. The wondering. The perpetual unknown. His unknown was twice as big as mine, but my secret was darker. It seemed we had a lot in common, but I wasn't allowed to tell him so.
I'm not jealous of Dante anymore, or of the fact that he got an extra annual party. I'm not even sure he liked those parties. He never talked to me or our parents about being adopted or how he felt about it. It might have meant nothing to him or he might have been broken up inside. There was no way to know because we weren't close. We weren't close, and our house wasn't a safe place to talk about such things. Had he dared to bring up the topic of his birth parents, even if it was just to express a curiosity in who they were, I can only imagine how our mother would have retaliated.
I can only remember my mother bringing up the topic of Dante's birth parents in my presence two times. I remember her telling Dante that his mother had been 15 and was impregnated by a man whose children she had been babysitting. I don't know if any of this was true, nor if it was "consensual," to the extent that sex with a 15-year-old can be consensual. It struck me as a way for my mother to tell Dante that she was better than his birth parents. Period. The "slut" insinuation was there. I'd like to say I imagined it, but as far as I could tell, my mother tended to view any sexually active woman as a slut who "had it coming," even if she was a child or married. The only other time I remember my mother mentioning Dante's birth parents was once when he wanted money for something in his teens or early twenties. She'd sneered at him, "Why don't you go find your REAL parents? Maybe they'll have some money for you." It had the desired effect of shutting him up.
I remember once prattling away in the living room as a child and accidentally saying "my mom" instead of just "Mom." Dante and our parents were the only people to whom I called her "Mom" instead of "my mom," so it seemed like a natural slip up to me, but my mother cut me off and laid into me. "How dare you?" she screamed. "I'm as much his mother as I am yours!" I'd never thought she wasn't. She'd favored Dante for most of my life. When he hadn't recently done something to prompt her to turn on him viciously, he was the one she chose for her team while I was left out in the cold with our dad. I knew how things worked at our house. I hadn't been trying to insinuate that the only brother I'd ever known wasn't a part of our awful family. He'd been a part of it for longer than I had. Still she blanketed me in shame. It feels strange to feel so sure I had made an innocent slip of the tongue with no deeper meaning behind it and to also feel so deeply ashamed for it. Maybe that's what good parents are supposed to do though -- defend their children against the perceived slights of others. It was confusing whenever I became one of those "others."
I wish Dante had known I was donor conceived. I don't believe it's harder than being adopted (or even as hard most of the time, depending on the family and the surrounding circumstances -- half the unknown = half the trouble?), but it's another way of being different, of being "other." It's something we sort of had in common. We don't relate to each other at all, and yet I imagine he must've felt like as much of an outsider in that house as I did. I felt like an outsider years before I knew I was donor conceived. I remember being in preschool and thinking I must've been secretly adopted. I thought I had both a mom and a dad out there in the world somewhere -- people who would understand me and make everything make sense.
I wish Dante knew that I wasn't as favored or as belonging as he seemed to think I was. As jealous as I was of him (sometimes childishly, sometimes with good reason), I could see that he was treated unfairly, especially by our dad. And that, as often as our mother gave him an undeserved pass on his bad behavior, she sometimes said terrible things he didn't deserve either. Did he ever see when I was treated unfairly? Did he recognize how hard I tried to keep them happy? Did it ever occur to him that his abuse made my life harder and scarier? Could he care?
I wish he knew that it wasn't always just him on the outside being mistreated like he seemed to think. Nothing there was fair, and neither of us was the full-time golden child. If he hadn't been a psychopath, we might have been friends. It would have been nice to have a friend in that house.
Dante is still in that house. I almost said "stuck in that house," but I suspect that's not how he sees it. Every time he left -- usually because our mother had kicked him out -- he gravitated back. When she finally moved out after the divorce, when he was in his mid-thirties, he left his apartment and independent adult life to move back into his childhood bedroom. Why? He brought his girlfriend and her son with him, but still, why? Why would anyone live in that awful, dilapidated house by choice? And now he lives there with our dad, the person who always treated him the most cruelly. I don't envy Dante anymore. He might be happier than me -- I honestly have no idea -- but I could never live the way he lives. We are too different. I have never been able to understand him.
I don't know what effect being adopted has had on him. No ones knows. There isn't a "control" version of Dante who isn't adopted with whom to compare him. I don't know how he might or might not have been different had he been raised by his birth mother, or by more functional adoptive parents for that matter. This post isn't really about that. I guess what I mean for it to be about is that you can't predict how someone will feel about being adopted or react to being adopted, and I don't think there is a way to undo the fact that someone is adopted simply by throwing them a party and calling them "special." And just because you love an adopted family member like they're blood and treat them like blood and genuinely feel like they're your flesh and blood doesn't mean they don't still feel adopted (or donor conceived, as the case may be). And that's okay. It'll be more okay if you can let them feel it without taking it personally or trying to make them feel something else. That's what I think anyway. I can't speak for anyone else.
Every year we celebrated Dante's anniversary by going out with our mother's extended family -- our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and many cousins -- first out for lunch at Pizza Hut and then to a movie or the bowling alley and ice skating rink. I loved spending the day with my cousins, almost all of whom were local and spent every major holiday with us, including nearly a dozen family birthday parties throughout the year. But I was jealous that Dante had an anniversary and I didn't. It was almost like getting a second birthday party every year, even if there weren't presents. I was jealous of Dante a lot, any time he got something I didn't, any time I felt things weren't equal. I think that's a pretty typical kid reaction to perceived unfairness.
