table4fiveIt’s 10:58 p.m., and it’s the end of a looooong day for me. My day started at 6:30 a.m. when I stumbled into the nursery to pick up the very wide-awake Kaitlyn, continued with me setting up my garage sale (I made 75 bucks-meh), then dinner at Culver’s, a restaurant that is like fast food but they bring it to your table and kids get a free HUGE frozen custard for dessert. Have I told you that Culver is my maiden name? And that when the restaurant opened my Dad went in and mentioned he was a Culver and they gave him a free baseball hat?
Everyone is asleep but me. I’m drinking a Miller Genuine Draft (the store we went to doesn’t sell Rolling Rock. WTF?), and watching “Sleeping with the Enemy” on the “We” channel. I can’t help it, I like Julia Roberts. And the guy she falls in love with in the movie has curly hair and a beard and twinkly eyes. So he’s not bad to look at.
One thing that attracts me to this movie is that Julia’s character escapes her abusive husband by faking her death and starting over with a new identity in a different state. When I was a mixed-up college student, I sometimes dreamed about taking off. Just getting in the car, and driving as far as I could go until I found some town where no one had ever heard of me. I didn’t grow up in a tiny town, the population was probably around 15,000, but my Mother was a teacher at one of the Elementary schools, and my Dad was the head of the teacher’s union. We ate at the same restaurant every Friday night, and it was a constant parade of people stopping by the table to shake my parents’ hands. I wanted to be able to go out without having to pretend to be happy to meet my Dad’s colleagues or my Mom’s former students. I even had a name picked out for my “new” identity-Rebecca Galway.
How did I come up with that name? Well, that’s a story. Have a minute? When I was born in 1967, I was the fifth girl born to my biological parents, whose first names I don’t know. My biomom died shortly after giving birth to me. The story I was told is that my biodad couldn’t handle caring for five children alone, so I was put in foster care as were at least two of my sisters. My parents never had an explanation for how my biomom died, it was one of those questions I would ask that was answered with “we don’t know, END of discussion.” Then, shortly after my Mom died, I was going through boxes of papers at my Dad’s house and I found a folder marked “Adoption-Betsy”. I never told you my nickname until I went to college was Betsy? No? Sorry. And no, I don’t want to be called that now, either.
Anyway, I was shocked to find that the Adoption folder contained a medical report about my biomom. Under “cause of death”, it said “brain seizure”. The reason that was shocking is twofold: One, my parents were always so vague about what had happened, when they knew exactly. I can understand not telling me when I was little, but certainly by the time I was 15 or 16 I think I could have handled knowing that. Two, one of the biggest medical difficulties I have had throughout my life is when you go to the Doctor and they ask you to check off the boxes next to Family Medical History. You know, is there a history of heart disease, stroke, kidney or liver problems, etc. I always had to explain that I didn’t know any family history because I was adopted. It might have helped to have at least been able to say that my biomom died of a brain seizure. It worries me a little.
My (adoptive, for clarification) Mom was a lifelong diabetic. As she got into her late 50s, she developed Congestive Heart Failure as a result of the circulation problems that can come with diabetes. She went to the Mayo clinic to apply for a Heart Transplant and was turned down. When she came home from that trip, she was, in some ways, a changed person. She started tentatively revealing personal information that I never knew. We would drive together somewhere and out of the blue she would start a sentence with “did I ever tell you that…?). I wish I could remember more of the things she told me, but the one has stuck with me ever since is that she told me my “baby name”.
Mom: “Did I ever tell you what your name was when you were born?”
Me: “WHAT?”
Mom: “You know how we told you when we adopted you that your name was Rebecca Elizabeth, and we dropped the Rebecca and added Anne for a middle name?”
Me: “Yeeeessss?”
Mom: “Well, your last name was Galway. Like the place in Ireland”.
Me: “Huh”.
I believe she withheld this information as long as possible because she was afraid I would go looking for my biological sisters. Which I never wanted to do, because my life has always been complicated enough.
So that, in a roundabout way, is why my “secret identity” name would be Rebecca Galway. Sometimes I say the name out loud to myself, listening for it to resonate some place deep inside. It is my understanding that since I was born a month early and weighed 4 pounds, I was immediately whisked off to whatever passed for a NICU immediately after being born, and was placed into foster care as soon as I could leave the hospital. I don’t know if my biodad or any of my sisters or anyone else in that family was even able to hold me let alone call me by name and talk to me. I have absolutely NO memory of the foster family that cared for me until I was 16 months old, and that information IS kept confidential. I have a baby book that my foster family kept for me. It is one of my most treasured possessions. It has pages of journal-like entries detailing trips to the pediatrician and how I delighted the nurses with my cooing and how tiny I was. They called me Becky.
I believe completely in adoption. I believe every person who truly wants a child should be able to parent one, and that every person who truly knows that they cannot care for a child should be able to place that child for adoption. But I also know that for me, it has created what I guess would be called, for lack of a better word, an identity crisis. Am I Rebecca, the baby and toddler who never knew her own parents? Am I Betsy, who was adopted by another set of parents? Am I Elizabeth, who went off to college, dropped her nickname, and tried to become her own person? If I was given the chance, would I want to go back to January 30, 1967 and save my biological Mother and therefore have a completely different life?
I don’t know. All of those circumstances are what has made me who I am right now. I am Warren’s daughter, Chris’ wife, Ryan, Nathan and Kaitlyn’s mother. Whose wife and mother would I be if something else had happened to me? I ponder the phrase “everything happens for a reason”, and wonder if that is really true.
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Hello and welcome to Table for Five! I'm Elizabeth, and this blog started in September 2005 as a way for me to participate in the Mommy Blogging community. I'm married with three terrific kids-boys ages 11 and 9 and a 2 year old daughter. Things I love include my family, coffee, Diet Coke, TV, reading, and Target.
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