The Decisions That Shape Our Lives

Sometimes I look in the mirror and after feeling the shock of seeing my mother looking back at me, I am amazed that I am nearing close to 40 (yea Gods, the oldest I have ever been) and hear the infinitely wise words of David Byrne from the Talking Heads:

“Well, how did I get here?”

It’s in those moments that I look back and try to find the answer on what got me to the place that I am at now…why this life, why this house, why this husband?

It is with all the clarity that hindsight can offer, I see just a few distinct moments in my life where it all could have changed.

Not the little inconsequential choices..this job or that, this new car or another and not the weird “beyond our control stuff” like if I hadn’t tried to carry too much up to the attic that time, I would not have fallen and ruptured my spleen, but the big stuff… the decisions that completely and totally changed the course of my existence and the foundation of who I am. One is a minor blip, not so much a huge choice but a lack of possible opportunity.

The Moments When Life Could Have Altered

My dearly adored ex-boyfriend came to visit my roommate in my new digs and surprised the heck out of me.

I had already started dating a different guy, the one that I eventually married and had my second son with, and I was very quick to turn any conversation with the loved ex away from the “us” and keep it very neutral. I know I could have engaged it all into something else and then there would have been no chance for the new relationship t take hold. For it was more than him just “popping” by…over a hundred miles. In our relationship there was a reoccurring theme and joke about turtles, so when he bought up my crazy roommate’s wooden turtle into the conversation, I knew that it was my opportunity to make the bland petty talk move into another realm. I was, unfortunately, still too angry and wanted to prove that I didn’t need him, care about him anymore, so I ignored the turtle reference.

So nothing happened and I never saw him again and I married the guy I was dating, had my second son and then went thought an emotional divorce after a disaster of a marriage. I know the paths of my life diverged that day in the nasty college basement apartment.

The Paths Life Takes

Other big deals, like moving away from home, off Long Island to Upstate NY, I don’t seem to have issue with. Granted it was a major life changing event, but it wasn’t a huge decision, more like a logical whim. People still ask me how I got up here and why and I usually blame it on LI traffic. But I didn’t think long and hard about it at the time, I just did it because it was a cool thing to do and New Paltz was a cool place to move to and, conveniently enough, there was a college to go to here too.

Conceiving my daughter was a big decision, for she was the only pregnancy that I actually planned. After years of trying, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully to control my fertility, it was ground breaking to plan to get pregnant. I freaked out because it felt so foreign, but consoled with the wise words of my best friend (at my grandfather’s funeral no less),

“Claud, it’s not so weird, You have always wanted to have more kids. You just didn’t have a guy who wanted them too. Now you do. Just do it”

And so I did. Scarlett was conceived quicker than I expected and therefore, I was bound to a man who I frequently hated at the time. Oddly enough, we both know that we would have gone our separate ways if not for her pending arrival, but we have managed to find our ways to be happy and content, committed to more than each other, but to this whole life that we have built together which includes both our daughter and her little brother.

So again, here is a path not taken and some other life of mine gone, but I would not have it any other way. I adore my children and I love my husband. This is a great life.

By far the biggest of all though, the ( please pardon the pun) mother load, is relinquishing my first born son for adoption at 19.

Now, of course, we all know that deciding not to parent ones child is a huge decision and one that is not to be made or taken lightly, but I am still frequently amazed that it continues to have such huge ramifications to this day.

Adoption: The Choice that Continue to This Day

At the time, it seemed that parenting him would have been the true life altering choice, but, ah, hindsight, no..it’s is the loss of that boy that continues to shape me and so many others in my path.

Briefly, I was 19 when I had Max and gave him up for adoption, 18 when I conceived, at a time in my life when I was so damaged, so broken , so in need of something to make me valuable and worthy. Born of a secret affair, with an older man who had a thing for young women, I paid in blood and tears to protect those who deserved not to be protected. Yet, I was a goodly determined birthmother to be who made all the right decisions once I was released of the spell of denial and willingly entered into the void of adoption with hopes of righting my great wrong, correcting my mistakes, and becoming a good and worthy person of value at last.

And that great noble feeling of being “strong, wise and loving” carried me over for quite a few years after. If you had asked me then, in that 14 year period after the adoption if it really affected me, I would have said no. I did not see then what I actually of out of the adoption: the overwhelming sense of righteousness, though I did like to think that “if I got hit by a truck I would have a place in heaven for doing something truly selfless” nor was I able to see and feel what I lost. If you had told me anytime in that period that I would spend hours upon hours discussing and learning and researching and writing about adoption, I would have laughed myself silly in disbelief.

Yes, it was the idea of parenting that would have changed my life forever. And that is what I was trying very hard to avoid. Worried about how I would care for my child, raise him, handle the responsibility, possible regret it; all that greatly factored into my deciding to place as well. It is only now that I can dare to look beyond the fears I had and really see what was available to me and what I was capable of.