When my mother told me I was donor conceived and immediately told me I could never tell another soul, including my dad or Dante, it cast Dante's adoption anniversary in a weird light for me. Why was his adoption, or the fact that our parents weren't biologically related to him, deserving of a party, while what I saw as a similar facet of my own identity -- being biologically descended from a secret parent outside our family -- was a dark secret? It didn't seem fair at all.
In hindsight, I think my mother was just doing what had she had been told to do (except for the telling me I am donor conceived part). Tell adopted children where they came from (to the extent that you know). Celebrate them. Tell them they are "special" and "chosen." That was where adoption had gotten to when Dante was born. Never tell children they are donor conceived. Never tell anyone where the donor conceived children came from. If anyone knows the truth, the intended father will reject the child and the child won't respect him as its parent. That was where donor conception had gotten to when I was born. "For god's sake, tell your child," has been the prevailing wisdom since the '90s, but when I was conceived, secrecy was king. Adoptions used to be dark secrets too, so it seems to me the prevailing wisdom of "what to tell the children" is a couple decades behind for donor conception simply because it's a newer phenomenon.
It seemed bizarre to me to treat us so differently when the goal was apparently to treat us both "as their own children." But the prevailing wisdom of the day was dramatically different for our individual circumstances, no matter how similar those circumstances appeared in my mind. Secret parents. God knows how many siblings. Falsified birth certificates. The wondering. The perpetual unknown. His unknown was twice as big as mine, but my secret was darker. It seemed we had a lot in common, but I wasn't allowed to tell him so.
I'm not jealous of Dante anymore, or of the fact that he got an extra annual party. I'm not even sure he liked those parties. He never talked to me or our parents about being adopted or how he felt about it. It might have meant nothing to him or he might have been broken up inside. There was no way to know because we weren't close. We weren't close, and our house wasn't a safe place to talk about such things. Had he dared to bring up the topic of his birth parents, even if it was just to express a curiosity in who they were, I can only imagine how our mother would have retaliated.
I can only remember my mother bringing up the topic of Dante's birth parents in my presence two times. I remember her telling Dante that his mother had been 15 and was impregnated by a man whose children she had been babysitting. I don't know if any of this was true, nor if it was "consensual," to the extent that sex with a 15-year-old can be consensual. It struck me as a way for my mother to tell Dante that she was better than his birth parents. Period. The "slut" insinuation was there. I'd like to say I imagined it, but as far as I could tell, my mother tended to view any sexually active woman as a slut who "had it coming," even if she was a child or married. The only other time I remember my mother mentioning Dante's birth parents was once when he wanted money for something in his teens or early twenties. She'd sneered at him, "Why don't you go find your REAL parents? Maybe they'll have some money for you." It had the desired effect of shutting him up.
I remember once prattling away in the living room as a child and accidentally saying "my mom" instead of just "Mom." Dante and our parents were the only people to whom I called her "Mom" instead of "my mom," so it seemed like a natural slip up to me, but my mother cut me off and laid into me. "How dare you?" she screamed. "I'm as much his mother as I am yours!" I'd never thought she wasn't. She'd favored Dante for most of my life. When he hadn't recently done something to prompt her to turn on him viciously, he was the one she chose for her team while I was left out in the cold with our dad. I knew how things worked at our house. I hadn't been trying to insinuate that the only brother I'd ever known wasn't a part of our awful family. He'd been a part of it for longer than I had. Still she blanketed me in shame. It feels strange to feel so sure I had made an innocent slip of the tongue with no deeper meaning behind it and to also feel so deeply ashamed for it. Maybe that's what good parents are supposed to do though -- defend their children against the perceived slights of others. It was confusing whenever I became one of those "others."
I wish Dante had known I was donor conceived. I don't believe it's harder than being adopted (or even as hard most of the time, depending on the family and the surrounding circumstances -- half the unknown = half the trouble?), but it's another way of being different, of being "other." It's something we sort of had in common. We don't relate to each other at all, and yet I imagine he must've felt like as much of an outsider in that house as I did. I felt like an outsider years before I knew I was donor conceived. I remember being in preschool and thinking I must've been secretly adopted. I thought I had both a mom and a dad out there in the world somewhere -- people who would understand me and make everything make sense.
I wish Dante knew that I wasn't as favored or as belonging as he seemed to think I was. As jealous as I was of him (sometimes childishly, sometimes with good reason), I could see that he was treated unfairly, especially by our dad. And that, as often as our mother gave him an undeserved pass on his bad behavior, she sometimes said terrible things he didn't deserve either. Did he ever see when I was treated unfairly? Did he recognize how hard I tried to keep them happy? Did it ever occur to him that his abuse made my life harder and scarier? Could he care?
I wish he knew that it wasn't always just him on the outside being mistreated like he seemed to think. Nothing there was fair, and neither of us was the full-time golden child. If he hadn't been a psychopath, we might have been friends. It would have been nice to have a friend in that house.
