Essays, Fiction, Poetry

I was scheduled for surgery on March 25, 2020, but because of the quarantine, the surgery was canceled. My condition declined and I politely and persistently encouraged my surgeon to appeal to the board. The appeal was successful and the surgery was and I had the surgery on April 17.

It was a much different experience then I could ever imagine.

I wasn’t afraid of the surgery. I’ve had several operations in my lifetime. But what I wasn’t prepared for was being alone—completely alone—immediately after my surgery and the entire night I spent in the hospital. The nurses and patient aides were attentive. If I needed something, I pushed the button, and they were able to help with pain meds or small amounts of food. But I was alone. Because of COVID-19, my husband was not allowed to be with me. He dropped me off at the door at 6 AM and I didn’t see him again until the next day when he came to drive me home.
I spent the entire night alone and in pain and had no one to comfort me. I imagine that my birth mother may have felt the same way the night she gave birth to me. I tried to get comfortable, but couldn’t. I tried to sit or lie in different positions, but it didn’t help. I was in pain and I cried. I barely slept. I felt nauseous at times and struggled to drink even the smallest amounts of water. My heart ached for my loved ones. When the nurse did come in, she was quick and efficient but didn’t stick around for small talk. She didn’t provide any kind of nurturing or offer encouraging words. I cried more and thought about calling someone, anyone, but I didn’t want to be a bother. Adoptees do that—we feel bad asking for help, as if we should be able to handle everything or because maybe we are not deserving of basic human compassion.

I was born William Joseph Olson in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on September 27, 1979, when my mother was only 20 years old. Because she’d been intimate with two men, she couldn’t be certain who my father was. One of the men, Brent, had been her senior prom date, and the other, Howard, was eleven years older—a man she saw when he was home on leave from the military. Her father despised him, and though she prayed he wasn’t my father, she suspected he was, thinking she remembered the night I was conceived: Christmas Eve 1978.

Howard had already been married and had a daughter, but my mother believed he was divorced at the time she became involved with him. A dental technician, he was the older brother of my mother’s close friend Alice from high school. During his visits to Lennox, he’d take my mom out on dates, usually to the races. When he wasn’t drunk, my mother says, he was a great guy.

When it came time for my mother to fill in the birth certificate, she chose to leave the father’s name blank. That decision profoundly influenced my life and my self image.

As a poor single woman, she needed state assistance, but the state required her to provide the name of the person who might be my father. She named Brent, but a DNA test ruled him out. That could only mean the man my grandfather despised—Howard—was my father.

Dear Dad,

In my dream house, you are there.

You were there all along. Always.

You carried me on your shoulders and taught me how to ride a bike, how to swim, how to fish. You told bedtime stories and silly dad jokes to make me laugh.

You let me hand you tools when you fixed the car. You took my teeth from under my pillow when you thought I was sleeping and replaced them with crisp dollar bills.

You smiled, standing there in your best suit as I came down the stairs in my fancy dress and Mary Janes, ready for my first father-daughter dance at school.

I made you pictures that you hung on the wall at your office and bought you ties for Father’s Day.

I made your coffee just the way you like on Sunday mornings and brought you iced tea when you mowed the lawn. We watched old movies and munched popcorn.

You helped me with my math homework and comforted me when my first crush broke my heart. We went out for ice cream. You taught me how to drive stick shift.

You cheered at my graduations, and teared up as you walked me down the aisle on my wedding day. We danced to Daddy’s Little Girl at the reception.
When I found out I was pregnant, you were thrilled. You helped my husband paint the baby’s room and put the crib together. You paced the hallway when I was in labor and you were the first person in the room to kiss your grandchild.

You came over so I could take a shower since the baby kept me up all night. I found you, with your first granddaughter nuzzled up on your chest, both of you sound asleep on the sofa.

You were there for every holiday. Every birthday. Every grandparents day at school, choral concert, dance recital.

I circle my birthday on the calendar every year.

As the date draws closer, its approach feels increasingly like warm, heavy breathing on the nape of my neck and I begin to think about it daily, as much as I don’t want to. The breathing on my neck intensifies. I work hard to bottle up anticipation that bubbles up from my soul. When it is a week away, anxiety skyrockets. Try as I might to banish all birthday thoughts and emotions from my mind and body, I’m unable to. The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Thank you, irony.

Then it arrives. It’s here! The big day! Time to celebrate! Celebratory texts and Facebook posts begin rolling in. Regardless of what’s planned for me on this most wondrous of days, I don’t need to guess what this day will be like or how I will feel. It’s my birthday after all. October 10th is here. Yippy.
Anxiety levels now reach all-time highs, or, to be precise, match the same highs set each preceding year. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco.