What Would My Life had been like…

if I had kept my son……

My mother, shocked as she was at the pregnancy, would have come around by his birth. She would have had to. Even with him gone, she did accept and mourn the loss of him. When struck by cancer, she had the goal to live long enough to see him “come home”. My mother would have had 7 years of being a grandmother, rather than just three….double her joy. That’s long enough that I would not be the only one to carry her real memory.

The disapproval and secret shame of my family knowing would have worn off also in time, as well as the curious looks of the neighbors and whoever else was so feared. Really now, was I all that special and was a young mom all that shocking in 1987 that we would have been stigmatized forever? Nah, some other drama would have caught the attention of the masses and I would have been left alone. I figure I would have had maybe 6 months of real conflicts before it all settled down.

I would have had to tell his father about his impending birth. That alone would have removed the weight I have carried alone for the past 18 years as I have managed to continue to procrastinate in speaking the truth to this man. Realistically, I would have been entitled to quite a nice existence financially. Paternity tests were happening then and I could have easily proved his parentage. Maybe I alone would have had trouble supporting my child, maybe it would have been a joyful struggle even with my mother’s help, but enter in paternal responsibility and we have a whole new ball game.

I didn’t dare think of this for over ten years after placement. Probably because my own father was a deadbeat dad, it was not an avenue I thought to really pursue, but we are not talking about another 19 year old with a part time job. Max’s dad was and still is an international corporate NY lawyer with his own firm. Seventeen percent of that income is a pretty nice chunk of change. Plus, this was and is his only child and he tended to be quite generous with his money.

Seeing the Life I threw Away

I can see sometimes glimmers of this other life that was in my grasp. Living in Manhattan in nice apartment, going to art school like I wanted. Maybe if I hadn’t taken the huge child education sidestep, I would have discovered my true calling, interior design, long before I actually did. Max would see his grandmother, his uncle, his father, his great grandparents…all relationships lost forever now. I can see a nanny there if needed while I went to classes and then the best of NYC private schooling…Dalton and their sweet little uniforms, afternoons at the Met. Theater and opera nights with his dad, trips to South America and Europe, summers with his dad’s side of the family in California’s wine county.

It is not such a bad deal for a kid. I can’t see how he really ended up having “more” and “better”.

Ready to be a Mother?

And what of me and what I was ready to do?

• Funny how at the age of 12, I was thrilled and quite capable of caring for my infant brother.
• Funny how immediately after Max’s birth I surrounded myself with young children and was responsible and trusted enough to be left alone with them while their parents went on vacations.
• Funny how I was very quick to settle down and have another child as soon as I could.

I was ready, even if I didn’t know it. Maybe it is the folly of youth, or eternal optimism, or just the inability to see beyond our immediate needs in an immediate world, but it never really occurred to me that the decision would continue to be part of my daily existence for so many years to come.

I know it was not presented in that way y the adoption agency. I believed that I would just carry forth in life and that it was completely and entirely possible to place your baby into the care of strangers and live life as if nothing had really happened.

Of course, I hadn’t had any children yet then and was unaware of the amazing connection that one shares when you can see yourself in the life that you created. Coupled with the natural disdain for my own parents and the need for independence that comes with the age I was, I probably would have rejected having anyone tell me otherwise. I was always interested in the ideals of reunions, finding lost loves, and the gothic glamour of having a hidden sorrow would also have great appeal to myself then.

But if I had really wanted life to go on unfettered, then I should have chosen the other path.

Taking the Path to my Motherhood

If I had kept my son, it would just be another day in our life today.

All the drama of his birth would be nothing but distant memories to chuckle over. I wouldn’t wonder for the sound of his voice. I would know what he smelled like when he sat in his robe and boxers and ate cereal in the am instead of trying to imagine seeing him again for the first time and how that will be. I would still be me and he would still be him, but only everything else would have changed. It wouldn’t have been the bitter tears of sorrow and loss that I cried on his 18th birthday. I would not be awaken by dreams that I long to re-enter for in them I can touch his face again. I would not be worrying about whether or not he is having a hard time with the reunion and adoption issues. I would not feel the guilt that I do about separating my children from each other.

I can assure you, with 110% of my heart that, I would not be on some parenting forum tonight saving how I wished I had placed him. I would not sit here in front of my computer imagining a life where he didn’t exist. It doesn’t happen.

Adoption made me welcome in constant sorrow. Once welcomed, there is no turning it away like some unwanted guest who stays too long. I had wanted to live my life, but instead I gave it away and the loss of my son cut though my life like a bright red marker carving a path for me to follow. And, what’s worse, the color bleeds out and tends to color others that are touched by it. Everyone who I denied this boy to, whether they know it or not, has suffered the loss of him. Parenting him would have changed my life by enriching it. It would have enriched us all. If I only knew how the paths were really twisted, how they turned.

If only I had been able to see that the path that was rough going at first would smooth out and the path that was so sure and true had a constant steep incline and was terribly close to the edge of madness.

I have a huge bone to pick with Robert Frost and his rotten advice:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”