Dante is still in that house. I almost said "stuck in that house," but I suspect that's not how he sees it. Every time he left -- usually because our mother had kicked him out -- he gravitated back. When she finally moved out after the divorce, when he was in his mid-thirties, he left his apartment and independent adult life to move back into his childhood bedroom. Why? He brought his girlfriend and her son with him, but still, why? Why would anyone live in that awful, dilapidated house by choice? And now he lives there with our dad, the person who always treated him the most cruelly. I don't envy Dante anymore. He might be happier than me -- I honestly have no idea -- but I could never live the way he lives. We are too different. I have never been able to understand him.
I don't know what effect being adopted has had on him. No ones knows. There isn't a "control" version of Dante who isn't adopted with whom to compare him. I don't know how he might or might not have been different had he been raised by his birth mother, or by more functional adoptive parents for that matter. This post isn't really about that. I guess what I mean for it to be about is that you can't predict how someone will feel about being adopted or react to being adopted, and I don't think there is a way to undo the fact that someone is adopted simply by throwing them a party and calling them "special." And just because you love an adopted family member like they're blood and treat them like blood and genuinely feel like they're your flesh and blood doesn't mean they don't still feel adopted (or donor conceived, as the case may be). And that's okay. It'll be more okay if you can let them feel it without taking it personally or trying to make them feel something else. That's what I think anyway. I can't speak for anyone else.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
The DAR and Cultural Identity
I have craved a cultural identity since I was a young child. I relished movies about people with strong cultural ties, such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Pocahontas" and I really want to think of a third one that isn't "Schindler's List" but every example I think of is more culturally insensitive than the last. I grew up in a white, Midwestern town where our grasping at cultural identity was probably a large part of what led people to genealogy. It's what led me to mine.
My interest in the Daughters of the American Revolution began when I thought I'd never know the identity of my biological father. My social father's mother had been very interested in her own genealogy, and I have a framed family tree she drew that includes pencil sketches of a few generations of her ancestors. They aren't my ancestors, but no one else in her family seemed to want it, and she's a talented artist. It seemed less weird to have it hanging on my dining room wall when I thought it was the only paternal family I'd ever know.
I decided to trace my dad's family tree on Ancestry.com since his mother had given me a decent start. I remembered another family tree she had drawn up that traced her American ancestors back to the 1600s. I thought maybe I could join the DAR. If there was going to be institutionalized lying on my birth certificate, I wanted at least to be able to use it to gain entry to a club where I didn't belong.
In case you aren't aware, the DAR is an American group for ladies over the age of 18 who can trace their direct lineage to someone who aided America in the fight for independence. By "trace," they mean you have to produce birth, marriage, and death certificates for everyone in your direct line back to the ancestor in question. Most states didn't keep such records until about a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, so that can be a tricky feat. Fortunately, if a more immediate ancestor is already a member of the DAR -- such as your mother or grandmother -- you only have to prove your lineage back to that person. Very convenient for maintaining the status quo. DNA evidence doesn't count as proof nor is it accepted, so no one really knows how many of the members actually descended from patriots biologically and not just legally, or how many meet the bloodline criteria but are excluded because of an ancestor being adopted or born out of wedlock.
I think my dad's mom tried to join the DAR at one point. When I found a "patriot" in her tree and looked him up in the DAR's patriot database, there was a note explicitly stating that the there was no certifiable proof that the daughter from whom my grandmother descended was legally his child.
Now that I've done more genealogical research on my own family tree, I've found I'm descended from at least half a dozen "patriots" on my maternal grandfather's side. While I find a club based around purity of blood rather distasteful and assigning yourself value based on who you were born to rather sad (especially in my case), the DAR still sings its siren song for me. I crave acceptance and belonging. Also, "I'm off to my DAR meeting," is one of the WASPiest things a person can say, and I've striven to be WASPier since adolescence.
In case you aren't aware, a WASP is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, but it has a connotation of snobby old money and power, which is what I find appealing about the term. I was born white, of mostly British descent, and Methodist, so I'm a WASP in the most literal sense, but I was raised as White Trash. It's a very different subculture. We kept a totaled car in our driveway when I was growing up. My brother has a gun collection. My grandpa used the "n" word at Thanksgiving dinner. I don't get jokes about "double-wide trailers" because my uncle lived in one and it was a hell of a lot nicer than the house where I grew up, not to mention TWICE AS WIDE as his previous trailer. It's a very different subculture.
As I drew up my family tree over the last year, it seemed my DAR dreams would be quashed by the fact that my maternal grandfather was "illegitimate." I had no idea what name he'd had at birth because his parents weren't married, and his siblings were all half-siblings with different surnames. Every census since his birth had listed them all under a different surname -- that of whomever their mother had most recently married, even though there was never a man in the house come census time. I couldn't find evidence my grandfather had even existed under his father's surname before he enlisted in the army for WWII, so I didn't know how to request a copy of his birth certificate.
Then a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to try. I knew his birth date and his mother's maiden name and the city where he was born. Maybe that would be enough. I used the only legal name under which I knew him and included his father's name for good measure. It worked. It turns out Wilkes -- his father's last name -- was always his last name. And his father's name was on his birth certificate too. Where my grandfather and I come from (and maybe across America -- I'm not sure), the mother's husband is automatically the legal father, whether he is present for the birth or not. If the mother is unmarried and no father is present to sign his name to the birth certificate, the father line unceremoniously reads "bastard." I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, but it's how they were done when my grandpa was born in the 1920s.
