There's Always a Catch − August, 1989
My first visit with my bio-mom had ended in disaster (see The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). She’d cast me out of her home when I’d rejected her claim of me as her daughter. To me, I was her daughter only by blood. A couple of years passed before I decided to try another visit in the late nineties.
Now, she lived near Asheville N.C. at the base of some mountains with her husband Jack. She and Jack were very happy to see me. She fixed a giant dish of Paella on the first night of my visit. She and Jack told me they had uprooted themselves from Rochester, N.Y. to move to North Carolina based on a dream she’d had one night. Their friends thought they were nuts, but they did it anyhow.
Near the end of the meal, she told me that she’d gotten into New Age. I nodded acceptingly, while inside I thought, “Ok, she’s nuts”. I try to be supportive even when I think someone’s nuts, as long as what she is doing isn’t hurting her. With a sigh of relief, she thanked me for being so understanding.
She, Jack, and I had a lot of fun. We hiked in the mountain forest and had lively conversations at night. Jack was a letch, but I didn’t mind. I gathered from my bio-mom that she was a nymphomaniac. I thought this was interesting, because I’d always had an unusually high sex drive. I was terribly horny even as a child. I’d been an avid fan of my father’s small collection of pornography.
I’d read some of her diaries on my previous visit, and on this visit, she gave me draft chapters of her book to read. She’d lived in a home for unwed mothers when she was pregnant with my older half sister, whom she’d given up for adoption. The home had been an unhappy place for her. She’d suffered from paranoia. In another chapter, I read in vivid detail about her drunken father chasing her older brother around the house in order to beat him while the other children and their mother cowered in terror.
When it was time to go, I was pretty sure I’d be back again. Back home, however, when we talked on the phone, she complained bitterly that I had not helped out enough in the kitchen during my visit. I was taken aback. It was a necessary reminder that this was an unusual relationship, and one that would not necessarily go the distance.
Comments:
nosecrets (February 12, 2008. 12:55pm)
Oh, yes, the other "catch" was that near the end of the visit, my bio-mom complained bitterly to me about the bad things my dad had done to her. Feh. I didn't want to hear that.