Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found Read online

  I thought that once I found my mother, I would instantly be over all my old wounds, but it doesn’t work like that. My adoption had shredded us both. In equal part, we each had much more healing to do, and for me it was time to go it alone for a while.

  MY KIDS DID meet the family. Jo discovered a new cousin and Spencer had fun playing with Jessie and her little boy.

  When we left Reno, Spencer said, “They look like you, Mom, but they are nothing like you, you know? ”

  With anyone else, I might have asked questions but with Spencer—I understood.

  THE CHAPERONES CLUSTER in the gymnasium, which is thick with the smells of rubber balls and dirty socks. I wear a nametag around my neck that reads: Josephine’s Mom. Jo presents me with the files of the two children who are to ride with me. They are Sarin and Ray.

  “Already I have a problem,” I say. “You are not on my list.”

  All four feet of Jo Jo stands up taller, paisley poncho draped around her body, her hood on her head.

  “Mo-om,” she says. “We talked about this. You have to drive other kids. It’s the rule.”

  I push her hood back and stomp my foot.

  “I don’t get this rule. I want to be with you,” I insist.

  “Mom,” she says. She pulls her hood back up and stomps her foot right back at me. “This is class time. I have to be independent.”

  It’s all a show. I already know I am not to have Jo in my car. Her teacher has made it clear that I am to allow Jo her own “self-sufficient outdoor experience,” without my preferential treatment. While I’m with the group, I am everyone’s mommy. This way, the other children, whose mothers could not come, do not feel left out.

  I take this as a reminder of a lesson I know all too well. The wrong kind of mothering and even overmothering can be as bad as no mothering. The act of nurturing requires such delicate balance. I know. I know.

  “Fine,” I say, pouting. “Be independent. Show me how it’s done.”

  Jo flits away, grinning over her shoulder, and I join the group of waiting parents.

  WHAT DO I think of the life I have lived?

  I once had so many regrets, wishing for less abuse and more expedient understanding of circumstances but these feelings no longer hold me hostage.

  My life has been my life and I have learned the best I knew how. I’ve tried as hard as any human could have. Now I’ve met Catherine, I feel a new self mature within my core and my old sad and protective self is being shed like the skin of a snake. I’m working myself free. I’m emerging into a new world.

  My view widens to the point where I can forgive the people from my past—Richard, Peggy, Deb, her kids, Bryan, Bud, Janet, Auntie Carol. What’s done is done. I can also see my own part in our mutual story. I can see the tricks my mind played on me. I can see how I even attracted so much negativity and hardship. I have learned the power of a traumatized mind.

  I also now have the luxury, space, and inner peace to be philosophical about the past. I feel I have learned so much; I have grown as a human being in this human family. And I get to ponder how the suffering we go through has the potential to make us more vivid and alive. I remind myself of the pressure a rock must go through to become a crystal. I have experienced that pressure myself. I feel refined.

  Most of all, I am grateful for my life and to Catherine for allowing time together to fulfill the biological need. I needed to get fully born into this life and my mother overcame her shame and her desire for secrecy to give that to me. What more could I want?

  IN THE CENTER of the gym, the children of the class are assembled in a circle. They are short, tall, skinny, thick, short-haired, long-haired, blond, brunette, black hair, and nearly every race. Their teacher, a high-spirited woman with boundless stores of positive energy, gives them last-minute instructions.

  This is a school designed around the method of Maria Montessori. The prime objective is to follow the child. Adults are guides, not teachers. Children explore the world and lead their own learning process. Each stage of development is considered.

  Jo pays close attention and is so earnest as her beloved teacher speaks. She stands tall, her shoulders back and her chin high, poised at the age of independence. She now knows who she is. She is, very much, her own person.

  IT IS COMMON for an adoptee to search for her father’s people when the reunion with the birth mother simmers down. I am no exception. I did search.

