Teacher Teacher, Can You Teach Me?

When I was in 4th year at York University, I took a course on Hemingway and Faulkner. It was an exciting course, the best I had ever taken. I learned a lot that year, from an incredibly talented English Professor named Don Sumemrhayes. His insight was incredible, and the discussions he encouraged pretty much ALWAYS left the group of 20 or so of us groaning each week when we realized the class was at an end.

At the end of that year we had a final essay worth 50% of our grade. We were to take one of the dozen books we had read and write about it in that traditional sense, calling to mind the various literary tools the book used to engage its reader. It was to have been a traditional essay format, at least as far as we understood.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. In no way could I explain how I felt about To Have and Have Not in a way that would be as intelligible as all the in-class conversations had been with all those big-brains in the class. But I DID feel strongly. So I re-wrote the entire ending of the book. No explanation. Just prose. My entire essay spoke for itself.

I was illustrating what Prof. Summerhayes said when we argued about whether or not a writer’s meaning could be interpreted using our own set of assumptions and life experiences; about whether or not the Deconstruction Theory could be applied to someone else’s work. I had always argued that if they put it out there, one could not help but attach their own meaning to the work. I felt I must therefore be a deconstructionist. And as such, I decided to do something bold and risky. And it was an intense exercise – it was both invigorating and intrusive, taking a writer such as Papa, and reworking him, forsaking his work as his own private canvass.

I really worked at it to get the feel for the writing style; I wanted it to look RIGHT, as though the pages could have been found amongst his things – the alternate ending he had debated for himself. I was scared the day I handed that 20 pages in. I really worried and lost sleep while it was out being graded. And on the day they were handed back I had a pit in my stomach the size of a grapefruit.

He didn’t hand mine back and he asked me to stay.

Uh-oh. What had I done? I about died.

The other students got theirs and all left the room with a backward glance to me. Was I about to fail? Convocation was mere weeks away. I was about to become the first University Degree Holder in my family since my Grandfather. Or was I? Had I risked it all to do some 4th year cocky English major boneheaded move?

He looked at me, that wonderful old hippie with long white hair in a ponytail and a beard, Our own Modern Hemingway. He slid it upside down across the table to me.

Tapping with his left fingers as he eyed me carefully, he sat back and told me to turn it over. I almost couldn't do it. I was so afraid.

A+

His written comment beside that glorious grade:
“A Most Brave and Wonderful Essay, and a joy to read.”

Here I had desecrated the sacred Hemingway, in a really big way, and I got my first EVER A+, weeks away from graduation. (I mean ever here. I'd scored a couple of A's in high school. But I was never considered an A student. And had NEVER received an A+).

I was on cloud 9 for weeks, and still am whenever I think about that class, that teacher, the one who had made all the difference to me. He asked me for a copy of the essay for his own, that it was so good he wanted to put it amongst the highlights of that course. I kept the marked up one and gave him a new one. And as my reward he gave me his own book of poetry, with a gorgeous inscription about a “kindred spirit” and wishing me the best in life.

We have ALL had a teacher, at some point, who has made THAT MUCH of a difference to us. Sarah’s too young yet to have had hers, but it will come, and when it happens, we’ll be able to tell from the gleam in her eye that she’s arrived at that pinnacle of her education career where someone has touched her mind in a way that she never thought possible.

For some people, our teachers, those who make us reach incredible heights, might be a parent or friend or someone else we admire beyond words. But either way, it happens. If it hasn’t happened for you yet, regardless of your age, it will!

Teachers have a wonderful place in our lives, as one of the few people who will share some responsibility for molding our minds and opening our hearts and eyes to wonder.

(I encourage you, if you're interested, to click on the links I've provided to Hemingway and Faulkner and Deconstruction Theory - all good fun!)

Finding Family.....

There are few among us who could possibly understand what it's like.

On one hand, you were chosen by someone. Someone PICKED you ahead of others. Something about you drew them to you and they decided to make you their family. That is special.

But in the back of your mind, the nagging question "why"? The nagging hurt. The thirst for answers. The need to know the reasons why someone else chose to LEAVE you.

So picked on one hand, and abandoned on the other. Life as an oxymoron.

I am speaking, of course, about adoption. Amazingly, almost every quarter of my family life has a story within it about adoption, abandonment, and inevitably finding family. Some of the stories are happy, and some verge on tragic. Some are very private and quiet, while others are very open, honest, and wonderful.

Rarely in each of these family units has every single sibling been able to "get on board" with the finding. Some are on awhile and then fall off. Some don't understand or even try. Others try but fail. And still others embrace it for what it is: a chance to know the person who for whatever reason got left behind.

I won't tell tales that I haven't been given permission to tell. But a relative of mine has found a second family and for the most part it has been wonderful. At the very least he has a very loving sister and his children have cousins who are unmistakeably related - and there is much love.

Another relative had to give a child up and had to endure the pain of finding and losing said child not once but thrice as they could not resolve too many past differences, and said relative's subsequent children could not [all] reconcile themselves to it. It has been too painful to watch; too much heartache for both parties.

