Keepers of the Phantom Limbs on Our
Family Trees
A Tribute to Natural Mothers, First Mothers, Adopters and Baby Mamas Everywhere
By D. Russell
Those who lose an arm or a leg
often report feeling a “phantom limb” that tingles or itches where the appendage
used to be. I believe that family-souls who lose a biological child through
adoption, abandonment or lack of recognition, are left with similar energetic
imprints: phantom limbs on our family trees. Most of us do not have to look far
into our ancestry to find a few phantom limbs.
This Mother’s Day, I honor my own
mother as well as all the Natural Mothers, Adopters and Baby Mamas who are the Keepers of The Phantom Limbs of
our family trees.
Natural Mother of Baby James, 1947
Family lore regarding my uncle
James Russell included the one about how his Navy ship was bombed during WWII, how
he once beat the crap out of his wife’s ex-husband and how we should not be fooled by his
Mickey Rooney appearance—this guy had game
with the ladies (even now, well into his 80s).
It was not until I was 22 that I
heard a completely different uncle James story. This time, my dad and uncle Max
were casually laughing about something that happened years before. The “joke” went
something like this: “Yea, remember that girl that (their brother) James got
pregnant? Boy, she was not going to let him get away with walking off carefree.“
“Oh yea, I remember. She insisted on naming that child ‘James Russell X’
(whatever her last name was) and marched around town with her belly out to there,
head held high.” Oh, the scandal!
It may be noted that I very pregnant
at the time, single and more than a little hormonal. I was very hurt by their
remarks. Were the Russell boys really having a good laugh at the expense of
this young woman who carried their brother’s child some forty years earlier, my new secret cousin? Had they chosen this moment to drop that particular
bombshell, just in case I had not paid close enough attention in Catechism classes when they covered how a girl should guard her purity or risk lifelong shame and mockery?
Since then, I have chosen to
consider a kinder interpretation of that story. Maybe they secretly admired this
woman’s chutzpah in thumbing her nose at the townspeople, as I was doing then. Maybe they were gently encouraging me not
to judge the father of my baby too harshly (uncle James was a pretty good guy,
after all). Maybe they were even letting me know that they had thought of this child
from time to time, the Russell boy who was never given a place at the family
table next to their own beloved sons.
My mystery cousin James Russell X
and his descendants represent a phantom branch on my family tree. I looked
online recently and found one record of a James Russell X who was born in that
area, the year my uncle was 22 years old. Was this James my secret cousin? If
so, I imagined that he probably inherited the Russell boys’ sharp wit,
twinkling blue eyes and love for electronic circuitry. I wish I had had
the opportunity to meet him.
The Internet James Russell X
passed away in 2003 at age 56. I pray that it was not from the cancer that took
my sister at a young age, my grandmother, my aunt and my dad. He did not have
access to the information that there is a genetic mutation in our family,
strongly linked with specific types of cancers.
When I lived in Latin America, I
learned the term “Natural Mother/Child” which, to the best of my understanding,
describes some sort of modern day Immaculate Conception or genetic fluke that
allows a woman to conceive without the perceptible participation of a man. (The
term is also used for birth mothers in adoption circles—not my intent here.) I
do not know if there was a similar term in 1947 to describe Miss X and baby
James, beginning the day my uncle walked away.
I smile at the thought of Miss X her
putting on her brightest red lipstick and whitest bobby socks, and strutting
through town, head held high. She is a Keeper of that Phantom Branch on my family
tree. I hope everything turned out well for her. And I hope she had a father who loved his little girl enough to ignore
the whispers, put aside his own judgments, wrap his arm around his daughter and
march through town right alongside her. Just as mine did.
First Mother and Adopter of Baby Sean, 1968
This is how life began for Sean,
the guy who got me pregnant. He was born in Richmond, Va., March 3, 1968.