My grandpa's father wasn't present for his birth. I know this because the line of the birth certificate where it asks for his last known address reads, "Unknown -- Abandoned Wife." Perhaps it's true. Perhaps they were married, in spite of the fact that there is no marriage license registered for them in the county where they both lived or anywhere else I have looked and in spite of the fact that my grandmother's letters made it sound like they weren't. (Or perhaps Michael is right and "Abandoned Wife" was the name of his hometown in Kentucky.) But I think it's equally likely my great-grandmother didn't want to have "bastard" written on her son's birth certificate. And I think that was a solid move on her part. I have great respect for people willing to lie for a good cause, and in this case, my great-grandmother was able to convey more truth on her son's birth certificate than the word "bastard" ever would have.
My interest in the Daughters of the American Revolution began when I thought I'd never know the identity of my biological father. My social father's mother had been very interested in her own genealogy, and I have a framed family tree she drew that includes pencil sketches of a few generations of her ancestors. They aren't my ancestors, but no one else in her family seemed to want it, and she's a talented artist. It seemed less weird to have it hanging on my dining room wall when I thought it was the only paternal family I'd ever know.
I decided to trace my dad's family tree on Ancestry.com since his mother had given me a decent start. I remembered another family tree she had drawn up that traced her American ancestors back to the 1600s. I thought maybe I could join the DAR. If there was going to be institutionalized lying on my birth certificate, I wanted at least to be able to use it to gain entry to a club where I didn't belong.
In case you aren't aware, the DAR is an American group for ladies over the age of 18 who can trace their direct lineage to someone who aided America in the fight for independence. By "trace," they mean you have to produce birth, marriage, and death certificates for everyone in your direct line back to the ancestor in question. Most states didn't keep such records until about a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, so that can be a tricky feat. Fortunately, if a more immediate ancestor is already a member of the DAR -- such as your mother or grandmother -- you only have to prove your lineage back to that person. Very convenient for maintaining the status quo. DNA evidence doesn't count as proof nor is it accepted, so no one really knows how many of the members actually descended from patriots biologically and not just legally, or how many meet the bloodline criteria but are excluded because of an ancestor being adopted or born out of wedlock.
I think my dad's mom tried to join the DAR at one point. When I found a "patriot" in her tree and looked him up in the DAR's patriot database, there was a note explicitly stating that the there was no certifiable proof that the daughter from whom my grandmother descended was legally his child.
Now that I've done more genealogical research on my own family tree, I've found I'm descended from at least half a dozen "patriots" on my maternal grandfather's side. While I find a club based around purity of blood rather distasteful and assigning yourself value based on who you were born to rather sad (especially in my case), the DAR still sings its siren song for me. I crave acceptance and belonging. Also, "I'm off to my DAR meeting," is one of the WASPiest things a person can say, and I've striven to be WASPier since adolescence.
In case you aren't aware, a WASP is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, but it has a connotation of snobby old money and power, which is what I find appealing about the term. I was born white, of mostly British descent, and Methodist, so I'm a WASP in the most literal sense, but I was raised as White Trash. It's a very different subculture. We kept a totaled car in our driveway when I was growing up. My brother has a gun collection. My grandpa used the "n" word at Thanksgiving dinner. I don't get jokes about "double-wide trailers" because my uncle lived in one and it was a hell of a lot nicer than the house where I grew up, not to mention TWICE AS WIDE as his previous trailer. It's a very different subculture.
As I drew up my family tree over the last year, it seemed my DAR dreams would be quashed by the fact that my maternal grandfather was "illegitimate." I had no idea what name he'd had at birth because his parents weren't married, and his siblings were all half-siblings with different surnames. Every census since his birth had listed them all under a different surname -- that of whomever their mother had most recently married, even though there was never a man in the house come census time. I couldn't find evidence my grandfather had even existed under his father's surname before he enlisted in the army for WWII, so I didn't know how to request a copy of his birth certificate.
Then a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to try. I knew his birth date and his mother's maiden name and the city where he was born. Maybe that would be enough. I used the only legal name under which I knew him and included his father's name for good measure. It worked. It turns out Wilkes -- his father's last name -- was always his last name. And his father's name was on his birth certificate too. Where my grandfather and I come from (and maybe across America -- I'm not sure), the mother's husband is automatically the legal father, whether he is present for the birth or not. If the mother is unmarried and no father is present to sign his name to the birth certificate, the father line unceremoniously reads "bastard." I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, but it's how they were done when my grandpa was born in the 1920s.
My grandpa's father wasn't present for his birth. I know this because the line of the birth certificate where it asks for his last known address reads, "Unknown -- Abandoned Wife." Perhaps it's true. Perhaps they were married, in spite of the fact that there is no marriage license registered for them in the county where they both lived or anywhere else I have looked and in spite of the fact that my grandmother's letters made it sound like they weren't. (Or perhaps Michael is right and "Abandoned Wife" was the name of his hometown in Kentucky.) But I think it's equally likely my great-grandmother didn't want to have "bastard" written on her son's birth certificate. And I think that was a solid move on her part. I have great respect for people willing to lie for a good cause, and in this case, my great-grandmother was able to convey more truth on her son's birth certificate than the word "bastard" ever would have.
