Susina Damaschina: True Tales of Conditional Love
Like most adoptees, I often wondered and fantasized about who my biological parents might be. It never really occurred to me to search. The whole idea must have been taboo since I can’t remember it entering my mind as a child or even as a teenager. I often wondered if I would ever just magically meet up with my birthparents, and for a time I entertained the notion that my aunt was my birthmother. When, in a drunken moment of desperation I finally questioned her about it, she had the nerve to reply, “No, but if I were, I wouldn’t tell you”. What an asshole. Then and there I knew she couldn’t be my birthmother. My birthmother would smile beatifically and welcome me with open arms. She would accept me as I am, be proud of my accomplishments and enrich my life with her great knowledge. My birthmother would never say anything so harsh and so rude. Little did I know…
One day, soon after my 18th birthday, I was eating dinner at my father’s apartment. Somehow the subject of my adoption came up and my Dad said that he had the adoption papers with my “original name” on them. Naturally I went ballistic jumping around like an idiot and shouting “Where?! Where?! What is it?! What is it?!”. My Dad got a big kick out of this and tried to draw it out but eventually he went into a drawer and handed me some yellowed papers. It was the decree of adoption and there typed in bold black capitals was my “original name”. My Dad told me that I could go to the agency and get non-identifying information. I think he may have been as curious as I was. The next day I made an appointment.
It took another seven years for me to embark wholeheartedly on my search. Soon after I finished school I decided that it was time to find a husband and start a family of my own. It was then that, like so many others, I decided to search in earnest.
I will spare you the particulars of my search. Suffice it to say that I was completely obsessed with it for a year and a half. After about six months in full-throttle obsesso- mode I found a grandparent. It was a wonderful experience except that she didn’t want me to contact my birthmother. She said it was a painful episode in her life that no one spoke of after it happened. She said some family members didn’t even know about it. She said that I shouldn’t want to rock the boat. She even said that she would put our correspondence in a locked vault and that she had instructed her lawyer to have them destroyed upon her demise. What the fuck had I gotten myself into?! At that time I was too caught up in it all to really consider the implication of her attitudes. I was scheming behind the scenes to find biomom. Using some very sneaky homespun tactics, I tracked her down and discovered her name, address, phone number, place of work and work number. Not wanting to betray my grandmother (who had no idea of what I had done), I sat on this information for nine whole months. When my grandmother came out to visit me a year after I had contacted her, she still didn’t know that I had this information. I would just look at it. Didn’t do anything with it. Didn’t even call and hang up. Just sat and waited.
As you know, the day came when I couldn’t sit on it anymore. One sunny June morning I must have had spring fever or something because I woke up knowing I would talk to my birthmother that day. Not to sound mystical or anything, but something just clicked and I knew that would be the day. I went to work but I couldn’t concentrate. At 11:00 I would call her at work. And I did. And she freaked. I mean, she was happy. She dropped the phone and I could hear her screaming “My daughter!, My daughter! It’s my daughter! She found me!”. So I started crying like an idiot on the public phone in the hallway at my work. Later I saw that my mascara had run all down my cheeks. I should have put on the waterproof!
Biomom was on a plane out to see methe same week. I got all prettied up, but with no makeup so that she could see what I look like au natural. My girlfriend drove me to the airport to meet her and I twiddled my thumbs and tapped my feet for about an hour waiting for her plane to arrive. When it finally did she was one of the first ones out. I smiled politely and she shook my hand. It was all quite civil really. No hugging, no sobbing, no no starry-eyed soul-searching stares of long-lost recognition. Just sort of pleasant.
As we left to return to my place I started picking up pieces of evidence which would eventually lead me to believe that my biomom was a freak. She struck up inane conversations with about 5 different strangers on the way from the terminal to the baggage claim to the car. She handed out stickers to several children. She took down addresses. She accosted people speaking foreign languages. At that time I was a bit star- struck and I thought “Oh, how delightfully eccentric she is!”. Yah. Right.