  This is when I learned of the impossible birthday, September 19, 1945. I also learned that Bill Wright died in the year 2005. He had cancer.

  While he lived, Bill had been fruitful.

  I found three more brothers—Tom, John, and David—as well as a sister named Sarah. I’ve met them all save Tom, and found my siblings to be quiet, contemplative, and sweet people with a kind of vulnerability and depth I didn’t experience in Catherine’s presence. She must have been the sunny side of the match and Bill was the dark side. I find I am surprisingly comfortable with my father’s children. They have been welcoming, polite, understanding, and genuine. I like them.

  I am told Bill had four wives and loved them all.

  Bill served in Vietnam and was honorably discharged.

  Bill was a Christian man who read the Bible nearly every day. He used to go around his house writing scriptures, as well as his own thoughts, on legal pads.

  Bill settled in a town very near Winlock called Yelm. He had a hobby of digging in the dirt of his yard where he would unearth rocks to make walking paths and stone walls. He made the soil of his garden supple and soft enough to grow a bountiful garden of strawberries and vegetables. He cooked for his family—in fact, my sister Sarah tells me it was Bill’s cooking that brought the many wives and children together. They all loved his food.

  Bill had a dark side, flashbacks from Vietnam. Another ghost that haunted him was his own childhood. His mother, named Georgia, abandoned him as a little boy. His grandmother raised him. His mother, who drank, came and went. Bill never knew his own father. It’s suspected Georgia was a prostitute.

  During his worst attacks, Bill would leave his family and go off by himself for days, sometimes weeks, to wrestle deep depression.

  Sarah told me Bill, when lucid, had been a good man and a good father. “Family was important to him,” she told me. She said her father had been generous and kind. He loved his kids. Even at his worst, he never harmed his own.

  When he died, he wrote all his recipes down and left them to his youngest son, David.

  “OKAY NOW,” THE guide says, clapping her hands. “Find your chaperone and let’s grab our gear.”

  I am on the lookout for my charges, Sarin and Ray, and they are quick to appear in front of me with little nametags around their necks. Both children have impossibly dark eyes and tentative smiles. Sarin has long dark hair in pigtails. Ray has a crew cut. Sarin is clearly of Eastern Indian descent and Ray is of Asian descent. I wonder if they are adopted children but don’t make that assumption. This is an international school, after all.

  Sarin and Ray are weighted down with sleeping bags and backpacks. They shift their bundles in their arms. “Can I help?” I offer.

  They both shake their heads in the same way at the same time. Their expressions are quite serious for ones so young.

  “Right,” I say. “You are supposed to do it yourselves.”

  They nod, so earnest.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  We weave out of the gym. Jo is in another group. I sneak a wave in her direction but she pretends to ignore me.

  WE FORM A caravan of cars, vans, and trucks and everyone follows the guide in the lead. We have cell phones and maps and a three-hour drive to complete. Our route is through a maze of freeways, down to the ocean, and up to the edge of the state. The teaching is about Lewis and Clark, that team of explorers who ended their trek across the U.S. just outside Astoria, Oregon.

  Once underway, I announce that I have a book on tape.

  “Okay,” Sarin
agrees.

  “Sure,” says Ray.

  I am surprised by their agreeability. Jo and Spencer would never consent with such speed.

  “Do you want to know what it’s about?” I ask.

  They don’t really seem to care but I go ahead and explain how the story is about a little boy in China who is tied to a kite against his will and sent to the heavens to test the wind. It’s titled The Kite Rider.

  “If you hate it, we’ll do music or something else,” I say as I put in the first CD.

  “Okay,” Ray says. Sarin says nothing. She looks out the window.

  They are so well mannered and polite—nothing like the flapping poncho and the sulking of an hour ago. I look from child to child and they are so very familiar to me. International school or not, these kids are adopted.

  Later, the guide will confirm that Sarin is from India and Ray is from Vietnam. I will be told of struggles that plague them—the lack of trust, the need for structure and routine, learning challenges, deep fears, tender open hearts, and an eagerness to please.