Friday, December 4, 2015
The Time My Mother Found My Address -- and a Contingency Plan
Dear Jerry,
My dad says my mom finally looked up my name on the internet and found me. My address is on the first page of hits, so it's an investment of about 5 seconds. I figured it was only a matter of time, but 2 years is a pretty good run. It's pretty obvious she is in the mania stage right now, based on my dad's email below. I'm wondering how long this one will last and if she is still living at that group home and if she is or was on any kind of stabilizing medication while there.
My phone number doesn't appear to be listed online yet, but even once it is, caller ID makes it easy enough to avoid 513 calls that aren't from my dad or you or your family. I doubt she'd take the 8-hour drive to show up on my doorstep if she hasn't been able to reach me by phone in 3+ years, but if she did, I have no idea how one is supposed to handle that situation. I imagine she would take a bus like she did when she accosted my dad in Cleveland and then take a taxi to my house, and then say she can't leave because she'd need to call another taxi and doesn't have enough money for it to take her anywhere anyway. Have you ever heard of someone in this situation? My first thought was that I would call the local police, but I think they'd just say they don't want to get involved in a domestic squabble and that she hasn't committed any crime and she'd be left sitting outside my house waiting for me to make a move. I'd like to have some kind of contingency plan that doesn't involve giving her money or letting her into my home. -- C
For a couple years after I stopped communicating with my mother, I still feared her showing up on my doorstep, as noted in the email above. I had moved halfway across the country since the last time she knew my address, but my new address was highly findable. When Michael and I bought our house, our county published our names, address, and the purchase price of our house, as they do with all real estate purchases. For awhile it was the first thing that came up in a Google search for my name, and it worried me.
I live a full day's drive from my mother, but I imagined the craziest things she could do, such as taking a taxi to get here and demanding I pay the thousand dollar cab fare because she had no money, or something similarly ridiculous. I worried about this scenario a fair amount, and sometimes it kept me awake at night. How would I get rid of her if she showed up? What if she threw a fit in my driveway and said she couldn't leave because she had no phone, no car, and no money? I couldn't control it. I can't control anything she does.
What I can control is how I react, so I hatched a contingency plan so I wouldn't lose any more sleep imagining this stupid scenario. First, I had to decide what else I had control over and what I would be willing to do. I have control over my house and my property and my body and my money. These were all things she had seemed to control up until I got my own apartment and a full-time job, so it was easy to forget I was a financially independent adult who could put my foot down.
I decided I would not pay anyone who brought her to my home. That would do nothing to benefit me, and no one could legally make me do it ("no one can legally make me" has become a big deciding factor in letting myself say "no" to things -- I say "no" to a lot of things now). I also wouldn't give her money or let her into my home under any circumstances. I could just imagine her kicking off her shoes, lying down on my couch, and declaring squatters rights or something. I know squatters rights don't work that way, but it would still be harder to make her leave once she got inside. I also wouldn't drive her anywhere in my car. I refuse to put myself in any situation in which she could try to abduct or kill me, likely or not, and I also don't care for the inconvenience.
What I would do is tell her politely and firmly that she is not welcome at my home or on my property and that, if she doesn't leave immediately, I will call the police. No conversation, no "hearing what she has to say," just my telling her politely and firmly to leave. If she said she couldn't go because her cab already left and she had no phone and no money and it was raining -- my god, the rain -- and she had nowhere else to go, I would be willing to give a little to ease along the progress of the situation.
If it were raining, I would give her an umbrella I don't mind parting with forever. We have at least one cheap, collapsible umbrella that is sort of half-broken but still in use because it's small enough to fit in a backpack. If it were raining, she could have that (envision "I am a benevolent god" meme here). I would bring the cordless phone to the door (after locking the door behind me while I went to fetch it so that she couldn't sneak in) because if she tried to steal it or break it, I have two others and they don't work beyond my yard anyway so it would just be amusing to me. I would let her call someone on my cordless phone to retrieve her, and if she swore she had no one, I would call her a cab myself. I would allow her to wait at the curb for the car rather than calling the police on her immediately. There would be a time limit on how long I would allow her to wait in sight of my home, and it would be based on how long it typically takes a cab to come. Maybe 30 minutes. I might be willing to pay a taxi driver in cash to take her to a bus station or airport, but I would give no money to my mother directly, and if she came back, I would not pay another cabbie again. I consider this very generous of me since paying the cabbie in the first place isn't my job and calling the cops is free.
If she came back again or refused to go in the first place, I would call the police, and they would come and remove her because the police in my town are very helpful and I am a thirty-something, affluent, white woman, while my mother looks like a crazy homeless person. I forgot this fact a lot when I was younger. I am an affluent white woman, I have power, and the amount of respect I receive from strangers has increased dramatically since I entered my thirties. Even if my mother tried to claim she has a right to me and everything I own because she is my mother, the cops wouldn't accept that because it is crazy and not how America works, even if it's how my mother's mind works. I would calmly and quietly explain that my mother is severely mentally ill, refuses any sort of treatment, and that I haven't been in contact with her for the last seven years for this exact reason. I would express a subdued but believable amount of fear and, now that I have a child, mention protecting her. They would take my mother away from my home because it's their job and also because I know how to behave in a variety of situations and she does not. I have no problem calling the police as many times as necessary. And unlike my dad, I have no qualms about pressing charges if it came to that.