When we got back to my apartment, I showed her around but she was much more concerned with telling me every detail of her life since she was born until that very day. Neither of us slept that first night. She confessed all manner of things to me. Things I didn’t particularly want to hear, but hey, if it made her feel better…
The second day she let loose her first real bombshell. “You know, I have to tell you something. I named the wrong guy as your father.”. Er, OK. So tell me about Tom. It didn’t hit me straight away that some other poor slob had been running around all these years thinking he had a daughter somewhere out there. Later, when that other poor slob wrote me a letter I realized how stupid my biomom had been. Oh well, we’re all entitled to mistakes. Problem is, biomom made a few too many.
The next time I saw biomom was a few months later at my wedding. My parents had invited the bios and their spouses and everyone got along very well. Biomom and biodad danced together at the wedding which was very scary to watch, the least because she is an Amazonian 6’2″ and biodad is a stout 5’5″. Everyone was on their best behavior.
The real trouble began in the months following my wedding. I got pregnant pretty much right away and biomom started calling frequently and writing long-winded letters about how Jesus had saved her soul from mortal perdition. She sent me tapes on how to attain salvation. She sent me a personally inscribed Bible. She even sent booklets on how the theory of evolution was “The Devil’s Monkey Business”. When she called she would always ask that I allow her to pray for me over the phone. She prayed in tongues, which basically means she spouted gibberish in a very solemn tone and then said “Amen”. I felt obligated to say “amen” too. So gradually I was getting sucked into her influence. I had never been a member of any organized religion in my life and this whole scene was very new to me. Basically I wanted her acceptance. She hadn’t seemed very interested in my past or interests or accomplishments. She was just fixated on herself and on Jesus. And on sucking other people into her Jesus-trap. That’s what I started to realize all her aggressive solicitation of strangers was about. Unfortunately I was still under her spell.
When I was four months pregnant I went out to visit her by myself. Like a needy child, I decided to accept Jesus to please her. She took me to her church, paraded me before a bunch of beaming. over-fed fundamentalists and was very warm and loving with me generally. She even took me to a christian “therapy” session during which I tricked myself into thinking that Jesus himself had pulled 100 yards of rotten intestines out of my body. Hey, maybe I’m just as nutty as she is!
But not quite. A few months after I returned home I realized what I was doing. I was lying to myself and to my biomom so as to gain her acceptance. I was scared to tell her how I really felt. She was so happy that I had found Jesus! Who knows how she would react? The charade could only go on for so long though. One day she called me and I just told her point blank that I didn’t believe in Jesus and I had done it just to please her. She tried to talk me out of it, but I stood my ground. Everything was downhill from there. No more frequent phone calls, no more letters, no more elaborate packages in the mail. I wonder if she felt betrayed. I wonder if she understands the irony of how she treated me.
The next time I saw biomom was when my first son was four months old. She came out for an obligatory visit and basically made my life hell. The first night she broke down crying and begged me to forgive her. For what? She told me that she would have aborted me had it been legal. She told me that she had even gone to the very door of the abortion clinic but turned back at the last minute because she feared for her own life (abortion was illegal back then). I was very understanding and told her that of course I forgave her. But the bitch wouldn’t stop there. Then she told me that she tried several “natural” methods of aborting me, obviously none of which worked. Fine, whatever. Then she told me that I was a big mistake and that God had punished her for sleeping around before marriage. Oy fucking vey! Still, I was patient. Then she started crying even more and told me that I had ruined her life!!!!! And there I was, patting her head, wiping away her tears and telling her “It’s all right, it’s all right”. But it wasn’t all right. From that point on the only feelings I could have for this woman were pity and disgust.
These themes were the topic of several subsequent conversations, all initiated by my biomom and all ending with me saying “Of course I forgive you. Stop torturing yourself.”. I still can’t figure out why she insisted on repeating these hurtful things over and over to me unless they were designed to guilt me into accepting Jesus or something. Whatever the reason may be, I have now decided that I simply don’t like her and I will be happier without her in my life. Being basically compassionate, I will send her the obligatory birthday and Christmas cards, but that’s it. And she’s lucky she’s getting that. Just as I’m lucky to be alive.
