No Return: I never got a receipt

To make things clear, throughout this blog, journal, mental faucet, whatever the fuck, my biological maternal and paternal sides are referred to as “mother” and “father”. My adopted parents are referred to as “mom” and “dad”.

I was born in Iowa City, late September in the early 60’s to an unwed mother from extreme SW Iowa. She was moved and housed, until my birth, at the old University Hospital for unwed mothers. I recall seeing an old photograph of it when I was in my late 20’s. I don’t believe the building even still exists: torn down or assimilated into the vast, all-consuming, entity that is now the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

I quite literally water-slid out of the womb, into a doctors hands, passed off to a nurse, had the prerequisite measurements taken, placed in a warming bed, and rolled to the newborn nursery. At some point afterwards I was transferred to the Annie Wittenmeyer Orphanage in Davenport Iowa. I didn’t even have a name. “Baby Boy”. How quaint. Even my last name wasn’t even the last name of my biological father. It was the last name of the man my mother had previously married: and later divorced while he was in prison for theft.

I was soon placed in foster care. I’m not sure at what age. I knew my foster parents since my adoptive mom and dad had kept in contact with them. It was my foster mother who told me the nurses at the orphanage named me “Thomas”. At 2 and a half years old, I was adopted. I obviously don’t remember it. Even if it was developmentally possible, I’m not sure I would have wanted to.

I have though of my grandchildren when they were that age and I look at my twin granddaughters who are 18 months old and all the confusing and terrifying emotions they would feel being taken from the only source of love, comfort, and protection they know and be given to near total strangers. I had ‘met’ my new parents on brief pre-visits, but at that age what does a toddler care or even recall about two strangers promptly forgotten once they were gone?

My mom told me they had “devised” a plan with my foster parents in that they would meet for dinner and later my foster parents would conveniently go to the bath room and not return. My mom told that didn’t slip past me at all and I caught on to the plan almost immediately. I screamed and cried all the way to my new home: to the point she wasn’t sure she could handle it and even thought of suggesting taking me back to my foster parents. But they didn’t. Looking back, there are times in my past while growing up I wish they had.

I have studied human development in college. Even at birth a child “knows” their mother and maybe even their father, if he’s around. They know their mother’s heart beat, her smell, and even know their mother’s and father’s voice on a primitive, instinctual level. Once hearing develops, babies can hear inside the womb. Those first few hours and days after birth are important in the first stages of a child’s steps in their mental foundation. And that closeness and contact with their mother are so important for their development of self: self-worth, self-assurance, feeling bonded, trust, feeling wanted, being protected, knowing they are safe …

Not surprising that I have abandonment issues. I was: in my developing mind, and in later years, already abandoned twice.

Over my many years, I’ve seen my share of therapists and psychologists. All in my later years – 30’s. Depression, ADD, OCD, High-Functioning Autism, Anxiety, Sleep Disorder, fear of being alone, issues with Social Interaction. That doesn’t include all the unseen and unknowable “trauma” that defined my first 20 years.

I think the strangest part of it all has been the development of my personality. I am both right-brained and left-brained. I am creative, visual, empathetic, sensitive, subjective, and very imaginative. At the same time, I am analytical, objective, “cold”, skeptical, logical, and a very strong critical thinker.

Basically I do not suffer fools lightly but I feel bad about it.

Thus begins the journey of me. I have no real agenda. I’ve been told it’s good to journal. Plus, my kids can read this without me actually having to say it to them or give them some hard-copy. I have no real format. I’m not writing a book, so topics will be mixed with no reasonable sequence. I’m doing this for me. A confession of sorts. Saying things without having to say them to anyone in particular. Giving my voice to the universe. Perhaps attempting to justify the bad energy I’ve produced in the universe all these years while giving myself a chance to realize, find, and acknowledge those instances where I produced positive energy. Instances where I was worthy and deserving.