I also had a clever plan in which I would sneak out the back door, go to my neighbor's house, sneak us both back in through my kitchen door, and have my neighbor answer the door to tell my mother I had sold the house and moved. I think it would take too long to go get my neighbor though. It might be worth trying if my mother were higher functioning and more dangerous, but I think the flat out rejection of sending her away or calling the cops would be equally effective at getting rid of her in the long-term. She doesn't handle rejection well, and I don't think she'd be willing to put herself out there a second time. I think she would crumple. Sometimes I think if I were to look her dead in the eye and state point blank, "You aren't worth the trouble," she would explode into a pile of ash.
[Edited: Re-reading all this I realize my contingency plan has changed. I would tell her to leave and then call the police. I wouldn't give her an umbrella or call her a cab or let her wait at the end of my driveway for a ride. I would just call the police. Apparently I don't have the patience or benevolence I had four years ago. Oh well.]
My dad says my mom finally looked up my name on the internet and found me. My address is on the first page of hits, so it's an investment of about 5 seconds. I figured it was only a matter of time, but 2 years is a pretty good run. It's pretty obvious she is in the mania stage right now, based on my dad's email below. I'm wondering how long this one will last and if she is still living at that group home and if she is or was on any kind of stabilizing medication while there.
My phone number doesn't appear to be listed online yet, but even once it is, caller ID makes it easy enough to avoid 513 calls that aren't from my dad or you or your family. I doubt she'd take the 8-hour drive to show up on my doorstep if she hasn't been able to reach me by phone in 3+ years, but if she did, I have no idea how one is supposed to handle that situation. I imagine she would take a bus like she did when she accosted my dad in Cleveland and then take a taxi to my house, and then say she can't leave because she'd need to call another taxi and doesn't have enough money for it to take her anywhere anyway. Have you ever heard of someone in this situation? My first thought was that I would call the local police, but I think they'd just say they don't want to get involved in a domestic squabble and that she hasn't committed any crime and she'd be left sitting outside my house waiting for me to make a move. I'd like to have some kind of contingency plan that doesn't involve giving her money or letting her into my home. -- C
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 3:53 PM
Subject:
To: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>
By the way, you'd better watch out. Evidently your mom has access to a computer, and is with it enough to have found you there.
She's also told Dante she is going to sue me for another $500 a month for monthly maintenance. I'd sure like to know who's putting her up to all this.
Love, Dad...
___________________
DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF, IT'S ALL SMALL STUFF...
For a couple years after I stopped communicating with my mother, I still feared her showing up on my doorstep, as noted in the email above. I had moved halfway across the country since the last time she knew my address, but my new address was highly findable. When Michael and I bought our house, our county published our names, address, and the purchase price of our house, as they do with all real estate purchases. For awhile it was the first thing that came up in a Google search for my name, and it worried me.
I live a full day's drive from my mother, but I imagined the craziest things she could do, such as taking a taxi to get here and demanding I pay the thousand dollar cab fare because she had no money, or something similarly ridiculous. I worried about this scenario a fair amount, and sometimes it kept me awake at night. How would I get rid of her if she showed up? What if she threw a fit in my driveway and said she couldn't leave because she had no phone, no car, and no money? I couldn't control it. I can't control anything she does.
What I can control is how I react, so I hatched a contingency plan so I wouldn't lose any more sleep imagining this stupid scenario. First, I had to decide what else I had control over and what I would be willing to do. I have control over my house and my property and my body and my money. These were all things she had seemed to control up until I got my own apartment and a full-time job, so it was easy to forget I was a financially independent adult who could put my foot down.
I decided I would not pay anyone who brought her to my home. That would do nothing to benefit me, and no one could legally make me do it ("no one can legally make me" has become a big deciding factor in letting myself say "no" to things -- I say "no" to a lot of things now). I also wouldn't give her money or let her into my home under any circumstances. I could just imagine her kicking off her shoes, lying down on my couch, and declaring squatters rights or something. I know squatters rights don't work that way, but it would still be harder to make her leave once she got inside. I also wouldn't drive her anywhere in my car. I refuse to put myself in any situation in which she could try to abduct or kill me, likely or not, and I also don't care for the inconvenience.
What I would do is tell her politely and firmly that she is not welcome at my home or on my property and that, if she doesn't leave immediately, I will call the police. No conversation, no "hearing what she has to say," just my telling her politely and firmly to leave. If she said she couldn't go because her cab already left and she had no phone and no money and it was raining -- my god, the rain -- and she had nowhere else to go, I would be willing to give a little to ease along the progress of the situation.
If it were raining, I would give her an umbrella I don't mind parting with forever. We have at least one cheap, collapsible umbrella that is sort of half-broken but still in use because it's small enough to fit in a backpack. If it were raining, she could have that (envision "I am a benevolent god" meme here). I would bring the cordless phone to the door (after locking the door behind me while I went to fetch it so that she couldn't sneak in) because if she tried to steal it or break it, I have two others and they don't work beyond my yard anyway so it would just be amusing to me. I would let her call someone on my cordless phone to retrieve her, and if she swore she had no one, I would call her a cab myself. I would allow her to wait at the curb for the car rather than calling the police on her immediately. There would be a time limit on how long I would allow her to wait in sight of my home, and it would be based on how long it typically takes a cab to come. Maybe 30 minutes. I might be willing to pay a taxi driver in cash to take her to a bus station or airport, but I would give no money to my mother directly, and if she came back, I would not pay another cabbie again. I consider this very generous of me since paying the cabbie in the first place isn't my job and calling the cops is free.
