the gift

Every year, on my birthday, I check to make sure it’s still there.

Every year, it is, and my heart is both torn and comforted.
It was the first thing I ever knew, and over the years has become a part of me. I think that without it, I would be lost.

Every year, for my birthday, I take it, wrap it up in pretty paper, and give it back to her, but I could do that a thousand times and it would still be here inside of me. It makes me who I am… but I do wonder what it would be like if it were gone.

Inside is the very first thing I was ever given, and something I carry with me even today. Even more today.

I didn’t have any words to voice what I felt, couldn’t make sense of it as the heartbeat and smell and warmth that let me feel that I would be safe was ripped away and I was torn out of the arms that for fifteen minutes kept the cold of the world away forever.

I would take it out, put it in a small box, wrap it up in pretty paper and hand it to her. Inside is something bigger than she is or can ever be, but something that over years and years made me stronger than I ever could have otherwise been. It takes a lot to hold the pieces together for so long.

She would open it up every year on my birthday.
Inside would be the baby’s pain.

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To find Me

Who am I anymore? My heart has grown black, blocked, protected, & I cannot see. But I remember.
I’m increasingly feeling that finding my mother was unfortunate. I had promised myself, promised her that I wouldn’t and don’t expect anything, but how could that even be possible?

If she hated me for finding her, I would have been fine. If she wanted to be a part of my life, even better – but I was depending on absolutes, either one or the other, and certainly not this. This, I couldn’t have imagined.

It began beautifully – exactly, more or less, what I wanted. She was excited to meet me & had my half-sister drive her down to the City. The first birthday of mine after we met, I opened my mailbox to find five cards from her…

And when I could, I visited her. A ride with my half-sister & our dogs, a ride with a girlfriend for a birthday present… but as time went by we talked less & less. I left months of unanswered messages, sent letters with no reply. A desperate ride from a friend to confront her. The only time we really talk is when we are together.

At first I was able to laugh it off. “Gods, she’s worse than me.” “She’s mostly a hermit.” “She’s bad at keeping in contact – I guess that’s where I get it.”… but the walls were already being built.

Of course I remembered how. It was the very first thing I learned how to do when I was torn from her arms. Detach. Hide the pain. Move on.
But this time it’s different. I’m stuck in a limbo of uncertainty, and I’ve worked too fucking hard to break the walls down to ever want them there again – though it makes things so much easier. Insufferably lonely, but easier.

I need to weave a new self-narrative of who I am & who she is in my life. Fragments of what was, what might have been, & what is, integrating the abandoned baby & the adult that baby has become.
I need to knit the fantasy birth-mother & the real one together, who she first was, & who I haven’t talked to in over a year nor seen in nearly two, and as painful as it is, accept it. Accept her, & accept… whatever we are now.

I feel that’s the only way to set my heart free again, to let it feel the light as it once did. To remember that part of me and once more… shine.

The world, this life is not perfect, yet we try to arrange people, places & things so as not to disturb our little fear-built fantasy of what it should be, and when people say or do something that doesn’t fit our fantasy, we feel that they’re against us. That life is against us.

I see people fighting to control the things around them every day – getting offended by the most ridiculous bullshit because it isn’t what *they* think. If someone else says or does something that stimulates the fear they have, then *that* person is wrong. Only fear can make a person so blind as to how beautifully magical life is, how incredible it can be when they give up the need for control of those around them.
They’re trapped in a bubble where everyone who doesn’t fit their idea of what “should be” is against them, and almost inevitably spit their sad little outrage out on the Facebook screen.
But I stray.

My life has been one of nearly constant introspection. I have done my best to simply live & let life happen instead of control it, and occasionally I have even been able to achieve this. ( https://kseaflux.wordpress.com/2005/08/ ~ 6 months forward.)
I look back at the past, remember & re-learn things I have forgotten. I feel around in the darkness of my heart & hope to find the answers I once knew for the questions I have today.

…and I understood that I was blaming this on my Mother. Trying to control her, to make her fit into my idea of what I think she should be. What “family” should be. Who the woman I searched over 25 years of my life for should be.
She didn’t ask for this, though she says she wanted me to find her. That she thought about me all the time.

Maybe she doesn’t need to think about me anymore. Maybe a thousand things. I don’t know. But I’m not going to let *this* blacken my heart anymore.

I was going through old Tribe.net testimonials yesterday, reading who I was, trying to repair my heart, trying to understand where & why things turned. These are from only 10 years ago.
This person is still in me, somewhere… and I will find him again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“I do admire you… I do not know how you do to live the life you live. You remind me of the replicates in the Blade Runner Film. So wild and beautiful like poetry lost in time… like tears in the rain…

Do birds ever come to you?