Birth mother and birth father met
at the wedding of a mutual friend and hit it off. They lived in different
cities at the time, but started a long-distance romance and saw each other on
several occasions over the course of the next year. Birth mother found out she
was pregnant as a result of one of these visits. The couple married late in the
pregnancy. Birth father’s family did not condone the relationship. Birth mother
did not want to give up the baby and fought to keep him, but was finally
convinced to relinquish the child in order to save the marriage. Birth mother was Catholic and birth
father was Jewish. They were both in their 20s. Birth father had a graduate
degree (I want to say social work with undergrad in history?) and birth mother
had (or was working toward) a bachelor’s degree. One was either a twin, or had
twin siblings. One or both was described as having brilliant blue eyes.
To me, the birth story never
quite added up on many levels (assuming that the story is accurate; many
adoption documents are not). Why would the couple get married if they were not
planning to keep the child? How could the woman have gone home to lie in her
husband’s bed, love him or even respect him afterwards? What happened to
Catholic birth mother and Jewish birth father after creating then surrendering
their child?
A doctor and his wife who could
not have children of their own adopted Sean. He was the third child the couple
adopted. They lived in a nice house south of the river. When I asked Sean about
his brother and sister, he commented that the three were obviously adopted
because they looked nothing alike and had very little in common. The adoptive father walked out on the
family when Sean was six. He had only sporadic contact with him after that.
This Mother’s Day I honor Sean’s adoptive
mother and all adoptive mothers. Not being able to have biological children
must carry a level of anguish difficult for those of us who were given babies
quite easily, to imagine. It could not have been easy for her to raise those
three children on her own after her husband left. There must have been extra challenges with raising adopted children who do not share a biological bond to
each other or to the adopter. I hope that those children filled her heart with
joy and she filled their home with love. She must have done a fantastic job in
the end, as Sean grew up to be an intelligent, sensitive, and capable man. He is now an attorney and military
officer, and (I hope) a devoted husband and father to his two boys.
I especially remember and honor
the First Mother, the biological grandmother of my beautiful daughter. I would
love to give her a big hug and tell her how sorry I am that she had to
make such a difficult choice. I am sure she would be proud of her son and it
would be a blessing for her to know that he turned out okay.
Sean’s adoption created a phantom
branch in both of the biological parents’ family trees that may have thrown them
off kilter just a little. He says he has never had any interest in finding his
birth family, which is under stable, given the story he was about why he was given up. But my daughter does! She is curious to know not only their (her)
medical history, but the emotional, intellectual, ethnic and cultural makeup of
those who are genetically her “people” as much as my family is. Is there a blue-eyed grandmother
somewhere with an hourglass figure like hers? Who in that family knows that one
of their own was placed for adoption, and might long to see at least see a
picture of him? I believe it is my daughter’s birthright to know, even if her
biological father is not interested.
Baby Mama of Baby Hillary, 1990
Sean and I had been dating for just a few months when I got pregnant. I was 22
and a senior in college. He was 21 and was going through a divorce. He had
taken a break from his studies and was working two jobs to help support his
wife and toddler boy. About the time I found out I was pregnant, he got back
together with his wife.
Had it been 1947 I may have given
the child his name in protest. In 1968, I may have been convinced that I was
not good enough to be a mom to my own baby or that its soul would be forever
trapped in limbo if I kept it. In 1647 a scarlet letter would have been sewn
to my chest. In 47 A.D. they simply would have stoned me to death. Fortunately,
this was 1989 and there were better options available than stoning. In today's terms, I was about to become a baby mamma.
In this moment I began to
learn what baby mama strength is all
about. I considered my options carefully and with a heavy heart. Deep down, I
wanted to keep my baby and I knew that I could be a good mom to
her. But the world seemed to be trying to convince me otherwise.
I will forever owe a huge debt of
gratitude to my mother for her love and guidance during this time. Although it was very difficult for her, being a staunch Catholic and woman who had opened her own home to unwed mothers; seeing her daughter as one of "them" must have been a shock. She gave me
a several pieces of sage advice that ultimately gave me permission to follow
my heart and keep my baby. First,
she said that she believed that if at all
possible, it is best for a child to stay with its biological parent(s).