If she came back again or refused to go in the first place, I would call the police, and they would come and remove her because the police in my town are very helpful and I am a thirty-something, affluent, white woman, while my mother looks like a crazy homeless person. I forgot this fact a lot when I was younger. I am an affluent white woman, I have power, and the amount of respect I receive from strangers has increased dramatically since I entered my thirties. Even if my mother tried to claim she has a right to me and everything I own because she is my mother, the cops wouldn't accept that because it is crazy and not how America works, even if it's how my mother's mind works. I would calmly and quietly explain that my mother is severely mentally ill, refuses any sort of treatment, and that I haven't been in contact with her for the last seven years for this exact reason. I would express a subdued but believable amount of fear and, now that I have a child, mention protecting her. They would take my mother away from my home because it's their job and also because I know how to behave in a variety of situations and she does not. I have no problem calling the police as many times as necessary. And unlike my dad, I have no qualms about pressing charges if it came to that.
I also had a clever plan in which I would sneak out the back door, go to my neighbor's house, sneak us both back in through my kitchen door, and have my neighbor answer the door to tell my mother I had sold the house and moved. I think it would take too long to go get my neighbor though. It might be worth trying if my mother were higher functioning and more dangerous, but I think the flat out rejection of sending her away or calling the cops would be equally effective at getting rid of her in the long-term. She doesn't handle rejection well, and I don't think she'd be willing to put herself out there a second time. I think she would crumple. Sometimes I think if I were to look her dead in the eye and state point blank, "You aren't worth the trouble," she would explode into a pile of ash.
[Edited: Re-reading all this I realize my contingency plan has changed. I would tell her to leave and then call the police. I wouldn't give her an umbrella or call her a cab or let her wait at the end of my driveway for a ride. I would just call the police. Apparently I don't have the patience or benevolence I had four years ago. Oh well.]
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Post-Divorce Antics
The following email chain took place a year after the last time I spoke to my mother. It was awhile after my parent's divorce became final, when my mother had moved in with her parents and finally made an effort to cash the spousal support checks my dad had paid her for the entirety of their separation. Because she had ignored the checks for months and then couldn't find them, the court had replaced them with a $30,000 mega-check.
Dear Jerry,
I can hardly fathom how much junk food one could buy at Walmart with $200.
My dad's lawyer sends him regular notes on what he's been doing on his case (i.e., "why I'm charging you another $250" notes -- just think how much junk food he could buy from Walmart!). He's ultra-professional and the notes normally just state quick little facts. Which is what makes the attached note and its tone of exasperation slightly amusing.
I'm so glad my mother doesn't have my current phone number or know what state I live in. Dante said she's been trying to call me, looking for the next check ever since the check for $30k went through, but the phone number she has is from two apartments ago. -- C
Dear Jerry,
I can hardly fathom how much junk food one could buy at Walmart with $200.
My dad's lawyer sends him regular notes on what he's been doing on his case (i.e., "why I'm charging you another $250" notes -- just think how much junk food he could buy from Walmart!). He's ultra-professional and the notes normally just state quick little facts. Which is what makes the attached note and its tone of exasperation slightly amusing.
I'm so glad my mother doesn't have my current phone number or know what state I live in. Dante said she's been trying to call me, looking for the next check ever since the check for $30k went through, but the phone number she has is from two apartments ago. -- C
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:37 PM
Subject: Fwd:
To: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>
Here's the note. By the way, She's calling Dante on a daily basis now. Looks like she's trying that with my lawyer. I'm damn glad she doesn't have my number or address. Dante also said that when she tried to cash the $30k check, the bank would only give her $100 until it cleared because of its size. She then took that $100, borrowed another $100 from grandpa, took a cab, and went to WalMart, and bought twinkies and other junk food. She's also off one of her meds, which explains her behavior, I think.
Love, Dad...
July 7. Annie Rossetti attempted to call me at 11:20am and at noon. Both times I refused to talk with her with explanation through my secretary that she has a lawyer and I am not permitted to talk with her. She clearly is having mental health problems right now again. That may be worse than they have been. She states that her personal property is to be turned over to her by July 31st and that she took a cab and went by the house in Cincinnati recently and the locks were changed and she could not get in. She threatens to file a contempt of court. She said she has tried to talk to her own lawyer and her own lawyer will not talk with her anymore. All of this was in a long winded voice mail to me. She claims she will file a contempt of court against client.I am not going to talk to Annie Rossetti and even when I get a voice mail from now on I am just going to ignore it rather then take the time and record it in the file and pass it on to client. Unless Paul instructs me by email to do so I will be ignoring any messages from her.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Unexpected Relatives
I found another second cousin today. On Facebook. On accident. He had replied to a school friend's post, and his surname was familiar, so I asked where he was from and suggested we might be cousins. Turns out our grandparents were siblings.
One of the best things about second cousins is that they are distant enough relations that I can say who my paternal grandparents were and we can establish how we're related without raising any eyebrows. I don't have to tell them my father's name or that he was an anonymous sperm donor. People don't usually expect to know their second cousins, so we say "small world!" and laugh and move on. I've done it before.
