Spinning Forward. Terri DuLong
ago, but we hadn’t discussed it recently. There was nothing earth-shattering about it. Vanessa and Bob Sherwood had been unable to have children of their own. They applied to adopt a child and brought me home when I was three weeks old. I had been told as a young child that I was adopted and it always made me feel special. When I got to be a teen, I became curious and questioned my mother about that other woman. All she could tell me was that I’d been born in New York City, March 19, 1955. I weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces. I assumed that the woman who had given me away was young and unwed. The typical story.
I reached for a chip from the bowl in front of us and shrugged. “I always wanted to search, but I felt it would be a betrayal to my parents. They gave me a good life. You know that.”
“Yeah, but I remember when Monica was born. You questioned if maybe she’d inherited looks or traits from your real parents and it bothered you. I tried to encourage you to begin a search. I think your parents would have understood. It’s only natural to be curious and want to know exactly where we came from. Genes aren’t everything in forming us, but they do matter.”
Ali was right. It wasn’t that I felt like a misfit in my adopted family, but I had always felt a void. I used to wonder if maybe my smile was passed on from a cousin or aunt that I’d never met. Had my mother enjoyed knitting like I did? I hadn’t seemed to get many traits from my adopted parents.
“Do it,” Ali said.
I looked at her with surprise. “Do what?”
“Search for your biological mother,” she said forcefully. “You’re floundering, Syd. You’ve lost all that you knew as your way of life. You need to move on and maybe locating some information about that woman will help you to do that. We all need a touchstone. Something to make us feel whole and understand why we’re the person we are. I think the time has come for you to discover that.”
I recalled shortly after Monica was born that I went so far as to research A.L.M.A. on the Internet. Adoptee’s Liberty Movement Association was located in Denville, New Jersey. I never bothered to list my own name though. Maybe I was afraid of what I might find. But now, at age fifty-two, I had a compelling need to search for my roots. Find out where I had come from. And perhaps enable myself to find out where I was going.
“You could be right,” I told Ali. “Maybe it’s an innate desire in all of us. Whether we admit it or not.” I took the last sip of my tea and placed the glass on the table. “Could I use your computer tomorrow to list myself on A.L.M.A.?”
Ali put up her hand for a high five. “Absolutely. And something else I think you should do is scout around town for some space and see about opening a knitting shop. There’re a few shops downtown that are being refurbished. I’d bet anything one of them would be perfect for you.”
I thought of my bank account dwindling down to nothing after putting a deposit for a lease. And stock? Where would I get the money to order supplies to get me started? After voicing my misgivings to Ali, I was sorry I’d mentioned it.
“I can give you a loan, Syd. You know I would.”
“Yeah, I know you would, and I don’t want you to. If, and I say if, I’m going to do this, it has to be on my own. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that step. What if it falls apart and I lose everything?”
“For Christ’s sake, life is a risk. You’ll certainly get nowhere if you don’t take a chance. It’s the same with your search. If you don’t even try, you’ll never find your biological mother.”
Ali always gave me something to think about. She pushed me to pursue things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. Like the time in our sophomore year in college she found out I couldn’t swim. She insisted I could and after three weeks of her instruction at the college pool, she proved me wrong.
I let out a deep sigh. “I’ll think about it,” I told her. Wanting to change the subject, I asked when I was going to meet the mysterious Paul.
Ali laughed and then surprised me as a crimson flush covered her face.
“I told you. He works for a large pharmaceutical company in Atlanta. It isn’t that easy for him to get down here a lot. And he isn’t mysterious at all. We’ve been seeing each other off and on for a few years now.”
“Does he have any plans to get down here in the near future?”
“When I spoke to him the other night, he said he was going to try and come down for a few days at the end of the month.”
Feeling like I was back in our dorm room at college, I asked, “So is this serious?”
Ali threw her head back laughing. “Honey, what’s serious when you’re our age? I don’t have marriage in mind, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, we have a kinda sorta committed relationship. We don’t sleep with anyone else.”
I’d forgotten how outspoken Ali could be. She’d always marched to the beat of a different drummer, and I guess age hadn’t changed a thing.
“Don’t look so shocked,” she teased me. “People over age fifty do continue to have sex, you know. And I can vouch for the fact it’s even better as we get older.”
Speak for yourself, I thought. I couldn’t remember the last time that Stephen and I had had sex. A year? Two? It wasn’t something we’d discussed or even brought to a halt intentionally. It had just sort of happened. Or not happened. I guess like most other things in my marriage, I had grown to accept it. And the magazines I’d see at the supermarket checkout seemed to confirm that sex was for the twenty, thirty, and forty year olds. Making love was a taboo subject for those of us over age fifty. But I had to admit that when I was reading a novel and came to a sex scene, it made me pause. Or when I watched a chick flick that involved some hot romping in bed, I felt sadness that that part of my life seemed to be over.
When I remained silent, Ali went on.
“Hell, years ago we had to worry about pregnancy. There’s a certain freedom in reaching a point in your life where lovemaking is simply pleasure. Both in the giving and receiving.”
I was saved from commenting by the ringing of Ali’s phone.
“Cedar Key Bed and Breakfast,” she said, in her polished business tone. “Monica. Hey, it’s great to hear your voice. Yup, she’s right here.”
I rolled my eyes as I reached for the phone. “Hi, sweetie. How’re you doing?”
“More to the point, how are you doing? Have you decided what the heck you’re going to do down there? Are you sure you shouldn’t have stayed up here? God, Mom, you’ve got yourself in quite a situation.”
As if I didn’t know that, and I could always depend on Monica to make me feel worse than I did. Never one to cut me any slack, she always stormed full speed ahead on everything. She made me feel like all of this was my fault. My fault that Stephen died, my fault that I got evicted, and my fault she’d lost her childhood home. Unlike me, Monica had always been sure of herself. Strong willed and independent, she made no pretense of the fact that I should have known better than to leave the house in Stephen’s name. She also blamed me for not paying more attention to her father’s hobby of gambling. Monica maintained I should have been aware that he visited the dog and horse track more than was normal.
My anger flared up and I didn’t mince words with her. “I have no idea what I’m going to do. But you know what, Monica? You can be assured you will not be called upon to look after your middle-aged mother. I guarantee you of that.” Pushing the disconnect button, I slammed the phone on the table.
“Hmm,” Ali said, picking up the phone to inspect any damage. “Aren’t mother-daughter relationships wonderful?”
3
Sitting in the quiet garden was quickly becoming my favorite way to start my days. While my Lexington neighborhood wasn’t overly noisy, it did have a fair amount of sound. Car doors slamming, the roar of a motorcycle in the distance, or the faint voice of