A Mother's Day Surprise!

I'm going to fast forward quite a bit here as my purpose for this blog is not to abide by the rules of chronology but to simply share what's on my mind at any given moment.

My adoptive-father, Greg, left us shortly after my eighth birthday. Without preamble, he gathered my mom, brother, and I together for a Mother's Day surprise. I don't remember every detail, but I recall being with everyone in my grandfather's wood shop, which my father frequently used for crafting and whatnot. We entered the wood shop thinking that he had made something beautiful for my mom when in reality, there was no significance to the location and apparently he forgot what day it was (seriously, who leaves their wife on Mother's Day?!). When we left the wood shop, we were a broken family; perhaps we should have all filed back into the shop to be glued back together with wood biscuits and held with clamps until my parents could work out their problems.

At this point it's important to note that my brother and I had no idea our parents had any problems to start with. All of their disagreements were apparently done in private. We never heard them raise their voices toward each other. We never felt any discord in the air. So my father's decision to leave was quite shocking indeed.

So that was it. We went back home and he packed his things and left. We hardly saw him after that even though he only moved down the street. He left us for another woman and her two children.

His mistress would call our home while our mother was at work and harass me and my brother, only eight and nine years old, respectively. We would huddle together in the corner, holding each other, crying, because of the awful things she would say.

After our dad left, Mom went off the deep end. She would leave for days or weeks at a time and we were left to fend for ourselves with little-to-no food. Because it was summer time, we couldn't rely on our school for breakfast and lunch so we began to depend on friends and neighbors for sustenance. That led to entirely different problems...

Hi, my name is Maggie and I'm a....

I've been called "bastard" and "illegitimate" and even "orphan," though the latter one is simply untrue, no matter how many times I wished it had been. You see, I grew up in a very strange environment. To call it "unstable" would be a gross understatement. Sometimes I had a dad and other times I didn't. Sometimes I had one and wished for a different one. I always had a mother and while I clung to her because she was one of only two people in my family I felt any connection to, I know now that I was clinging to a fictitious imagining of the woman I wish she would be; the woman I knew she could be because I had seen glimpses of that incredible woman every so often. Often enough to keep me hoping at least.

I have an older brother. Truth be told, I have several siblings - I'm unsure of how many really. But I grew up with one of them. His name is Calvin and he is less than 15 months older than I am. We were always very close growing up; difficult childhoods either bond siblings closer or wedge them farther apart. Ours bonded us. We certainly had our difficult times, but when push-came-to-shove, we were always united. He may not realize it, even now that we are adults, but he had a better childhood than I did. Though, maybe he believes the same about me. Perhaps there were things he endured in secret and kept them hidden as a means of protecting me, his baby sister. I wouldn't put it past him to do such a thing for my sake. But I sincerely hope that I had the worst childhood of the two of us, simply because I certainly suffered and there's no reason why both of us should have. One was more than enough.

Now back to the topic of discussion: being a bastard. Growing up, we were told about our father. We knew that our mother had two children from a previous marriage and that when her husband was killed, she gave her young babes up for adoption. We came later - her second chance family. She explained that when her heart had healed enough from losing her soul mate and their children, she knew that she wanted to have more children. But she wasn't yet ready to allow a man into her heart. So she approached a friend with a proposition. This friend was tall, thin, gloriously Scandinavian with beautiful features, and he had a very healthy lineage of ancestors who all lived to be quite old. He had the kind of genes my mother would feel good about passing onto her children. He agreed to give her a baby and after my brother was a few months old, he agreed to give my brother a sibling. That's where I come in. They had already agreed beforehand that he would have no involvement in our lives and in return, my mother would not ask him for any financial support. Whether he was happy with that arrangement in the end or wished he could be a part of our lives, my mother never said.

I would ask my mother repeatedly throughout my childhood to tell me about my father. I knew his name was Sal and he was tall with blue eyes and blond hair. He had a chiseled jaw and manly features. A kind face and big heart. My mother always spoke fondly of him.

When I was two years old, the man I would call "Dad" came into our lives. I don't remember his entrance into my world because I was still so young. But he was present in my earliest memories. Greg looked nothing like my real father, at least according to the description my mother gave. But Greg was nice and I believe that he loved us from the very beginning. He married my mother shortly after my 2nd birthday and began the paperwork for adoption right away. Once that was all complete, my brother and I were issued new birth certificates and new social security cards with his name on them. We were now a big, happy family with the same last name.

But I was still a bastard...