Flood

my voice cracks when i say things out loud that make me sad. it cracks and quivers and i don't like it. my voice--and my psyche-- did a little cracking while i was talking to my friend chris last friday. there are pieces of this reunion that are exceptionally painful, and i tend to find ways other than my voice to release those parts. but with chris, i could talk about the details because he understands. so as we are talking about reunion and the sheer joy of initial contact and the uncharted territory of things like Mother's Day, all in the context of a not-at-all small flooding situation, my voice broke a little bit. i told him a little story and said, "what do i do with this? i can't change it. i can't go back and make it different. but it hurts my heart every single day." and chris, in his stellar wisdom said, "put it in the blog." brilliant. i will put it in the blog and let it go to the best of my ability and this little piece of loss (that does not feel so little when i am looking at my mother and the river is rising) can maybe be healed.... so here goes. i will put it in the blog. i will put it in the blog, likely without paragraph breaks, because that is how blogger is still behaving. grrr.... i am not shy about the fact that i did not do so well at life in 1997. and i have not handled flooding situations very well since then. i am getting a lot better... but it definitely still makes me twitchy to think too much about it or to experience the cold heaviness of sandbags and observe the red cross vehicles prowling around muddy neighborhoods. i suppose because the loss in 1997 was sudden, unexpected and very personal, i just don't feel at ease with river water so far out of its banks. in 1997, we returned to piles of wet, molding, dirty stuff--mostly in giant black trash bags-- in the front yard of the house i had been living in. digging through all of it would have been, besides traumatic and disgusting, quite futile. i just walked away from most of it, with the full awareness that it would be even more upsetting to see all of the things that had been destroyed. to this day, i continue to think of little bits of my childhood or my previous life and sometimes begin to wonder what ever happened to that book/toy/game and then it quickly occurs to me that it was most likely a part of the massive wet trash pile of 1997. it was around Mother's Day in '97... nope, probably '98... i remembered one bit of flooded rubbish that i would have given almost anything to have been able to retrieve. as i perused the Mother's Day cards and prepared to choose one that is funny and appropriate for my adoptive mother and one that would be set aside for the day that i might one day meet my birthmother, it occurred to me that that stack of set-aside Mother's Day cards was gone. i had been buying them since i was old enough to do so without anyone else knowing about it. i was going to give them to her if i ever got to meet her, or mail them to her so she would know that i had always thought about her and always loved her. but they were long gone and this realization would be the end of that annual practice. i thought about starting it again, but it made me too sad that the set wouldn't be as complete as it was supposed to be, so i never bought another one. i would still look at cards and think of her on Mother's Day, but i stopped buying them. as i began to understand that my reunion with Susan was going to be during flood season and very near Mother's Day, i got a little sad because it has been a long time since i have thought about this little bit of loss 14 years ago. so, Mother's Day of 2011 should have been the day that i could present Susan with a lifetime of greetings on the day that i have always honored her courage and love. but i can't. so i am sad.