So, tomorrow is my born date.  I wanted to spend the day with my birthmother, but this didn't happen.   My mother and I reunited quite a few years ago.  I wanted to ask her lots of questions about it.  She's not had the chance to tell me about her experience as a mom. When I first met her, she told me about the events surrounding my taking.  I was taken from her and put up for adoption.  I was adopted in 1975, three years before the Indian Child Welfare Act, not sure when the state took me.

 My birthday is a mixed occasion for me; happy to be alive, sad about what happened to my mom.   Adoptees are handed a legacy that is taken away from us when we are picked up and placed on another path.  Altho, it's not any different than anyone else's path, really, not any more significant or less, it just is.  For native America, it's strained, I guess.  I was taken because of my mother's skin color.  'The taking.'  My mom has not been right since.  As one would expect the event devastated her.
But now, like any mom, she gets mad at me because I don't call often enough or come to visit enough.  Which makes me smile, and close my eyes, and breathe deeply the essence of being loved.   Love has no conditions, no control.  It simply is.  I didn't understand how it worked with my son until I met my mom. My mom relates to me the same way I relate to my son.

Understanding how love works helps me to understand my adopted dad.  He simply loved me and gave me his name. Which is pretty significant to give a stranger your name.  I will always be grateful for him and grateful for my heritage.  My adopted dad walked on in 1995 and it seems I miss him more now than ever.  I miss him on birthdays.  Birthdays make me think of home, perfectly frosted cakes made by my step-mom, and the smell of forest; the smell of pine; sap; wild rose bushes, the sound of Omak creek gurgling.

My birthdays generally come and go. Nothing significant happens.  I joined a small online community a couple of years ago who celebrated it today.  That was quite lovely.  That will probably be the extent of it.

 

So scared.  Not even sure why.  I fear what's going to happen, and what won't happen and most of all nothing at all.  Fear has bullied me, stymied me, tripped me, I wait for fear to take a nap so I can tiptoe over it only to find myself taking a nap instead.

It occurred to me that I like commas far too much and I place them, unnecessarily, everywhere.  Time to read Rule of Thumb again.  So many books to read this summer.

I felt bored yesterday and a bit lonely today.  When I first realized I was bored, I thought how childish of me, I have a camera and books to read, and I am fully capable of finding things to do.  As I was getting ready to take my daily walk, I realized I am over my ex-partner.  Truly over him and the grief of another lost relationship.  I know this because my brain was free to realize I wasn't crunching the grief or finding things to distract me from it. A very freeing feeling and one that makes me very happy.  I didn't come out of it unscathed, where I once had furniture (that he is now in possession of) I have weight gain, I am slower.  Our break up came in the middle of a four-year depression.  Took my legs right out from under me.  Medication, food, and isolation did not help.  Not a method to prescribe to, that's for sure.  Education and support held me.  But, I am not sure I was capable of anymore, energy-wise.  The energy simply wasn't there.  I kept eating thinking that would give me energy, but it only served to slow me down.

Sometimes, I realize things too harshly. In the aftermath and the wreckage of depression, I see again, the gentleness of the grass growing and from a distance how soft and billowy tree branches move in the breeze. Trees are ironic.  Six pelicans have been swimming in the pond.  I love watching pelicans, it's like watching something be a caricature of itself.

My legs are returning to me, along with my strength.  I forget how strong I am and sometimes when a flash of anger arises, I deal with people harsher than I realize.  Chill is typically my middle name.

I am putting off what I know I inevitably have to do. Fear.  Because once this last stretch is done, then the next chapter has to be written, and that's the scary one.  It involves rejection.  I hate rejection, I also loathe ridicule, which happens to large people a lot.  I need a plan to deal with it.  Like a song or something. And a note reminding me to breathe.  Made the note, I keep a little sketchbook by my laptop and every day I blind draw my fist, date it.  One day, I want to show my artist friend, whom I asked to teach me how to draw, and she said, this first, so I learn to see with my eyes.