  The CD book begins with the sound of gongs and the deep voice of the narrator. All three of us are taken in right away when the boy is orphaned in the first chapter.

  IF I LET myself imagine being Tara Wright rather than Jennifer Lauck, I have to ask not what would have become of me, but instead, what would I have missed? Would I have become an investigative reporter and then a writer? Would I have slept in a tent in the Rocky Mountains, under a rainbow-ringed moon? Would I have hiked dusty roads, asking myself about the nature of my mind? Would I have sat in front of an enlightened master and heard him speak Tibetan, while giving me a thumbs up? Would I have done one prostration, let alone one hundred thousand for the benefit of all beings? Would I have met Tylanni, Rinpoche, or Anne? Would I have loved, fought, and made babies with Steve? Would there be Jo? Would there be Spencer? Would I have found the love of Rogelio? Would there be me, as I am now, a middleaged woman ripening into an old woman with such a tale to tell?

  I suppose it’s not about being Jennifer Lauck or Tara Wright, it’s about what I will now do with my life. I must continue to ask myself deep questions about what has come to pass, which include these: Did I learn? Did I grow? Can I say I am a woman—no matter my name—who brings healing and love? Or will I forever be defined and governed by what I have lost? What is the value of what has passed?

  Big questions.

  We shall see.

  JUST THE OTHER day, Roger looked up my name in Chinese (which is just like him since he’s a scholar of ancient Chinese medicine). He said Jennifer translates to be Zhen Ni Fa and this means—among many things—green jade woman. Of course, a green jade woman is Tara.

  I will remain as Jennifer Caste Lauck for this life. That is who I am and who I always was. But I suppose I am also Tara. I am Jampel Sherab too. And I’m none of these. I find myself, these days, beyond explanation.

  Such a state can be a great relief.

  THE CLASS IS to visit a Lewis and Clark museum and I turn off the CD and pull over for the first stop of the day.

  “You know, this is a pretty scary book,” I say. “Are you guys okay with it?”

  “No, it’s not,” Sarin says. “It’s really good.”

  “We get to listen again when we get back in, right?” Ray asks.

  They lean forward, stretching the seat belt straps to the limits. Adopted children like to know what’s going to happen next. They want continuity and a sense of control. I see these desires in their faces and hear them in their questions.

  “Yes,” I say, “of course.”

  We pile out of the car and I act as vigilant guide, making sure they have lunches, coats, and their note pads. I get them to the curb safely. I rest my hands on their shoulders—the lightest of touch, just enough, not too much. Adopted children don’t like to be smothered. But they will smother you, if they let you get close enough.

  Sarin and Ray ease close to me. They lean into my sides, barely touching beyond a confirmation of contact.

  As we cross the road together, I feel a rise of surprising love for these two children—it’s as big as what I feel for Jo and Spencer. All this time, I have kept myself so isolated from the world and I have been so full of fear that I did not think it possible to open my heart to strangers, but look. Love is here.

  IT’S NOT TRUE that I didn’t have any identity. The problem was that I had too many identities—all of them flimsy at best. My Self, prior to meeting Catherine, was a patchwork quilt, a jagged mosaic of trial and error. I am now in a phase of refinement.

  I was a writer and that is who I remain.

  I was a mother and that is who I am too.

  I was a Buddhist and now remain a curious student, although I am now more like an Ekhart Tolle-yogini-Buddha-Daoist. I also dig Byron Katie, I think Jesus rocks, and I’m pretty sure John Lennon was enlightened. I’d make a bet on it.

  Before I met Catherine, I played piano for years, studying classical music. I bought a tabla and took lessons from a small Indian man. I also had a small accordion-style instrument, from India as well, and I was trying to figure that machine out. I even took voice lessons. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of music. I have given all that up. I am not a musician (although I love music).

