I’ve already said pretty much everything I needed to say in last year’s,

Mothers’ Day and my day

Since I first wrote that piece, it’s been another year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’

May 10th, 2009 marks another year of still only one phone call to make.

***

Sadly, Saturday slid out from underneath me due to other obligations, but, a bit late here, I wanted to also point out my post from last year pertaining to

“Birthmother’s Day” and a Day without Adoption

It too, covers the Saturday portion of these weekends, and deserves time and attention as well.

As to why “Birthmother’s Day” is in quotes? Read the piece, it’s simply not language I prefer to utilize.

Finally, lest this post seem little more than a poignant rerun, Lorraine Dusky (herself a Mother,) has a few choice words about “Birthmother events.”

In the spirit of letting Mothers speak for themselves, and NOT speaking for them or over them, here’s a link worth the read on a day like today.

What’s Wrong with Birthmother Events on Mother’s Day? Just about EVERYTHING

The entire piece is an important read.

While Mothers (of all stripes) react each in their own way to these weekends, I find these two paragraphs of Lorraine’s strong work most deeply mirror my own thinking about such.

Not surprisingly, I am not a fan of any “birth mother celebrations,” even if they were the brainchild of first/birth mothers themselves, as apparently some of them are. The Saturday before Mother’s Day is designated as “Birthmother’s Day.” Special gatherings of first mothers are planned in several states, I read. To all this I say, gag me with a spoon. I can not think of anything more depressing that getting together with other first mothers on the day calibrated to remind us of possibly the worst day in our lives…unless we were going to the theater, a super lunch, a day at the spa, or just getting together because we are friends.

This is the first year in several that I did not get numerous reminders to attend a Spence-Chapin gala in Manhattan, which I looked upon as a mawkish reminder of all that had been lost. I know a hasty email I sent offended at least one of the birth mothers involved in the planning. But I can not see how such a “celebration” for women who have relinquished their children–sponsored by an adoption agency–is anything more than a pat on the head for good service done, as in: You gave us product for our business. Thank you. Hey, have lunch on us, light a candle together, we share your pain.

What many don’t realize is that particularly for womyn who have never revealed their hidden status as Mothers, today may be a personal form of their own annually celebrated hell. For every Mother like Lorraine, boldly writing their truths, there are also other womyn locked in silence of a decades old secret.

I’m not sure any of the readily “visible”/above the waterline members (Parents, Adopted People, or Adoptive Parents) of the adoption pentagon go through this time of year completely unscathed.

Add in the bonus round “fun” of both families dealing with miscarriage or infertility and the lives of womyn such as myself, who are intentionally Childfree (not childless, but choosing a lifetime devoid of children of our own) and it becomes readily apparent, “Mother’s Day weekend” is fraught with emotional and systemic complexity and often unstated volumes worth of the reproductive biographical realities of all our lives.

What to Hallmark is so often reduced to inks and papers, to womyn ourselves is a weekend filled with so many of the “impolite” topics and conversations that form the very fabric of our lives.

Each year, over these weekends, whether I like it or not, my thoughts turn to each of us, each in our positions, each with their own stories to tell. I find so much of the landscape spread out before me profoundly disturbing and all too often tinged with genuine sorrow.

But it’s more than that.

I wrote yesterday about how today is all too often painful for many different kinds of Mothers for many different reasons.

What I didn’t mention though, are a particular subset of (Original) Mothers, those who for good or ill happen to have given birth on Mother’s Day.

Oh yes, birth happens on that second Sunday in May, just as any other day. So there are Mother’s Day Original Mothers/”Birthmothers”; those womyn who gave birth on Mother’s Day, who place or find their children in adoptions. Some even blog about their experiences, here for example.

Thus Mother’s Day takes on whole new levels of meaning for those “lucky” few.

Why write about them on a day like to today, a day all about Spring flowers and Sunday Brunches and all the heartwarming good feelings people fixate upon when they hear the words “Mother’s Day?” I mean come on, womyn losing their kids permanently, and into things like sealed adoptions? What a downer. Who the hell wants to talk about things like that on a day like this?

Well, I do, but not only out of empathy.

For you see, one of those few Mothers who gave birth on Mother’s Day in the late 1960’s in Ohio just happened to be my Mother. Which means Mother’s Day, also happens to fall on my Birthday many years. The particular day I was born, for example.

Being a product of a sealed adoption I can only imagine what that has meant to her decade after decade (both the good, and the potential anguish, perhaps even anguish a bit above and beyond the usual due to the arbitrary significance of said date.)

I certainly know what it meant to me. Being a sealed records adoptee who has a Birthday as Mother’s Day is it’s own particular hell.

I’ve also had somewhat of an insight into what it’s meant for my Adoptive Mother, though I won’t presume to speak for her, or to her feelings on this.

So today I can only make one phone call, when the reality is, I need to make two.

Though odds are I’d be willing to bet My Original Mother wishes she could call and wish me “Happy Birthday” as well, (although she too has been unable to cross the divide Ohio’s sealed records have created.) As is, I have no way of knowing whether or not she even knows whether I’m still alive.

So for the Mother I’ve never known, (having the Ohio sealed records system to ‘thank’ for that) all I can do is send my “Happy Mother’s Day” out across the net.

You deserved better than that.