I will remain as Jennifer Caste Lauck for this life. That is who I am and who I always was. But I suppose I am also Tara. I am Jampel Sherab too. And I’m none of these. I find myself, these days, beyond explanation.
Such a state can be a great relief.
THE CLASS IS to visit a Lewis and Clark museum and I turn off the CD and pull over for the first stop of the day.
“You know, this is a pretty scary book,” I say. “Are you guys okay with it?”
“No, it’s not,” Sarin says. “It’s really good.”
“We get to listen again when we get back in, right?” Ray asks.
They lean forward, stretching the seat belt straps to the limits. Adopted children like to know what’s going to happen next. They want continuity and a sense of control. I see these desires in their faces and hear them in their questions.
“Yes,” I say, “of course.”
We pile out of the car and I act as vigilant guide, making sure they have lunches, coats, and their note pads. I get them to the curb safely. I rest my hands on their shoulders—the lightest of touch, just enough, not too much. Adopted children don’t like to be smothered. But they will smother you, if they let you get close enough.
Sarin and Ray ease close to me. They lean into my sides, barely touching beyond a confirmation of contact.
As we cross the road together, I feel a rise of surprising love for these two children—it’s as big as what I feel for Jo and Spencer. All this time, I have kept myself so isolated from the world and I have been so full of fear that I did not think it possible to open my heart to strangers, but look. Love is here.
IT’S NOT TRUE that I didn’t have any identity. The problem was that I had too many identities—all of them flimsy at best. My Self, prior
to meeting Catherine, was a patchwork quilt, a jagged mosaic of trial and error. I am now in a phase of refinement.
I was a writer and that is who I remain.
I was a mother and that is who I am too.
I was a Buddhist and now remain a curious student, although I am now more like an Ekhart Tolle-yogini-Buddha-Daoist. I also dig Byron Katie, I think Jesus rocks, and I’m pretty sure John Lennon was enlightened. I’d make a bet on it.
Before I met Catherine, I played piano for years, studying classical music. I bought a tabla and took lessons from a small Indian man. I also had a small accordion-style instrument, from India as well, and I was trying to figure that machine out. I even took voice lessons. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of music. I have given all that up. I am not a musician (although I love music).
Before I met Catherine, I studied dance, a high-test form of ballet, for twenty years. I stood on tiptoes, did deep pliés and attempted running leaps. I made achingly slow progress. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of dance. I have given that up too. I am not a dancer (although I love to dance).
Before I met Catherine, I became a Tibetan Buddhist, meditated, considered becoming a nun and—well, you know that story. I was trying to find myself through the mastery of spirit. I am not a Tibetan. I don’t have time to meditate hours of each day away and I certainly am not a monastic. I do my Tara meditation nearly every day. Tara is enough for me.
I am now a person who prefers chocolate ice cream.
My favorite food is Japanese.
I don’t like cake.
I do like pastries.
My favorite tree is the red oak in my back yard.
My favorite flower is the rose.
My favorite color is brown, a deep, rich, earthy shade of sable brown.
AFTER LUNCH, THE children collectively play on and around the picnic tables. They chase each other and make games of tag and hide and seek.
Sarin remains outside the group. She holds her journal to her chest. Her ponytails have come undone and she has the elastics on her wrist for safekeeping. Ray is off on the other side of the group, sitting at a bench in solitude.
The other chaperones are all together, at the tables too, and they chat as they eat.
I sit at a bench, on my own and within earshot of Sarin.
“Do you want me to fix your hair?” I ask.
I am pretty sure Sarin will say no to my offer but she smiles and nods. She wriggles the bands off her wrist and hands them to me.
I comb her hair with my fingers and it slides over my skin, so dark that it shines. It’s thick too. “You have the prettiest hair,” I tell her. “I love it.”
She says thank you, very polite.
I put the elastics into place, careful not to pull or tug.
“Is that good? ” I ask.
She nods and sits down next to me on the bench.
It doesn’t bother me that she sits here with me, so quiet. If she were Jo, I’d worry that she didn’t feel well or was unhappy. Jo isn’t the kind of child to sit on a bench, apart from the crowd. Spencer isn’t either. But I was, and so is Sarin.
At my feet is a basket of yarn I travel with. I knit from a skein of gray wool that feeds out of the basket—back and forth I go—creating something from nothing.
“What are you making?” Sarin asks.
“Oh, just a scarf,” I say.
Sarin plays with the yarn that feeds into my needles and we say no more.
Knitting isn’t about the scarf but is about soothing anxiety. A therapist I know also said knitting can help reform the trauma structures built into my brain. It has something to do with using both hands, crossing the axis and repetitive motion but I don’t really understand the science. I just know knitting helps calm me down. If knitting can also help realign my brain—pass the yarn.
“I knit too,” Sarin says.
“You do?”
She nods, big dark eyes of melted chocolate.
“Finger knitting, most of the time,” she adds. “I like it though. It makes me feel better.”
“I hear you, little sister,” I say. “You want some yarn? ”
She smiles when I call her little sister, just a trace of a smile but
declines my offer. Finally, she gets off the bench and says she’s going to fill her water bottle before we go.
As she walks over to the fountain, Ray comes to where I sit and plunks down on the bench. “Whatcha making?” he asks.
THIS IS THE Story I tell myself about Catherine.
She is a product of her environment—of her land. She lives where gambling, prostitution, and speedy marriages and divorces are the norm. Her cells have been rearranged by the many nuclear bomb blasts that have occurred just a few hundred miles south. Radioactive winds have blown over her roof and have been inhaled and exhaled a trillion times. Her state contains a national sacrifice zone—the only one I know of in the U.S.—where a wide swath of land is uninhabitable and will be for countless generations.
