When You Have Birthmother as Friend
We joke that we are cut from the same cloth. It’s almost quite funny. We have so many of the same likes and dislikes, we can almost assume for each other how the other will react. I have only known her for a year, but people think we have known each other forever.
She started out as just a woman I worked with.
Back to the Restaurant Industry; Away from Crazy Kitchens
I had recently returned to the restaurant industry which is a fancy term for saying I started waiting on tables again. I had a “real” job in my field as a kitchen designer in Westchester, but over the nine months I worked for this guy, who owned the small business, and his wife, who I really liked, I had come to the conclusion that he was a crazy man. He was nasty and verbally abusive and just beyond any more attempts of compromise and bending over backwards to keep my job. He was so nuts that I was depressed and also scared. He would turn red and curse at me and I had to met with him alone at night. Even his wife of 30 something years, hated him and talked of divorce with the wistful tones of a hopeful fantasy.
Anyway, one day in mid December 2004, He was freaking out as usual..finding an “issue” with a job that he had already looked over, but since he was a control freak, he couldn’t just let me DO my job and sell the kitchen. And I realized that nothing I would or could do was going to make him happy and I should just cut my losses. I was doing my customers a disservice because of him and the thought occurred to me,”I would rather wait tables than deal with him anymore”. So I quit.
By Jan 2, I was trailing at Terrapin Restaurant in Rhinebeck, NY.
I am a restaurant snob. I like a real good place and very few would I even consider working at. I am a damn good waitress. Good timing with food, I am funny and amusing and I really do like you to be happy if you are at my table. Plus I am not going to waste my time in a restaurant that does not make money. I expect a hundred bucks a night ..minimum.
I have always loved this restraint. And really, they were my first choice going back into actually working the floor after an 8 year retirement. It was a joy to be there..and I liked everyone I worked with.
They hired three of us that time..Me, James and Merridee. We were the “new kids’
The First Time I Actually Met Another BirthMother
One night, after a shift…Merri and I were sitting around talking to Samantha at the bar. Somehow, it turned to babies, fertility, the government and adoption. So I was babbling away..gee, could you imagine?..and Merri also had a lot to say. And at one point, we are on infant adoption..and I just look at her. And I am shocked by what she is saying because I can tell, she knows…….
So I ask her, “Wait a minutes…how do you know this?”
And she looks at me, with haunting eyes, and says,”Because I placed my son Teddy for adoption.”
And I was, for the first time, sitting with another birthmother in the flesh.
It took me 17 years of being open about Max’s adoption, before I would be open with another mom like myself. There is something to be said about being able to sit around after work, drink in hand, and discuss how screwed up we are by it all. We do that when we need to.
Like if I am pissed off at something, I can just rant with her..and she gets it.
If we have a known adoptive family in the restaurant, we can raise our eyebrows at each other and it says sooo much. It’s support, it’s co-working, it’s friendship.
It’s funny we have very similar type spouses and we can vent on that too. We are close in age, our son’s are close in age. She insisted on an open adoption, but now it is closed partly of her choosing. She as been kept up to date and rejoices at my finding Max. I have more children, she does not. She is everyone’s favorite to work with. She goes above and beyond. It’s too quiet when she is not there. Loud and real, brash and funny, honest to a fault, she has the biggest heart.
Supporting BirthMother Birthday Blues
It’s her son’s birthday this week. That haunting look just flickered quickly though her eyes when she told me. No one could have noticed the quiver in her voice. I saw it. I know what a birthday means.
“When do you usually crash?” I asked her.
“I’ll get hit on Wednesday” she replied.
Good.
It is our staff holiday party. We will all be off, the restaurant closed..at the bowling alley with black light bowling two blocks from my house. This is suppose to be fun, but we all dread it anyway.
I hope I can be of some comfort to my friend on Wednesday. If we have to leave the fun of the black lights to sit at my house and talk, I will be more than glad. I know how these birthdays are
If nothing else, she won’t need to explain anything to me.
I know.