For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t. Like a family of pit vipers slithering over each other in a dark den, something buried in my subconscious moves, waiting for a chance to strike. I’m riddled with emotional pain and loneliness even though I’m blessed to be married to a superhero and am a father to two wonderful children who go out of their way to do nice things for me. I feel as if I am seeking something that cannot be found.

Two years ago, I discovered a birth father I knew nothing about after taking a 23andMe DNA test for fun. I hired a genealogist to locate him and, against her expert advice, went to his home to meet him when he ignored my phone calls. This man’s interest eventually overcame his denial and we began a relationship as father and daughter. With him came aunts, an uncle, cousins, a brother, sister-in-law, and a nephew—instant family! As I met each of them, in turn they welcomed me with the typical Scottish declaration, “Welcome to the clan!” 23andMe had reported I was 50% Scottish, and now it was official.

With a major life cycle transition, there’s usually an official event: a wedding shower, baby shower, baby naming, a birthday party—a welcoming of a new stage or a new person, with all the accompanying pomp and circumstance of tradition. Interestingly, my official welcome to the clan occurred over the Jewish New Year— Rosh Hashana—also a time of new beginnings and discovery. The very nature of a new year is a beginning, albeit symbolic if not psychological.

When we have a difficult year, we can’t wait for the official ending and symbolic beginning of the next revolution around the sun—almost as if beginning again acts as a type of psychological barrier, representing an end to the difficulty. Yin and yang depict the necessary opposites of light and dark forces inherent to all aspects of creation—the seasons, cycle of life, to name a few. A new beginning occurs on the heels of something ending. When I took the 23andMe test, I had no way of knowing the loss at 22 years old of the father who raised me would be the ending to this new beginning.

It’s been about 18 months since I discovered the man on my birth certificate was not my biological father and I joined the growing tribe of people who are lucky enough to call themselves NPEs, or Not Parent Expected. I thought once I discovered who my biological father was and had time to process my feelings, I’d be able to put this NPE nonsense behind me. It took me about six months to be sure I’d found the man behind half of my genes. I gave myself another six months to let it all sink in and then, I hoped, everything would return to how it was before my DNA surprise.

Great, I thought, let’s wrap that rollercoaster ride up, stuff it in a box, put it in the deep recesses of my mind, and slam the door shut. I processed. It was time to move on. But I couldn’t. When my best friend died of cancer 15 years ago, I was eventually able to work through my grief. She’s still in my heart, and sometimes something reminds me of her and I smile. Smile! With my NPE status, I compressed all of those emotions and tried to consider myself “over it.” But it wasn’t working, I still couldn’t smile about it.

In DNA NPE Friends, an NPE Facebook support group, a fellow NPE asked everyone to list just one word to describe how they feel about their NPE experience at that moment. The emotions you feel when you discover you’re an NPE are intense and change over time. I tallied the more than 600 responses and generated a word cloud.

What struck me most was the number one feeling—lost. As soon as you realize you’re an NPE, you lose your tether to the world. To the family you grew up with. To the person you were just moments before. You are adrift. You are confused and overwhelmed. I remember reading a description of an experience in the “Twilight Series” that reminds me of what it’s like to discover you’re an NPE. In “Breaking Dawn,” Jacob describes what it feels like to “imprint” on Bella and Edward’s baby daughter Renesmee the first time he sees her. “Everything that made me who I was—my love for [Bella], my love for my father, my loyalty to my pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.”

Many adoptees dread an elementary school project that seems to be universally assigned — the family tree project. The teachers ask children to research their roots and family origins to find out where they came from and what their heritage is. Most children like me, adopted during the baby scoop era, lived in families in which we were simply expected to assume our place in the adoptive family and take our identity from it. I first encountered the family tree project when I was in 2nd grade. It created consequences from which I not only never recovered, but which also shaped my future in unforeseeable ways.
I have a strong memory from that school year. I asked my mom, “What am I?” I meant what nationality was I, where did MY people come from? Kids at school were talking about this and I could not join the conversation. Stephanie was German, Korey was Korean, what was I? She had no answer for me other than the vague and slightly suspect information given to her by the social worker who arranged my adoption. It wasn’t good enough for me.

my body remembers

the shiver of separation

the moment of release

from anything and everything I ever knew

my body remembers

the renunciation

the retraction

the ricochet

of loss

pain becomes an echo of that loss

that thunders through my skull

screaming

forcing me to remember what my body refuses to forget