The hot summer days of this past weekend made me think back to my younger days growing up in South Hadley, MA.
I have spotty memories of my childhood. Flashes of friends, family, the house I grew up in. Moments frozen in time. My earliest memory is of my first night in my new home. I fell out of bed. I yelled for my mother? My father? A voice says, 'Why do you always call for him/her?' I realize now that these are two separate memories. The one asking the question was before my adoption. The falling out of bed really was my first night with my adoptive parents.
I have to sort of piece the story together for you. My adoptive parents really didn't talk about my adoption until, well, within months of their deaths. It seems they had tried for many years to adopt. (For the sake of convenience I will refer to them as my ad-parents and my biological parents as my bio-parents.) They had tried and been rejected in the USA and in other countries mainly because of their age. They had married at 31/32, my ad-mom had to have a hysterectomy because of a benign tumor so children were not a possibility. Back in the 1950's they were considered too old to adopt. Imagine that. But they had made a friend in the system. I will just call her Ms. S. One day they received a phone call from Ms. S. asking if they would consider adopting a slightly older child, not a newborn. They said yes and quickly began to prepare their den as a bedroom for their child. And 24 hours later they found themselves entrusted with a daughter. That night they tucked her into her new bed. Shut the lights off and walked down the hallway to their own bedroom. At some point in the night they woke up to a child screaming. (I still have a good set of lungs.) Their little girl had rolled right off the edge of the bed. They comforted her and once again tucked her back into her new bed. But this time they moved the bed up against a wall and they got 3 kitchen chairs and put them against the other side of the bed to form a rail to keep their daughter from rolling out of bed again. The rest of the night went peacefully. The next day a trip to a department store garnered them a bed rail that slipped under the mattress (which keep me for repeating the roll maneuver) and the kitchen chairs went back around the kitchen table.
See, things had happen so fast that nobody thought of telling these 'new' parents that their child had only slept in a crib, never in a regular bed. To this day I prefer my bed tucked up in a corner, I still get a feeling of being safe.
As for the other part, the voice asking the question. I can only believe that incident happened with my bio-parents and for some reason stuck with me. But for whatever reason it stayed with me it made me favor one ad-parent over the other. I don't know the physiology of the whole situation and I don't care to know. The one thing I feel is that when I called out as a toddler it was not to my bio-mother. Her 'rejection' of me was immeasurably painful. As a toddler and as an adult reaching out to her. The secrets she had she took with her to her grave might have explained much too me or maybe little but I will never know. None of us will.
I have spotty memories of my childhood. Flashes of friends, family, the house I grew up in. Moments frozen in time. My earliest memory is of my first night in my new home. I fell out of bed. I yelled for my mother? My father? A voice says, 'Why do you always call for him/her?' I realize now that these are two separate memories. The one asking the question was before my adoption. The falling out of bed really was my first night with my adoptive parents.
I have to sort of piece the story together for you. My adoptive parents really didn't talk about my adoption until, well, within months of their deaths. It seems they had tried for many years to adopt. (For the sake of convenience I will refer to them as my ad-parents and my biological parents as my bio-parents.) They had tried and been rejected in the USA and in other countries mainly because of their age. They had married at 31/32, my ad-mom had to have a hysterectomy because of a benign tumor so children were not a possibility. Back in the 1950's they were considered too old to adopt. Imagine that. But they had made a friend in the system. I will just call her Ms. S. One day they received a phone call from Ms. S. asking if they would consider adopting a slightly older child, not a newborn. They said yes and quickly began to prepare their den as a bedroom for their child. And 24 hours later they found themselves entrusted with a daughter. That night they tucked her into her new bed. Shut the lights off and walked down the hallway to their own bedroom. At some point in the night they woke up to a child screaming. (I still have a good set of lungs.) Their little girl had rolled right off the edge of the bed. They comforted her and once again tucked her back into her new bed. But this time they moved the bed up against a wall and they got 3 kitchen chairs and put them against the other side of the bed to form a rail to keep their daughter from rolling out of bed again. The rest of the night went peacefully. The next day a trip to a department store garnered them a bed rail that slipped under the mattress (which keep me for repeating the roll maneuver) and the kitchen chairs went back around the kitchen table.
See, things had happen so fast that nobody thought of telling these 'new' parents that their child had only slept in a crib, never in a regular bed. To this day I prefer my bed tucked up in a corner, I still get a feeling of being safe.
As for the other part, the voice asking the question. I can only believe that incident happened with my bio-parents and for some reason stuck with me. But for whatever reason it stayed with me it made me favor one ad-parent over the other. I don't know the physiology of the whole situation and I don't care to know. The one thing I feel is that when I called out as a toddler it was not to my bio-mother. Her 'rejection' of me was immeasurably painful. As a toddler and as an adult reaching out to her. The secrets she had she took with her to her grave might have explained much too me or maybe little but I will never know. None of us will.
not sure it will ever help, but you were missed after you were gone. and questions were always met with that horrible grownup response of don't worry your little head about that. and years later i began to wonder if i had dreamed that whole things about my cousin having siblings and if it was really me and my brother i was remembering being with my cousin. like you said, all mixed up and swirly in the memory these days.
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