There was no guarantee from Cathy, nor in my gut that, when I came back to Portland my connection with Cathy would deepen, but I didn’t expect it to flatline altogether. My mind marches all the way back to the core moment in 1970 when I made my decision to bring her to term and relinquish her for adoption. Why was that a good decision if it causes her to suffer? Why is it worthwhile if forty-four years later I am so easily triggered with post-traumatic responses that steal my breath away and spin me with anxiety, pounding potholes in my self-esteem and leaves me flat at the bottom of a deep well in a drying season, fed by dwindling springs of hope?
The irony is almost too much to look at. The adoption was intended to be a noble result of a situation that was considered out of bounds at the time, doing what was best “for the child.” The secrecy around it was supposed to protect us both from social shame and stigma and provide happy endings for two lives in a difficult reality.
Although we’ve built a special closeness in the past twenty-five years since our reunion, there has also been a quiet tension in Cathy that I had accepted as part of her nature. She is more reserved and quiet where I am not. Now at almost forty-five, I can feel something brewing in her that feels like a storm about to break. Somewhere inside I instinctively prepare for a tsunami to hit the shoreline and sense it building from her direction and look for higher ground so it won’t swallow me whole.
There have been a lot of triggers in the past few months. National Adoption Month spurring #flipthescript, a truth-telling campaign in November, followed by Thanksgiving, the sad anniversary of her father’s still recent death, and Christmas with her aging widowed mother for whom Cathy has assumed full filial responsibility. Then I moved from Seattle to live within walking distance from her house. Tinderpoint.
Even in the heat and confusion we both feel, being in one another’s presence is still a curious salve. Perhaps the deeper truth is that we are connected even if the framework of our lives doesn’t always include the space and furniture to hold us in it comfortably together. What we share is still there. DNA does not exclude soul-connection. We are innately bound together. If souls pick their next incarnation, then Cathy picked a doozy when she came to life in me. Maybe God has a sense of humor after all.
Conflict is a game of hearts and time a great teacher. I aim for love but rejection also has its lessons. The truth is the truth and whatever Cathy decides about me will be the best she can do. Love is a transcendental choice.
Sometimes when I feel Cathy’s angst, I wish I could just hold her close and rock her, and not let her go until she settles in my embrace, and finally feels safe enough to rest easy. Instead she fights me off in the reflux of relinquishment and its distress remains to rub her colicky heart.
I imagine that if words could hug, I would never stop talking.
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To read my daughter’s counterblog, please visit ReunionEyes.
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Kate Power & Steve Einhorn
Mothertone ... Kathleen~Cathleen 