Catherine also happens to be one of an estimated 1.5 million American girls who were forced to sacrifice their babies under Nazilike conditions of terror and fear. The stories of women strapped down during labor, of having babies mercilessly wrenched away, and of being forced to sign documents that were not legal are enough to make even me, a hardened journalist, revolted.
My mother, like so many others, was shunned and shamed and forced to be silent for the whole of her life. Many girls never went on to have more children. Many more have died alone with their sorrow. Too many have not searched for their children.
What happens inside a person under such conditions? What slips inside the brain or the psyche or even the soul to make such
an experience bearable? How does a person—a mother—go on? I cannot know the answer to these questions. They are impossible for me to ponder.
My heart breaks for my mother and what she has endured. I have no right to judge her and when I find I am judging her, I make myself think again—I push my heart to open wider still. I look for the love that is my original connection to Catherine and I keep my focus there.
I wish my mother well.
BACK IN THE car for the last leg of our drive, the children are eager to pick up the story of the kite rider, who now ties himself to a kite and has become the one who casts himself out—despite the danger.
Sarin and Ray are very quiet. They eat snacks. They pay sharp attention.
This is no Disney tale. In fact, it’s a terrible tale of cruelty to children and the abuses of those who hold power. The plot twists like paper in the wind. The powerful get more powerful. The weak become weaker. In the end, the child nearly dies and finally goes blind in one eye. He cannot continue as a kite rider. Instead he makes kites and decides a better life is one where he keeps his feet firmly on the ground.
I like the book, I guess. It’s an award winner recommended by the librarian but I hope it wasn’t too much. I turn off the CD.
“Whew,” I say. “What a story.” I practically wipe my brow.
Sarin and Ray say nothing. Neither of them breathes a sigh of relief.
If Spencer and Jo were in the car, they would be outraged, surprised, and even shocked at the injustices in the story and the way the characters behaved. Both would ask a thousand questions that I’d attempt to answer while also trying to protect them from the fact that outrageous injustice exists.
But for Sarin and Ray, the story of a child cast on the winds is not unusual. A child who suffers isn’t something new. They are old beyond being seven and nine.
As I watch them in the rearview mirror, these little recognizable strangers who occupy my heart, I wonder how far they will be unfurled in their own lives, before, like me, they find a way to reel themselves in again. Will they go home to their mothers and families in India and Vietnam? Will their adoptive families have the courage and wisdom to give them that gift, even if the children don’t ask to go home? Will those families also be there to support their charges if birth families reject them a second time around? Will they survive? Will they be happy? Will they be whole?
We cross a long bridge that takes us to the edge of North America, just outside Astoria. Tonight the class will camp at a park a few miles beyond Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark stopped their westward journey, took a break for the wet winter, and then turned around to return east. This bridge, more than two miles long, crosses the Columbia River as the river meets the Pacific Ocean. The children look over the waves of the sea. Do they know, not far away, lies Russia and beyond is Vietnam and India?
Sarin asks if she can open the window. She wants to feel the wind on her face.
“You bet,” I say. I roll down all the western windows and the inside of the car fills with the salty taste of the sea. Wind whips napkins and empty wrappers around the interior of the car. Sarin and Ray laugh.
The purity of their sound rearranges my cells and brings such hope to my heart and soul.
ON THE OTHER end of the bridge, the caravan reaches its destination and we all park.
In tight clusters, children emerge from cars and run to the campground, chasing each other and yelling to unleash pent-up energy. Jo Jo sprints off with her best friends, Grace and Marbella. Their giggles fly through the air.
The other drivers look tired, worn out, and even harried.
I get out of the car and stretch my arms and my legs. Sarin and Ray do the same. I am not tired.
“Good trip, you guys,” I say. “You are wonderful travelers.”
“Do we go back home with you?” Ray asks, taking hold of my right hand.
“Yes, of course, I’m your guide.”
Sarin takes my left hand. “Good,” she says.
Before we cross the road and join the others, I look both ways, which is rather silly and redundant. There’s no car on the road and we are the only ones out here. But I can’t help it.
Off in the distance is the ocean and the sun goes down, turning the sea the color of steel. I get Sarin and Ray across the road, safe and sound, and release them to the group.
The End
END NOTE
SINCE THE CREATION of this book, I have been involved in many conversations about adoption and have attended several conferences. I am a member of The Adoption Mosaic in Portland, Oregon, which offers support to all members of the triad, which include adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth families. I maintain a close connection to the leaders in the field and am a member of Concerned United Birthparents as well as the American Adoption Congress.
My general feeling about adoption is that we are not thinking very well about this very important subject, nor are we applying common sense to the biological connection of mother and child.
Is this lack of thought due to the fact that there is just so much money to be made in the field of adoption? From lawyers to agencies to intermediaries and over to churches, adoption is a big business.
Perhaps our lack of thought also comes from a strong need to idealize family and to behave as if everything is perfect—when it’s not.
It’s hard to know why we do as we do, but when we adopt, we face a myriad of complex challenges and opportunities that must be faced, discussed, and resolved.
Adoptive parents must be better informed.
Birth mothers must be better informed.
Adoptees must be better informed.
IT IS DISTRESSING to learn that the U.S. leads the world as the single largest adoption nation. It seems startling to me that Americans are so fast on the scene of international disasters, and we scoop up orphan children and have them adopted into U.S. homes before body counts are added up.
Imagine if a collective of Chinese emissaries rushed to our shores after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina and took off with Louisiana babies. Or say a collective of Australian humanitarians came to Manhattan after 9/11 and hauled away orphans. These scenarios are ludicrous, and yet this is what American representatives are doing under the guise of being helpful.