I will be praying for you these days… for you, my friend, to get home soon. I am so very glad life is good to you because you are so good, way over too many stupidities of this world. And, I might be wrong, of course, for I perceive your nature must bring this need to pull it all the way. Not being a slave at any risk… it’s a pretty good damn meaning and purpose. I believe in you, you are an inspiration to life itself…

I feel you have been giving way too much, and you are so intense, could be dangerous like love… you seem from here like a wild tender beautiful authentic being, more than human. I want to pray for you to find what you are looking for, what you really need….

There is something of me in you; still we might be completely opposites… You are, brother, creator of fantasies, worlds, and million thousand ways to fly. I watch you fly mesmerized; still I wish something wires you to the land… I don’t know why, sometimes I wish I could become that wire to connect you with your land, or at least, send it to you in some magical way…

The higher you fly, the further away, the deeper this wish buries in me… like a dream, it cuts. It’s not easy to say this kind of things, to describe this kind of experience without some fear…

I hope you’ll understand… I hope you do receive a kiss and a hug with these words which aren’t enough, I know, but it’s all I got now…

Blessings”

~  ~  ~
“I find it hard to breathe in your arms. it has less to do with the urgency of your embrace, the strength in your slender sinewy limbs… more the relentlessness of your self. I find myself outnumbered, surrounded, because you are starving, ravenous, for life and love and laughter.

and these things I have, like candies spilling out of my overfull hands

I hold them behind me, not to taunt you, but unsure that I can surrender them without loosing fingers.
you are no tame bird”

~  ~  ~
“it was wonderful seeing you last night. you were looking more balanced than i have seen you
before, gorgeous and fit of course, but also you energetically seemed very clear and free. So many real smiles, even your aura shining. i’m so glad. you’re such a great combination of goofy and lovable and innocent, and fucking searingly sexy and worldly and such a piece of inspiring art to look at. fascinating art that creates itself from the inside out and can reach out and grab a lady’s hair just right.
love.”

 

I miss who I was when I knew the light.

 

As They Have Done For Me (A commitment to myself.)

I had left phone messages, sent handwritten letters & cards, and still hadn’t heard anything back from her. For the first few months I wasn’t concerned. With the exception of a brief time shortly after we met, she’s always been inconsistent in getting back to me, and is a complete Luddite when it comes to anything beyond phone or cards. It’s frustrating, but something I’ve learned to tolerate. It’s just who she is, and I don’t have much of a choice but to accept it.

I had spent 25 years of my life searching for my Birth Mother, not knowing if she was even alive, and with each year that passed growing more anxious. I would vividly imagine the first time we met only being able to lay flowers on her grave – so this, this was small.

Only a couple years before there were times she would call me out of the blue, just to check in, say hi – and eventually would always return a phone message. My first birthday after we had met, she sent five cards, each addressed & in their own envelope, and even though the frequency of our communication got less & less after that, she never failed to at least send a beautiful card for my birthday. In these she would fill me in on the latest in her life, and it was always the same thing. She worked in a hospital lab, came home, watched TV for a bit before bed, & on Sundays, usually went to a local restaurant, a place called Lauren’s in Boonville. She frequently closed the notes saying “I need to get a life!” Helpless to do anything about it, reading that always hurt.

It had been months since I’d heard anything from her. When my birthday came & went without a card, I started to get worried. The messages I left & cards I sent increasingly got more desperate, eventually flat out asking if she wanted me in her life anymore. Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe she decided that she didn’t want to be reminded of that time in her life, being shipped from Colorado to San Diego to have me, away from the humiliation that a pregnant & unwed child would have brought to her family in the ‘60’s. Maybe… hell, I didn’t know what to think. I was terrified that after over half my life searching for & finding my Mother, I had again lost her.

Still no reply.

All I had were letters and phone messages to send, and nothing came of those. I thought about taking the train up there, but the station was much too far away. Bus, same thing. If she didn’t want me in her life anymore, I could somehow learn to live with that – but I needed to hear it from HER, I needed to know why before I could begin to accept it, to heal as well as I could. With each day that passed, each letter or card that went unanswered, my heart collapsed a little more. Did she leave me again? What’s wrong with me, why can’t I fix it, why can’t I see it? What did I do wrong this time? I just needed to know. I needed answers. Maybe with answers I could work on what’s wrong with me.

I had been journaling, trying to make sense of it. I posted some of what I wrote just to get it away from my mind, and people were nice, reached out in words of concern. They were appreciated, but words didn’t help anything.

