Joy’s Division

So I made it, I got up at an ungodly time, met my friends very close to the appointed hour and braved my way through crowds and loudness. Pride is something I normally avoid, or hide from while I am trying to have a pleasant meal and bury my head in what I am reading or speaking about as the dykes on bikes disrupt my peace and make their bawdy presence known.

I don’t do crowds, and I don’t do loud as a general rule. I tend to like intimate settings and gentle conversations. I am lightening up in the last couple of years, I am learning to go along with others ideas instead of just turning off my phone and losing myself in my reading or work.

So I went, and my dear friend who I will call Ine, for the purpose of crypitafication, has been a dear friend for several years, she was shocked that I actually made it, the others I don’t know as well, but am on of course friendly terms with, and they all seem warm, kind and open.

Ine was really afraid we were going to miss the whole Dykes on bikes thing, and when I group started to get clogged and sluggish, as big groups do, I insisted that we split off so we could see her favorite entry, which is also the first one. It was strange to me to be hurrying toward something that normally makes me cringe, but I had fun, it was fun, I was going along with things, and then not much long after that, Team ACLU marched in front of me carrying signs bragging how they fought for my rights.

My stomach clenched and I thought, you have me mistaken for someone else, the ACLU still recognizes me as non-human property, but what is the big deal right? It is not about me, it is about Gay Pride, and balloon magic had a wonderful entry, I think they are my favorite, and music and we were dancing, and I was clapping with my hands over my head to express my appreciation to all those that put so much effort into this, and I enjoyed seeing people revel in themselves, and thought we should all have a pride parade, esp. adoptees, how powerful they are.

It touched me when the PFLAG group went by and Ine started clapping very loudly. I instantly knew why, because they were doing something that very much needs doing, encouraging acceptance among family members. She told me that her dad claims her sexaulity is the worst thing that has ever happened to him, *sigh* She thinks he should get out more.

Then the adoption.sf float went by, and Independent Adoption Center, I was laughing and I was being handed beads, someone was insisting that I put one she had won around my neck, I bent my head forward, and when I straightened myself up again, I saw it said, “adoptionsf.org” or something like that.

Fuck.

I made some complaint about not liking the circles on the beads, no my friends insisted, it makes them look more like medallions, “No, I really don’t like them”

Because of course I can’t just say, I hate adoption, adoption was a hugely destructive force in my life that compromised the quality of my life hugely, that I am still not recovered from, because of course none of them know I am adopted, and I want it to stay that way, I want them to think adoption is just this thing that happens to “the other” unfortunate people. I don’t want them to pity, me or watch what they say around me, or tell each other behind my back, “she is adopted you know”

So I ingored it for awhile, and continued with my happy antics. Then I decided, fuck it, this is ridiculous, esp. after seeing one of the plastic medallions taken off someone else’s beads, on the ground adoption.sf.org I stepped over it happy to think someone else ditched theirs, didn’t like theirs either.

I started to undo the wire circles holding them on to the beads, someone I was with noticed, most of them were advertising beer, she put her hand over the adoption one, and said, “well leave this one on, because adoption is so important”

I ignored her, but didn’t explain myself.

For the most part I had a fab time. For the most part, is all you can really ask for I guess.

I relayed this story to my sweetheart when I got back home, he laughed and said, “too bad you couldn’t have a medallion that said ‘ban gay marriage in November”‘ and told her it was really important that she wear it.”

I mean of course we support gay marriage, his point was how I would never do something so dismissive to someone, I would never tell them what was important for me to have them wear, I would never expect someone else to celebrate discrimination against themselves.

In a lot of ways, that is what adoption is to me, not just a loss of family, but a loss of self, in order to adopt someone, in the United States at least for now, they must foresake their identity, whether or not they are willing to. That is at the core of this split for me, that is the ultimate price I paid, loss of self. A child cannot be cared for by people other than their parents unless they are willing to foresake themselves seems to be the message.

My sweetheart and I made up more insensitive slogans to entertain ourselves, “drunk driving is more thrilling” for victims of drunk drivers to wear, “It is really important” the humor was very black, and not sincere.

The thing is the woman who told me that “adoption is so important” is a kind, progressive, thoughtful person, she didn’t mean to demean, but the chasm, between what I experience, and the cultural paradigm okay barf, I said paradigm, is so huge as to be insurmountable, no wonder I prefer my tea and poetry.

