Hey all,
Yesterday was an education. My cousin and his wife went to the hospital to pick up their new baby boy that they'd adopted. I didn't know that until I saw a bunch of mails from relatives which were on my Outlook yesterday morning and were entitled: "Hooray!"
I could see there were attachments and so I figured it was a joke or something joke being passed around to everybody (my family does that - every frigging person has to send the same joke). Anyhoo...dumba** here opens the attachments without reading the messages.
There before my eyes are pictures of my cousin & his wife holding their newly adopted baby at the hospital in front of the elevator; in the recovery room; in the hospital lounge,etc., etc. And the messages on the emails? "Let's all pray for (names deleted) and their newly adopted son."
Anyone who's read any of my posts knows what that elevator signifies for me. I can't even describe my shock when I saw this pic of the new family standing in front of that hospital elevator...beaming smiles abounding as they prepared to ride it down to a new life.
Welp........I lost it. And I do mean lost it........... So much so in fact that in desperation as I'm sitting in my home office wailing like a banshee I called my mother!
Yeah. You heard me right. Janey calls mom.
It took me near five minutes to calm down enough to speak. I laid out my feelings, my rage, my heartache. Where, I asked her, was the prayers for the bmom and WHERE was my family's tact and discretion in regards to me?
I waited....waited for that hard side of my mother that turns it's stiff upper lip at suffering..........but it never appeared. Instead, here's my mother apologzing to me!! Telling me that the adoption of my babies was not my fault...that it was hers. That she should've been there for me.
She also admitted that my mean stepdad had told her that if I brought the babies home, he'd thrown them, me and my mother out of the house.
Then she said, "I shouldn't have ignored you in that elevator, Janey. I shouldn't have done that. I was just so **** mad at myself and at my husband that I couldn't even look at you. I failed you. I'm sorry."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said to her, "Mom, honestly I don't even remember you being in the elevator with me."
And she said, "I wasn't Janey. Not really. You were alone and that's my fault. You were so alone in all of it and I'm so sorry and I hope we can start to talk about this."
I just couldn't believe it!
She said she hoped we could continue to build on this small conversation and heal.
I am thinking today that perhaps mom and I have found some kind of bridge......... Yeah.... it's a rickety, Precolumbia arch with rotted twine and busted planks and it threatens to fall into the cavern below but at least it's a bridge, right?
Sigh........I can only hope and in hoping, pray I am not dreaming.
Thanks for listening!
Janey