The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

One of the subjects I want to have a conversation with Tin about is abandonment. I’ve squarely given this issue to him because of adoption. But I’ve learned in the last year and now realize so well in my ACA meetings and readings that abandonment doesn’t have to be a parent giving you up physically.

Your parents could give you up emotionally, and their physical presence while they do this makes it sometimes even more confusing.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~Henry David Thoreau

I was abandoned as a child. My father was a force of nature, a bull of a man, a raging machine of an angry patriarch. I don’t know why but the other day I cringed when a memory slipped in as I was writing about abandonment in my journal, writing in my friend’s studio, where I’ve committed myself to the craft without my usual instrument – aka keyboard, computer.

The memory brought me back to our kitchen on Riderwood Drive in Atlanta, Georgia. I remember being near the refrigerator – the kitchen had three exits, back door to the outside, door to my father’s library and office, and passageway by the fridge, through the built-in desk nook my mom used, which led to the dining room and the rest of the house. My sister-in-law screaming was the first thing that slipped into my thoughts. She was screaming because my father was trying to give a piece of candy to her baby, my first niece, who was just shy of one years old. I was only just meeting the baby for the first time because my father refused to acknowledge her birth for nearly a year on account of my brother and sister-in-law switching the baby’s name order so what would have been her middle name was her first and her first was now her middle.

What? Most people who know Jewish tradition know that you cannot name your child after a living relative, but that is an Ashkenazi tradition. In the Sephardic tradition, my family’s tradition, the first born child is named after the grandparent. In this case, my first-born niece’s first name would have been her grandmother’s first name. Alas, the order was switched when she was born and my father declared this act egregious and non negotiable.

But back to the kitchen scene. Standing there in the entrance from the dining room was my sister-in-law trying to get her baby out of my father’s arms, while my father was dangling a piece of candy in front of the baby’s mouth. My brother was not doing anything. My mother was not doing anything. And I was screaming throughout my body, yet no sounds were coming out. I had backed myself against the refrigerator. My sister-in-law was screaming so shrill and loud that it was hard to hear anything else in the room. From my position, I could see a playful smile on my father’s face.

When I was young, my beautiful mother checked out early and took to drinking. And some Valium. On occasion, she would open capsules of Librium and sneak the blue and white granules into my father’s coffee. Anything for peace. I developed a pattern of behavior I took to like a second skin that I carried into my adulthood – make sure everyone and everything is okay in the hopes I would be okay too. There was no safe place in my childhood. So I have spent over half a century feeling unsafe in my body and using maladaptive coping skills to seek calm: I have cleaned, fawned, organized, fed, eaten, drank, served, fucked, worked, and nurtured all and anyone I could get my hands on so I could mimic safety in my body. 

Now, I want to talk to my son about abandonment and what it felt like for me as a child. Mostly, because that child lives inside of me. Recently, when I couldn’t figure out health insurance for him, I went into that childlike state. I wanted an adult to help me figure it out. I started having anxiety dreams and feeling restless during the day. Two and half months of trying to understand what would be the best insurance for my son and having no adult, expert, or insurance person able to answer that simple question for me, sent me down a rabbit hole that felt akin to abandonment.

The good news is after the months long tortuous experience, I told myself one night while I was self soothing through meditation and breathing that in the absence of an expert or adult, I was going to figure this out myself, and whatever I decided would be good enough. It took 66 years to talk to myself in this way. To reach in and connect with the child who was terrified of making a mistake with the understanding I am now the adult who would help me know I am safe.

[Thank you for reading my writing; I love hearing from you and
would love to gather your responses here, instead of on social media.
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