  Before I met Catherine, I studied dance, a high-test form of ballet, for twenty years. I stood on tiptoes, did deep pliés and attempted running leaps. I made achingly slow progress. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of dance. I have given that up too. I am not a dancer (although I love to dance).

  Before I met Catherine, I became a Tibetan Buddhist, meditated, considered becoming a nun and—well, you know that story. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of spirit. I am not a Tibetan. I don’t have time to meditate hours of each day away and I certainly am not a monastic. I do my Tara meditation nearly every day. Tara is enough for me.

  I am now a person who prefers chocolate ice cream.

  My favorite food is Japanese.

  I don’t like cake.

  I do like pastries.

  My favorite tree is the red oak in my back yard.

  My favorite flower is the rose.

  My favorite color is brown, a deep, rich, earthy shade of sable brown.

  AFTER LUNCH, THE children collectively play on and around the picnic tables. They chase each other and make games of tag and hide and seek.

  Sarin remains outside the group. She holds her journal to her chest. Her ponytails have come undone and she has the elastics on her wrist for safekeeping. Ray is off on the other side of the group, sitting at a bench in solitude.

  The other chaperones are all together, at the tables too, and they chat as they eat.

  I sit at a bench, on my own and within earshot of Sarin.

  “Do you want me to fix your hair?” I ask.

  I am pretty sure Sarin will say no to my offer but she smiles and nods. She wriggles the bands off her wrist and hands them to me.

  I comb her hair with my fingers and it slides over my skin, so dark that it shines. It’s thick too. “You have the prettiest hair,” I tell her. “I love it.”

  She says thank you, very polite.

  I put the elastics into place, careful not to pull or tug.

  “Is that good? ” I ask.

  She nods and sits down next to me on the bench.

  It doesn’t bother me that she sits here with me, so quiet. If she were Jo, I’d worry that she didn’t feel well or was unhappy. Jo isn’t the kind of child to sit on a bench, apart from the crowd. Spencer isn’t either. But I was, and so is Sarin.

  At my feet is a basket of yarn I travel with. I knit from a skein of gray wool that feeds out of the basket—back and forth I go—creating something from nothing.

  “What are you making?” Sarin asks.

  “Oh, just a scarf,” I say.

  Sarin plays with the yarn that feeds into my needles and we say no more.

  Knitting isn’t about the scarf
but is about soothing anxiety. A therapist I know also said knitting can help reform the trauma structures built into my brain. It has something to do with using both hands, crossing the axis and repetitive motion but I don’t really understand the science. I just know knitting helps calm me down. If knitting can also help realign my brain—pass the yarn.

  “I knit too,” Sarin says.

  “You do?”

  She nods, big dark eyes of melted chocolate.

  “Finger knitting, most of the time,” she adds. “I like it though. It makes me feel better.”

  “I hear you, little sister,” I say. “You want some yarn? ”

  She smiles when I call her little sister, just a trace of a smile but declines my offer. Finally, she gets off the bench and says she’s going to fill her water bottle before we go.

  As she walks over to the fountain, Ray comes to where I sit and plunks down on the bench. “Whatcha making?” he asks.

  THIS IS THE Story I tell myself about Catherine.

  She is a product of her environment—of her land. She lives where gambling, prostitution, and speedy marriages and divorces are the norm. Her cells have been rearranged by the many nuclear bomb blasts that have occurred just a few hundred miles south. Radioactive winds have blown over her roof and have been inhaled and exhaled a trillion times. Her state contains a national sacrifice zone—the only one I know of in the U.S.—where a wide swath of land is uninhabitable and will be for countless generations.

  Catherine also happens to be one of an estimated 1.5 million American girls who were forced to sacrifice their babies under Nazilike conditions of terror and fear. The stories of women strapped down during labor, of having babies mercilessly wrenched away, and of being forced to sign documents that were not legal are enough to make even me, a hardened journalist, revolted.