My mother is a more difficult, complicated story. While I never fantasized about replacing her with my birth mother, somehow other women came into my life and gave me support and advice I never even knew I needed. It now seems to me mothers appear at different times and in many guises, and you can have more than one or two if you’re lucky. My mother had all of my love growing up and no one could hurt me the way she could, and did. After years of conflict and estrangement she and I have come to a place in our relationship that is not ideal for either of us. She wants more entrée into my life; I can’t or won’t give it. Yet, we are not unkind to each other anymore and I have a great deal more compassion and understanding of the difficulties of her life than I did in years past. I value her resilience and sense of humor, her youthful outlook. I don’t think our experience is much different than that of countless other mothers and daughters, for that is what we are: mother and daughter.
Still, my birth mother is out there somewhere, like a flicker in the corner of my eye. I have no idea how to reach her, or even if she’s alive. So, I’m consigning this story to the winds and tides of this vast ocean we call the Internet. It’s my virtual message in a bottle, containing a letter of love and compassion, gratitude and hope. Gratitude that you gave me up for adoption, because it’s been a wild ride and I love wild rides; love and compassion because that’s what I’ve learned is important during the ride. Most of all, it contains my hopes for you. That you went on to have whatever sort of life you dreamed of while you were pregnant with me, and that those dreams turned out happily. I hope you had other children and a husband if that’s what you wanted, and that you didn’t grieve over the things that can’t be undone. Who knows if this letter I wrote for you, for us, will ever reach you? An unknown destination is, after all, the nature of a message in a bottle. I hope this does reach you and that it’s welcome.
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