Dear _______,
Because you know almost nothing about me, I offer you this: My name is Cindy Marie Fuhrman. I had another name for several months — the name, perhaps you gave me — that was redacted on my birth certificate. A name I think I might recognize, were I to hear it. A name that might tell me something about myself.
The name before the name nurses and caregivers at the orphanage and foster parents called me. Maybe the one you said when, at night, you talked to your stomach. One you might have whispered in the brief moments you held me, if you held me at all. How many names lie between us?
Once, I was given the assignment to write my conception story. I sat for hours in front of an empty white page. I looked at all the letters on my keyboard, and I wondered at the different ways I might arrange them to make my conception real to me. Finally, I wrote, "I was not conceived, I was adopted."
I write nonfiction. Memoir. My one rule: honesty. Can I be forgiven for the ways I have fictionalized my conception? The tales I tell myself about my biological father and you. I must start somewhere. Was it a secret love? A simple accident? One-night stand? Or maybe you were the victim of assault, and I am a reminder of violence or hate. I have some facts I can add for veracity. Your age: 18. My bio father: Unknown
My mom, the woman who raised me, Dolores, says I look like her Serbian grandmother. She points to things we have in common, dark hair and eyes and the ability to grow anything. Is that how it will work in my creation story? I will attach to whomever is the nearest reflection of myself and become kin to shadow ancestors? My dad, Ron, would say, "Close enough for government work," and it was close — only a few years later the Indian Child Welfare Act would've disallowed the state to take me, to put me into the arms of my mother and him. Maybe you know where you come from and from whom. I am from the Adoptee Nation. Enrolled Member of the Tribe of Unknowing.
I am in my 51st year. My therapist tells me I need to heal my "primal wound." She says that my disconnect with you creates a wound that manifests as a sense of loss and mistrust and difficulties in relationships — a lack of identity. A psychic said a small girl follows me everywhere, tugging on my dress hem, playing jokes on me. Once, in Bucerias, Mexico, I stood at the edge of the continent in the dark of night. An interminable abyss. The horizon was unknowable, and for a moment I forgot where I ended and it began. I carry that horizon within me.
Sometimes I see you in an old brown pickup. You are driving fast, away from the hospital. The radio is loud. Your fingers making a hollow sound as they tap the rusted door. Your uterus aching with my absence, with absolution.
Other friends in my class finished the conception assignment. I watched them read parts of the work to the class. The shy and sometimes funny miracle of themselves. My partner says he doesn't care how he was conceived, but his mother tells me he was a good baby, an easy birth. My late husband's mother used hypnosis rather than drugs to birth him. My mom was a "preemie" placed in a shoebox and kept in a warm and open oven. My dad was a "whoops."
Sometimes I see you in an old brown pickup. You are driving fast, away from the hospital. The radio is loud.
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Fifty more years and it won't matter. My obituary will make no mention of the redaction on my original birth certificate. I'll reach back into the days of living and remember the dogs and the homemade cookies. The cello lessons and the people who loved me. My mom holding my hand... I will touch old photographs of a foursome wrestling, a smiling foursome at Christmas, and I will say Family. I will say, my mom. My dad. My sister.
Why am I writing, you must wonder. What difference will it make in the end? Is the wound a scar that would only reopen with knowing? I imagine you telling me that first name, that first story and feeling that black horizon envelope me. I don't want to have to placate you or grant you forgiveness.
My dogs are getting restless. It is past the time that we usually go for a walk, and I can't disappoint them. It's only a quarter mile, but they have so much to do in that time! Cisco brings his ball and tosses it toward my feet, so I'll kick it as we walk. Apache, she is so young still, but she longs to know the world. Sometimes my neighbor comes out and tosses the ball and we get to talking. His dog, EZ, died last year and they haven't gotten another. "I just can't get over that one." He says that every time.
The way home is always a little longer. Especially now, when the steep driveway is icy and I can't get traction. I imagine the ways I might fall, yet I never do.
Kindly,
Cindy Marie Fuhrman ♦
November is National Adoption Awareness Month. Please take some time this month to learn more about adoption by consulting books by adoptees and biological mothers and adoption websites.
