The Ancestors

My father-1937

The wine sank lower and the talk turned to our daddehs.

"Did you know that John's father was a fighter pilot in WWII?" Mike asks. "He shot down a lot of enemy planes. His name is even in a history book."

"Well," I said. "My dad is in a history book, too."

"Which one?" Mike asks.

"The Manhattan Project," I reply.

"WHAT? You're kidding!" Mike kneels in homage. He kisses my ring. "That is so freaking cool!"

"Oh, he was just a very very junior engineer," I murmur modestly. "He probably fetched coffee for the big shots."

"Still awesome," whispers Mike. "Seriously, that is neat."

"And my father in law fought in the Pacific and sent radio messages for General Douglas McArthur," I brag.

I carry the name of heroes. I carry the name of people who danced through South Carolina history distinguishing themselves with their grace, intelligence, fortitude, and humor.

"The entire town of Edgefield mourns the death of Tolliver Cleveland Norris," reads an obitutary from one hundred years ago. "His uproarious humor enlivened many a tedious session of the South Carolina legislature." Wow, Tolliver. I wish I could have met you. But if you insisted on a DNA test before hugging your great great grandniece, I'd be SOL.

I don't carry their blood.

My paternal grandmother's family owned half of Cha'ston, (Charleston) so I hear. Great Grandfather Jagar gave each of his children a house in Charleston for their 21st birthday. I have the deed for my grandmother-dated 1919. Sadly (weeping copious tears here) Grandmother sold it long ago. We found the deed, and a huge box of pictures dating from 1870, when we cleaned out my aunt's house last year.

The Jagars took lots of pictures of themselves, and a nice looking bunch they are. But you know what? I don't feel a thing except awe at the beautiful clothes and fancy carriages. I feel no real connection with anybody in the family who died before I knew them personally.

I don't carry their blood.

My children are Chinese and were yanked from the country where their bloodlines go back to a time before America was a twinkle in the eye of the white man.

What are they going to think about their adopted ancestors? I seriously doubt if they'll feel much of a connection.

It makes me sad knowing that even my dad, a laughing, living presence to me, is going to be nothing to them but a picture in a frame.

These thoughts were far from my head as I filled out the paperwork eight years ago to create a family not from blood...

but from ink.

When Life Gives You A Wheelbarrow, Drive Carefully

Margaret Mitchell never wrote another book after Gone With The Wind because she didn't think she could top it.

Now I know how she felt! And it wasn't even MY writing.

(steps to podium) I would like to thank Blogspot for giving me a free site and making it so even me, the idiot, could figure out how to post entries. I would also like to thank my father for writing the most perfect letter ever written and also LIVING that love every day. I would also like to thank you, wonderful readers, for writing your loving comments. (gets teary eyed) You like DADDY, you really like him! He was quiet, but could write like an angel and when he talked, it was worth listening to.

I'll post the full letter from my birth mother and thoughts on what to do about that in a few weeks after I have a chance to think things through. I hadn't seen the letter in 10 years. I got it, shoved it in a drawer and tried to forget about it. It's pretty brutal.

Anyway, back to the mundane things, oh, like having a child suddenly develop a condition that exactly mimicked a life threatening illness.

You know the days that you remember your whole life and how they start out with cereal and coffee just like every other day? Well, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006, was about as routine as you can get until 1:31 when my cell phone rang in class and the house of cards started its slow mo tumble...

"Um...Meredith is breaking out in welts all over...very suddenly. We gave her a Benadryl, but she's still breaking out... (the headmistress) I've never seen anything so sudden in 29 years of running this school..."

Put down phone, dismiss class, climb in car, and drive 85 miles/hour to take child to doctor. The school will of course call an ambulance if necessary, but I've had a few allergic reactions, and anaphylactic shock can kill you in minutes. otoh, they can't just have an ambulance stand around on the off chance that she'll, like, die, can they? of course not. I'm processing this fact, complete with musings on the sorry state of health care in America...

As I continued my speedy ride,
With a tractor trailer truck on my right side,
Illness started to bode
In the form of a wheelbarrow in the middle of the road.

I'm on the phone with the doctor's office, driving 85 miles an hour, cut off from the other lane, and there's a wheelbarrow in the road. It wasn't a big one. It looked just like the one in the picture. But it was blocking most of my lane.

"SHIIIITTTTTTT!" I scream at the top of my lungs.

"Ma'am?" inquires the nurse ever so politely.

"I'm sorry!" I scream. "I just almost hit a wheelbarrow on the highway!"

Will I see 47 the next day? Will Meredith see 4:17? Will I need to have a Thorazine drip?

And the gods smiled and said, "Just kiddin'!"

I avoided the wheelbarrow.
Meredith turned out to have a benign, harmless virus.

If This Doesn't Explain Why I'm Happy To Be Adopted.....

February 21, 1959
Retreat For The Sick Hospital
Richmond, Virginia

Quote from the only letter I ever received from my birth mother. I'll post the whole letter in a few days..I just found it after many years while searching for Daddy's letter.