And as soon as I wrote that sentence, he messaged me, "Who is your dad? My dad wants to know."
I didn't know what to say. If I told him my father's name, it might get back to my uncle who still lives in the same town, and even though he knows who I am, I don't know how he feels about my existence or my advertising it. If I said, "He was an anonymous sperm donor, but he doesn't like people to know, so keep it quiet," that would raise eyebrows and probably more interest. It would also make me an interloper who doesn't belong in their family, at least in some people's eyes. This is why I don't reach out to my first cousins or my uncles, even though they are the ones with the old photos and the family stories I want. It would be awkward. I would feel like a tattletale or even a liar, claiming the family of a father who won't claim me. I didn't realize how much of a secret I was still keeping with his identity. I have never kept his name secret from friends or advertised it publicly, but today was the first day someone who wasn't a friend asked for it. Even on my Ancestry tree his name is private, and no one has ever asked for it. Today was the first time I had to draw a line.
I didn't respond to my second cousin. Ignoring his question seems rude and I don't like doing it, but I don't know how to respond, so Jerry suggested I just never respond because it will do the least damage. I'm on here posting everything I remember about my mother, but I'm still keeping my father's secret. I feel nauseous.
One of the best things about second cousins is that they are distant enough relations that I can say who my paternal grandparents were and we can establish how we're related without raising any eyebrows. I don't have to tell them my father's name or that he was an anonymous sperm donor. People don't usually expect to know their second cousins, so we say "small world!" and laugh and move on. I've done it before.
And as soon as I wrote that sentence, he messaged me, "Who is your dad? My dad wants to know."
I didn't know what to say. If I told him my father's name, it might get back to my uncle who still lives in the same town, and even though he knows who I am, I don't know how he feels about my existence or my advertising it. If I said, "He was an anonymous sperm donor, but he doesn't like people to know, so keep it quiet," that would raise eyebrows and probably more interest. It would also make me an interloper who doesn't belong in their family, at least in some people's eyes. This is why I don't reach out to my first cousins or my uncles, even though they are the ones with the old photos and the family stories I want. It would be awkward. I would feel like a tattletale or even a liar, claiming the family of a father who won't claim me. I didn't realize how much of a secret I was still keeping with his identity. I have never kept his name secret from friends or advertised it publicly, but today was the first day someone who wasn't a friend asked for it. Even on my Ancestry tree his name is private, and no one has ever asked for it. Today was the first time I had to draw a line.
I didn't respond to my second cousin. Ignoring his question seems rude and I don't like doing it, but I don't know how to respond, so Jerry suggested I just never respond because it will do the least damage. I'm on here posting everything I remember about my mother, but I'm still keeping my father's secret. I feel nauseous.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
A Minor DC Discovery
I had my birth certificate out the other day because of bank-related nonsense. As I was putting it away, back in the lock box with the passports and the social security cards and the letter from my sperm donor father, a familiar name caught my eye. The doctor who delivered me was the same doctor who had inseminated my mother. I don't mean my biological father. I mean he was the man who is now known for having impregnated patients with medical student sperm. I learned his name from another local DC person long after the last time I'd look at my birth certificate. I don't know why it surprised me. I guess I had assumed he had been something more than a run-of-the-mill obstetrician and that he wouldn't do prenatal checkups or deliver babies. Impregnating women with donor sperm doesn't require a medical mastermind, but I'd assumed he'd specialized in infertility. I'd assumed he treated... something.
I wonder if the same doctor delivered Hans. I was conceived the semester our father started medical school. Hans was born the semester that he graduated. It doesn't matter. I'm just grasping at things we might have in common. I wonder if Hans and I have ever known someone in common. I wonder if my father and I have ever unwittingly been in the same building at the same time. I never thought about these things before I knew who he was. Then I thought how likely it was.
I wonder if any medical student anonymous sperm donor has ever examined a woman carrying his child, or been present for the birth of his own child. It didn't happen to me because first years don't see patients, but what if someone donated as a third year or fourth year? Third and fourth years see patients. If a medical student had his obstetrics and gynecology rotation when a patient or four were gestating his offspring, it seems like there would be a decent chance he might see one of them. He could see one of those patients or possibly even be present for the birth of his own offspring and, based on the secrecy and alleged lack of record keeping at the hospital where I was created, there would be no way he or anyone else would ever know.
I wonder if the same doctor delivered Hans. I was conceived the semester our father started medical school. Hans was born the semester that he graduated. It doesn't matter. I'm just grasping at things we might have in common. I wonder if Hans and I have ever known someone in common. I wonder if my father and I have ever unwittingly been in the same building at the same time. I never thought about these things before I knew who he was. Then I thought how likely it was.
I wonder if any medical student anonymous sperm donor has ever examined a woman carrying his child, or been present for the birth of his own child. It didn't happen to me because first years don't see patients, but what if someone donated as a third year or fourth year? Third and fourth years see patients. If a medical student had his obstetrics and gynecology rotation when a patient or four were gestating his offspring, it seems like there would be a decent chance he might see one of them. He could see one of those patients or possibly even be present for the birth of his own offspring and, based on the secrecy and alleged lack of record keeping at the hospital where I was created, there would be no way he or anyone else would ever know.
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