Still others have never sought. My dad was not raised by his mother, but by a step-mother he called Mom. He never had much interest in knowing the "other side". My mom and I tried to delve in to it, but we hit roadblocks and kind of abandoned it. And since my dad didn't feel it was worthy of our time or effort, it didn't feel as important as other searches. In a way, that is painful too. But on the other hand, it could just be that he was happy with the idea of his step-mother choosing him and his father. Maybe he doesn't have a burning desire to know. Or maybe he does and we'll never know.

The stories are all intense. All involve someone wonderful "stepping up" in light of the reality and being a wonderful partner or parent. But none is so wonderful, emotional, or mysterious as my mother's adoption story.

My mom was one of 5 siblings and one on the way in 1945, at the end of the second world war.

The men were coming home from the fight. How many of these came home to unexpected children where the math simply didn't add up?

That was what happened in my mom's case. He came home to his own three daughters, plus a boy and a girl and one on the way that were clearly not his.

We have no idea what happened. But in the end, the man took his three daughters "home" to England, the boy and the girl were taken away, and the baby was born and adopted in infancy.

My mother was almost 5 when Doug and Eva Jackson "chose" her. She grew up knowing full well that she was adopted. She grew up knowing that she'd had a first family, but some of the memories faded, only to come back as she dug in to find the truth much later.

In about 1977, my mother found first her brother, who at 5 at the time of the "abandonment" never got adopted. He had found their birth mother some years earlier, and had reestablished contact intermittently with the sisters in England. But though he was interested, he was unable to embrace the whole idea of new family, of my sister and I as nieces, of my mother has his baby sister. He cares, but there is definitely a wall. And I certainly understand it. At 5, the pain would not have dulled over time. Instead, the feral nature of the feelings of being ripped from hearth and home and happiness and security would last forever. A five year old can not reason. A five year old ONLY knows that they are being left behind, taken away, punished for unseen reason. So if he can't let down his guard, it's because of a life of feeling left behind and of feeling punished for something that was never his doing or responsibility.

Through her brother my mom got in touch with her own mother. From about 1978-1985 there was a "relationship". Dana and I called her grandma. We dressed in her jewelry and posed for silly pictures. We fed her bird. We ate her lemon meringue pie. We visited pretty much every weekend. And we got few answers. The shame of it for me is that I was too young to ask questions of my own, to push for details where they were lacking. At the time, my mom was just so happy to get "something" that she didn't think to ask for more; and she had no reason to believe that the details she was getting weren't the truth. But there were gaps. And no answers forthcoming for that.

When had her husband gone back to England with the girls? Where was she when Children's Aid took the two small children? Why didn't she talk about the baby girl? Where did she have the baby girl? Who was the father (or fathers) in question?

Eventually, the relationship faltered. Lots of reasons for it, as in most cases when it happens. Eventually the weight of the truth (or lack of it) bubbles to the surface and makes it hard to just sit and have small talk. But also, people who have found another sometimes get a sense of entitlement that doesn't exist in reality; they want to be "the" brother, "the" mother. "the" daughter, "the" grandmother. And that could hurt the other side: the chosen side. And people don't understand. And so a rift grows. Words are said. Sides are chosen. And the tentative strands of a relationship fall apart, disintegrate under the weight of the pain and questions that still remain.

But then.
Then a few years later, with all of generation one (those who left behind and those who chose) gone, the ability to seek answers becomes slightly less painful, slightly more urgent. Records are sought; distant family is approached for truth. The tendrils of inquiry are sent out to the rest who are left behind. Someone sees an internet family tree. Sends an email. Poses the question.

And the next thing you know, there are nieces and nephews and nephews-in-law and grandnieces and nephews and babies on the way, and children and family resemblances and similar humours to share and undeniably, you've found family!

None of that uncomfortable stuff. Those who embrace it want to know the truth; believe what truth there is, desire to know a family they just realized was there. Suddenly a connection to a deceased parent, to a place they heard about but have never experienced. Suddenly a cousin who quickly becomes the huge pain in the butt she always would have been had you the opportunity to grow up knowing her (I of course, being that cousin).

My sister Dana and I had NO cousins. None. We had no aunts or uncles. We had each other, and that was it (so she got me as the pain in the butt - poor thing!). We have each taken turn weaving in and out of the various degrees of our mom's searching. We've both been on board at different times or staunchly removed at others (as Eva Jackson got closer to the end of her days, I became anti-anything related to pre-adoption. I was young and I felt it would be disrespectful to the Grandma I admired so much).

But now here we are. And we have a RAFT of family in England! We have found my mother's sister Betty's children! And grandchildren! And one on the way! Most are happy for it. Others are tentative. It takes getting used to. Some never will. And that has to be respected.

But it's there. A brand new old family to learn about and tease and eventually meet and embrace for real.

And at the same time, the Ontario Adoption Records just opened, allowing adoptees to apply for "the truth" which my mom has done and hopes to find even more answers in.

It's strange and wonderful. Yes, we must tread carefully. There's a lot of past there to wade through. Not everyone's going to be as thrilled. And some may weave in and out as we have done in turn.

But right now, my mom, my sister and myself are all connected to England. And it's wonderful stuff. A sense of history. A sense of belonging. A family.

I can't wait to meet you, family!
Thanks mom, for doing the grunt work, for finding these funny and great and wonderful people!

Love to you all.