Becoming Jackie

It's the first thing I knew about myself about my family about alternatives to nature that allowed me to be nurtured It's the first thing I let others know once I decided I'd let them know me Get the facts out there someone might know someone who knows something.... I don't know when the fortress walls went up keeping my soul safe inside the courtyard the castle walls reinforced with bricks of humor cemented in sarcasm keeping me in and others out without any of us being the wiser Believe this, they said. This is true, they decreed. For the best, they assured No one will ever know and it will be as if a)it never happened b)she were your own It's the first thing I knew was true about myself about my family that alternatives that allowed me to be nurtured didn't always seem like second nature. This was true: there was another this was also true she did not dance alone This to...

How do you explain the hurt underneath the happiness that happens when a baby finally finds a family (was the baby really looking for one, or merely happy for a new one?) How often does adoption go wrong or turnout badly or bring heart ache and disappointment? Almost always. What is the fairytale told to terrified teens about how these fairly odd-mothers would make it all better would make their "problem" go away and make their babies legitimate in other people's eyes Women with children of their own, or infertile women who can't help casting aspersions on young girls with inconvenient fertility. Oh, how times have changed. The unwed mother swallowed whole by the Stand alone single mother One wears a cloak of shame, the other a superwoman's cape. Eerily similar our scripts no matter where the adoptee is from for the best, given what others couldn't give Chosen, selected, winning prizes in a baby bonanza Never be able ...

When one could not, the other one could When one would not, the other one would When one did not, the other one did. When one mother gave up her child, the other one took her in When one mother gave up this earth, the other one returned. Locked together forever, two mothers who ever knew each other not their names or their faces not their backgrounds or their dreams for the daughter they shared. The story books from the 60s are wrong. The little house that found happiness didn't choose anything or anyone. The little family in the little house that found happiness had to find pain, tragedy and despair first, through the loss of another daughter, the one who never had a chance at one mother, let alone two. The family didn't choose me, but my souls, looking down at what was in store chose Mom. I chose her, not the other way around. I was never her gift; she was mine. The stories from the Baby Snatch Era of the 1960s sought...

On March 20, 1932 in Kansas City A star was born, A supernova, beautiful inside and out widening her orbit as her universe expanded. A beautiful dreamer who went places she’d never even dreamed of. An only child born during the depths of the Great Depression, raised during the Second World War both events shaping her and preparing her to withstand any hardships to follow. When she was little, she rode the streetcar with Gramma Lida “to the pretty part of town.” She cared for her own father when he passed, Finishing high school by night tending her father by day, Her mother blazing a trail a single mom long before the term was in vogue She knew things would be different for her own children one day. On a trip out west, a young Mary Ann, in turquoise pedal pushers, decided California would be a nice place to live, full of beautiful places and beautiful people. And warm. California was warm and inviting. ...

It was a lifetime ago When I couldn’t And she wouldn’t Because she thought she shouldn’t Secrets exposed The world didn’t end Family found-- joy Along with a father And a fascination for a little white ball To channel my obsession In a healthy way It was an eternity Waiting hoping simmering on the back burner seething on the inside Frozen in half Afraid to unleash emotions or machinery It was like yesterday When she did Because she knew She should Asked if I would I could And we are

Think of the first time you left home— for camp, for college, for your first apartment, even if it was just around the corner from your folks…. you left with this backing and foundation. At two days or six weeks or even three years old, despite what the on-line, e-trading babies might lead you to believe, infants, babies and toddlers aren’t prepared to move out of the house yet. Not to foster care (a temporary place, until you are relocated again, like lost luggage), not to your “new” home It becomes home, but it is never really home because home is the one place you must never, never seek to go, It would belie the lie