This is the story..you were a result of a date rape. Did they call it that back then, no. The boy responsible was of course a jerk--and I have long since blotted out the memory of him and the ordeal. Abortion was illegal back then.

Here is a letter that my Daddy wrote the night of February 20, 1959, the night before the big pickup.

Dearest,

You're asleep by now, Pretty...I just got to the kitchen and poured my milk, but I'm sure you must be alseep!

Since I always seem to talk better with a pen 'n' paper, I spec' I'll have a few words with you now.

First off, I need to thank you for being so wonderful. You'll just never know how much it has meant to me to have you to love me and encourage me through these trying months. It's been a strain on you, too but you've been such a pillar of strength for me that...well, I just couldn't have carried on without you!

And now, in addition to all your other virtues, you're about to become a mother! Just think of it! Mother Ruth! Isn't it wonderful? I think so...I'm so proud of you I'm just about to bust wide open! I surely hope..and pray..that our little girl will be as sweet and wonderful and intelligent and kind as you. And I'm sure she will be. As sure as I'm sitting here too, there will be times of heartache and troubles and tensions as well as much happiness in the future. That's life--it's also God's will..and we must never lose sight of the fact that the problems which beset us can always be overcome if we maintain our faith in God.

Also, I'm about to become a father. The prospect is a little frightening, but it sounds wonderful too. I'm beset by all kinds of doubts as to my ability in that category...and yet, I believe...I believe that God would not have given us the opportunity to know and have Miss Lorrie had he not thought us capable of being her parents. Just call me Dad, Mom!

I'm sleepy too, so think I must join you now..Remember, Pretty, I love you and I always will...in all ways...G'Nite and

Lotsa love,

Grady, Father-t0-be

Dr. H. Grady Callison, Jr.
a gentleman and a scholar
1922-1997

Loves Me Like A Rock

My mama loves me,
She loves me,
Yeah she loves me like a rock.

Monday night I got a call from my mom. Could she drop by? Why yes, she could.

But why? It was a rainy night. Mom hates to drive in the rain, or at night.

Well in she comes, lookin' so fine in her purple raincoat and matching hat. 105 lbs worth of pure sass.

She had baked me a birthday cake from scratch. With scratch fudge icing.

I thought briefly about taking a picture of it before Madeleine and I began attacking it like starved wolves. (Meredith hates desserts and Roger was coaching).

You can say what you want about the Primal Wound theory, and I don't mean to be disrespectful....

Wait. Yes I do.

Nanny nanny boo boo
The Primal Wound theory is poo poo.

But sometimes, like a rainy night in February, when your adopted mom bakes you a scratch cake and drives through a rainy night to deliver it, all of the expert's dire pronoucements about the unending pain of adoption and the severed wounds of the child brutally yanked away from her birth mother's loving arms and all that simply disappear in the rush of love, and sugar, and you look to the sky and raise your crumb crusted hands and say, Thank You to whoever is up there for giving me the best mom in the universe.

I Had A Dream

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had a dream.

I had a dream that my beloved children would not be regarded as little yellow-skinned-math prodigy-violin-playing freaks that I bought/rescued because I Could Not Have One Of My Own.

The reality:

Meg Ryan, star of such movies as Crap and Crap 2: the Craptathlon, will adopt a Chinese baby later today, according to OK! magazine. The adoption is scheduled to take place at an American consulate in China. An insider tells the publication, "The consulate will formalize the adoption and grant Meg's new daughter a visa and a social security number. They will probably be flying back to the US immediately after the process is complete."
China is like the Wal-Mart of adoptions. You touch down at the airport in Beijing and they just start throwing babies and fortune cookies at you. But good for Meg. Now all she needs to do is name the baby Lo Pan and teach it to shoot fire from its eyes.


I had a dream that the glorious happiness of motherhood that I've experienced would never be trivialized and mocked as a fashion statement.

Walter Scott’s
Personality Parade®

Published: January 29, 2006
Q. Why do stars like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopt foreign kids when many are waiting here?—John Cranston, Everett, Wash.A. In Hollywood, it’s fashionable to adopt infants from the Third World. “Also, many believe there’s less red tape outside the U.S. Often, it’s worse,” explains actor Henry Winkler. He works with the Children’s Action Network, which says 119,000 foster-care kids in the U.S. are eligible for adoption. (Visit childrensactionnetwork.org for details.) Jolie and Pitt are expecting their own, of course, and he has filed to adopt Maddox, 4, and Zahara, 1.

I had a dream that The Man On The Street would someday come to understand that the path I chose to motherhood is as sacred and wonderful as shooting out a blonde haired blue eyed child from my crotch.

I had a dream that if one day my children were cuter than anybody else's, scored higher on a test than anybody else's, spoke lovingly of their mother and father, were well dressed, sent me Mother's Day cards on a regular basis, and toured the world proclaiming at every pitstop that our family bonds were as tight and sacred as the family next door sharing DNA that the world would grant me the street cred I would have received if I had only returned to that fertility clinic in January, 1998.

I don't have that dream any more.