Then, on one of my posts, a friend offered a ride. I figured it was a nice gesture, but more than likely wouldn’t happen. People say a lot of things, promise the world, but at the end of the day, seldom come through. I didn’t let myself get excited, but figured I’d at least play along.

If this happened, he would have to drive down from Sacramento, pick me up, and then drive the 2.5 hours to my Mother’s house so we could catch her after she got home from work at around 5:30 – then after surprising her by knocking on her door and figuring out what the HELL was going on, would have to do the whole trip back to Sac. I saw how absurd that was, and although I needed answers, him doing this – for *me* – was just ridiculous, and far too much to ask or hope for. It was constantly on my mind to cancel just for his sake – but Kitty never faltered, never gave a hint of reluctance. It was going to be more than a 400 mile round trip for him, and all he wanted was for me to get the answers I needed from my mother. He also said he liked the idea of “sand-bagging” her for answers, and even if it was a last-stand, at least what needed to be done could be done.

When he showed up at my door that Saturday after our planning, I decided that maybe it was time for me to accept that he was serious. This was happening.
OhShitOhShitOhShit.

With all the apprehension and anxiety I put myself through, it turned out to be surprisingly unapocalyptic. As I walked up to her door I could see her through the large living-room window, sitting in her chair & watching TV. I watch her as she walks over to the door, unable to see me yet.
“Hi mom.”
“Ohhh, HI, Casey! What a surprise!”
She motions for me to come in.
“What the hell is going on? Have you gotten my letters? Messages?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry…”
“But you didn’t even take a minute to answer them? ANY of them? Not one?”
“I meant to, but…”
“But what, you couldn’t be bothered? Do you have the slightest idea what I’ve been going through? I think I made it pretty fucking clear in the letters.”
“I know, I kept meaning to, but it just got harder as time went on and…”

Looking at my Mother’s face, seeing *my* face in hers & seeing the regret and apology, the anger starts to subside but I’m not letting her off that easy. I still don’t know what I need to know.
“DO you want me in your life anymore? If not, I need to know why – what I’ve done or if it’s just your trip, if this is too much for you, do you still want me?”
“Of course I do. I’m so sorry, I… I’m just bad at it, bad at staying in contact. I promise I’ll try to get better Casey, I *do* love you and want you in my life, and I’m sorry I put you through that, I didn’t mean to…”

We’re both sitting now, the anger & dread nearly all washed from me, and I’m explaining to her like she’s a three year old what it did to me, what she did, how she made me feel. I know she understands, but I don’t want her to forget. I don’t want her to take this lightly, and especially don’t want her to ever do it again. Hoping I got my point across well enough, the conversation moves into seeing how she’s doing, how the hips that have both recently been replaced are feeling, and knowing Kitty & I need to get back on the road soon. I go outside & invite him in, and shortly after we’re back on the road, leaving my Mother to her grey, empty life & TV.

As we walk the short distance to his car I turn to see her sitting again, and vow to myself that somehow, I’ll figure out a way to get a car, get up here at least a couple times a month to either take her on small adventures or just stay the weekend and help her clean up the weeds in her back yard. I think of planting a garden for her, how nice that would be. She’s mentioned that she would really like to get a dog someday. So many things I could do for her, if only I could get up here.

What Kitty did for me that day, I will never forget.
I do what I can for people to try and help, but it’s frustrating being so limited. I can only do small things: take dog food down to the homeless kids & their dogs around Civic Center, give a few dollars here & there when I have it, drape coats that I don’t wear anymore over people trying to sleep on cold San Francisco nights – but it’s never enough. I know there is so much more I could do – but it requires a car. There’s no way around it.

That was a year and seven months ago. I haven’t been able to get up and see my Mother since.
A few months ago she ordered somey jewelry from me, and I still haven’t seen them on her. Small things like that…

 

On September 5^th is my 50^th birthday, and right now my greatest dream is to be able to go pick My Mother up and bring her back down to the City so I can spend it with her. Have a small gathering of friends so they can finally meet her, this beautiful and amazing woman, and she could meet them – get out of her house and finally enjoy life a little bit. She deserves to.

I have a campaign on GoFundMe to help me get a car, which would not only allow me to get a little adventure and excitement into my mother’s life but help me get to shows & events to vend my jewelry & grow my business – as well increase the quality of my life in every way I can imagine. I could help so many more people…

http://www.gofundme.com/magickbus

If you can, please donate to it, share it to your friends on Facebook, Twitter, emails, and anywhere you can think of. Click on the link below, and please – give what you can. I would appreciate it with all my heart – and if, with your help, I am able to get a car – if you ever need a ride somewhere, *anywhere* – you got it.
THANK YOU!!!

http://www.gofundme.com/magickbus