Second, that she and my father would support me in whatever I decided, and would help with
whatever I needed. Third, she said, “knowing how much our family loves babies,
how could you ever think that we wouldn’t want you to keep this one?” It was
decided then, I would keep my baby.
Sean pulled all the old tricks of
a young man in full panic mode and not wanting to take responsibility for
thinking with his private parts instead of his head. He doubted the baby was his (step one:
paternity test—check!). He did not feel he should have to pay child support, as
I was the one who decided to have her and keep her (step two: court system not
caught in the middle ages—check!) He offered to have me move in with him and
support me during the pregnancy, if I
gave the child up for adoption (hmmm, and his wife and child? Pass!). He said
that after our child grew up, maybe age 16, if she wanted to have a relationship with him, he would never deny her that (shifting the responsibility for their relationship, to the child—nice!).
It is impossible to imagine my
family today without our precious Hillary. She is 21 and will graduate from
college this year. She is brilliant, beautiful, strong, loving and loyal. She
is forever stitched within my heart, and that of my family soul. Of course, she
will always have a small hole in her heart where her biological father should
be. She will continue to grow around that.
The quickest way we Keepers of
Phantom Limbs innately know how to heal our own hearts and those holes in our children’s
hearts is by claiming fully, our earned position outside the frame of duality thinking that relegated us to the shadows in the first place. We are clear in our wisdom that women are
not either virgins or whores, men are not either family men or
a**holes, birth mothers are not either poor, powerless teens or
unfeeling crack whores. The truth is that we each have a story that is much
richer and much more complicated than can be summed up using a few stereotypes. We
are each much brighter and stronger and more resilient than to have our life
stories hijacked by the guy who got us pregnant, the father who walked out, or
the girl who is insisting we pay child support. We get to write our own endings with rich details and descriptive adjectives and juicy plot twists.
As Hillary grew, I played a game
in my mind that gave me super baby mama strength. Any time she showed a positive trait that did not come from
me, I would silently attribute it to her biological father and thank him for
his DNA. When she began sketching elaborate costume designs age 9, I thought “just
like him—incredible artistic talent.” When she watched Gone With the Wind and
concluded that Scarlett was the undisputed heroine and that Melanie was “a
terrible liar—it says so right at the beginning,” I thought, “He must be a gifted
attorney with the ability to formulate an compelling argument on either side of
a case.” When she got a near-perfect score on her SATs and made the final cut to
appear on TV for Teen Jeopardy—well, I went halfsies on that—both her
parents are pretty smart cookies!
Hillary was 6 when she began to recognize
the baby mama game. Once she even broke down in primal sobs and asked, “If he’s such
a great guy, how come he left me without a dad?” This one requires advanced baby
mama strength. The best I was able to come up with was to acknowledge that this
man is a fatherless father. Two men who had the opportunity to love and nurture him,
take pride in his accomplishments and stand by his side (his birth father and adoptive father),
simply did not. It changed who he is as a person. So he did the same to you,
my precious little one. It was not fair and it was incredibly hurtful and you did not
deserve it. And you will grow through it, grow around it. Despite all the baby mama magic in
the world, this is the one hand we just have to fold on every time.
I am heartened to see that in
2012, we have evolved to the point where biological fathers not only have permission,
but the expectation, of having some connection with their biological children,
regardless of the status of their relationship with the mother. It is my belief
that there is more than enough love available in the universe to encompass and
accommodate any number of parent-child/family configurations. The “shortage” of
babies up for adoption these days is likely due in part, to the fact that more mothers
are seeking and receiving the support they need to follow their heart if it
tells them that they are be the best mother for their baby. And we have made it
harder and less acceptable for fathers to simply walk away. Fewer phantom limbs
in our family trees.
So today, First Mother’s Day, I
want to honor all those Keepers of the Phantom Limbs on our family trees: all
the Natural Mothers, the First Mothers, the Adoptive Mothers, and the Baby
Mamas who courageously and lovingly made the best decisions we could in the
face of heartbreak, scorn and adversity. We can all strut through town with
heads held high, and know that we and our children will be just fine.
Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, JoAnn
Russell, who is forever imprinted in my heart.
