JULY

I love July, the warm long days and nights, getting together with friends, the lack of rain usually and a vacation I normally take. 

It’s also the month of my birthday, which has always been a big deal to me, I feel like it’s mine, I own this day. Just like Mother’s day, I own that too. These two days are my right to enjoy and be celebrated. Even though I shared my birthday with my grandmother and later my niece too, I have always felt as though it is mine. My day that I came into this world. Alone, unloved and not wanted. 

I have five grandchildren, I have held each one within hours of their birth and I have watched my oldest granddaughter actually be born. Who held me? Who looked into my eyes and said they would always be there for me? As I have said for my own child and grandchildren. It’s something I have chased all of my life. Wanting to be wanted, making myself useful so I would be wanted. Wanting to be loved unconditionally. Every day I am getting closer to what I need and want.  It's work I have to do.  I have to love myself.

I didn’t start thinking about the actual day until recently.  Which was a Monday in 1962. I didn’t think about my actual birth, how it was for my birth mother and how I was likely whisked away from her, never to see her face or to hear her voice again. How did all of this happen? I read the book The Girls who Went Away by Ann Fessler and that gave me an idea of what it was like for the mothers. I asked my aunt and she never knew that my birth mother was pregnant. No one did, except my birth father and he wasn’t around after the birth, he says. In the letters I exchanged with my birth mother, before she passed, she couldn’t remember the time of day I was born. There is so much more to know, that I will never find out. 

When I was a kid, it was very easy to make up stories of what could have been if I had not been adopted. So many scenarios played in my head and any stranger could be related to me somehow.

As an adult, it’s hard to erase the stories and search for the truth.

I received a letter at the end of May this year from the adoption agency. My foster mother had passed away and she had kept notes and pictures of me. Her daughter, (God bless her!) had thought to contact the adoption agency with what had to be boxes and boxes of items from 1959-1970, she had found after her mother’s passing. After I had signed the hold harmless letter for the agency, I received two pages of notes, three pictures and four negatives. It came pretty quick, just 10 days I think, but when I say that, it should have not taken 56 years for me to get these! I was in foster care for 18 days prior to my adoption. I was Linda #2. This was amazing to me, all of the dates, all of the notes and the pictures.  I had never seen a picture of me that young.  

My story has always started “when we got you”, maybe that’s why the actual day means so much, it’s my beginning. I need to acknowledge and celebrate that I have a beginning. Not starting at a random date that seems to change depending on whose information I listen to. My mom says, without hesitation, I was two weeks old when they picked me up. I now have notes from a foster mother that say it was 18 days. Though fairly cryptic, if I do the math, figure the dates, so and so left and so and so arrived, Linda #2 came on such and such and Linda #2 left on the same date as such and such, yes that is what the notes are like. I will take them though more information is better than none.

So back to my birthday, I shared it with my grandmother Lila, my mom’s mom. I felt connected to her because of our shared birthday. I have an old stool in my house that was hers. I used to sit on it when I was a kid, in her kitchen and talk to her while she cooked. It had no less than a thousand coats of paint on it when I refinished it to the bare metal and wood.  That stool reminds me a lot of her.  She lived in Canada so we saw each other about 4 times a year. When I got older and could drive myself there, I would. I made several trips alone and sometimes with friends.  I always called her on our birthday and we would chat about what we were doing that day. She was a tough old gal, never hesitated to speak her mind and was always working on something to make her care facility better. She lived to 99 years old and was fighting to the end. 

This year as I celebrate 57, I will be at the beach with my wife. Enjoying some good food and some sun hopefully. 

Whatever the day holds for me, I am thankful for this life as it’s been a good one!

Thankful to be a part of this world and the people I know. I found my sister, connected with a cousin, reunited with my aunt, and met my birth father. 

I have found out so much about myself. 

Thanks for reading!