I have been talked to taking more time off work, if my friends have their way, I may become a fun person.

The costumes are so great, reminds me of H.’s cousin, the transvestite costume designer who set us up in high school, with some of the best clothes evah, can’t fit into any of them now, but still have quite a few, and I do think they are museum worthy, if the age, some of them dating back to the 1920’s hasn’t started to eat away.

*Sigh*

I am so unflamboyant now, damn my respectablity.

Why don’t adoptees get a pride parade?

I am back. I rested, and I didn’t log on for at least 5 days or so, God I am a computer addict.

Guess what?

I am still adopted, ha ha.

Umm, I am thinking of retiring this blog after the protest, I like my blog, I like how it is spazzy sometimes, and girlish, full of mistakes, and upset, I like that I cuss a lot, although I like anyone who cusses a lot. It is a really vulnerable, fragile expression of something that people are afraid to talk about.

Maybe I won’t retire it, maybe I can’t, I sometimes wonder if I have hypergraphia. Also it is so very different than the irl me, the irl me is all about keeping up my game face, trying to accomplish, being greedy and ambitious.

It is nice to have a place to come and unload and to be understood, and cared about, to show my underbelly and have it rubbed.

I don’t know, I was off-line, and it felt good, I didn’t feel the frost-bite of over exposure, I drew pictures of bugs and watched them crawl around, I went inside a cave, and got really upset when our guide said that spiders don’t have eyes but refrained from piping up, yes, spiders have 8 simple eyes, brains, intenstines, reprocutive organs and silk sacs, not bad for such tiny things, but maybe cave-dwelling spiders don’t, maybe there is some crazy no-eyed-wolf spider. I don’t know that much about cave dwelling creatures. I broke out my Audobon field guides, and toted around Mary Oliver. I played Pac-Man and lost $100.00 on a bet that I could beat my sweet heart at Pac-Man, gambling is evil.

I discovered maybe I don’t study religion so much as I think I should because I do experience this very naive deep love for all living things, that I think God is everything I see, that is why it bothers me to step on snails, or kill roaches, or mice. When I was little I thought everything was a sentient being, which made life kind of hard. That feeling never left me wholly. That is why I can’t hold up one person as more connected to God than another, why I can’t find a spiritual teacher, is I can’t shake the feeling that my cat is as divine an expression of God as any held-high holy one.

I found a cool pair of shorts for $8.00 and wondered why I don’t spend time in used clothing stores, I am sick of buying new things. I got in a fight with Tomtom about Xeriscaping and how offensive I find lush green lawns in hot California climates, he claimed it was some kind of waterless magic grass, HA! That boy will say anything to win a fight.

I flipped open my laptop to work on my book, and my sweetheart said, “Oh No! not adoption again!” Which made me question, what am I giving up, a lot what am I accomplishing, very little and maybe the purpose has come and gone.

I didn’t miss reading blogs by happy first mothers who know in their heart they did the right thing, and then blog about boys they have crushes on ad nauseum, I am glad my mother is of more substance than that.

I didn’t miss the hundreds of triggering upsetting things that one can read about the gladness and the gayness of adoption on any given day.

I didn’t miss reading the blogs of adoptive mothers who truly seem to care about their adoptlings, which breaks my heart in a very special way, because there is nothing they can really do.

Adoption is about a child’s worst fears coming true, and every day I wake-up it will still suck.

I can’t change it for anyone, I can’t make it an easy or happy thing.

I have been in reunion for 1,000,000 years and it hasn’t gotten easy yet, in fact my mother and I had another dousha today.

I can say adoption hurts children, a million times, in a myriad of life-long impacting ways, and it is like a pebble in a big land of pebbles, because the flesh-peddlers have money to be made, because we don’t value other than as inventory.

I will never understand why women carry pregnancies to term when they don’t want or can’t care for the child, I mean I am fanatically pro-choice, but I do believe abortion kills a baby, but I don’t have to understand everything. I am just a small expression of a much larger whole.

have I mentioned how much I love Mary Oliver recently?

Buck Moon- From the Field Guide to Insects

Eighty-eight thousand six-hundred
different species in North America. In the trees, the grasses,
around us. Maybe more, maybe
several million on each acre of earth. This one
as well as any other. Where you are standing
at dusk. Wher the moon
appears to be climbing in the eastern sky. Where the wind
seems to be traveling through the trees, and the frogs
are content in their black ponds or else
why do they sing? Where you feel a power
that is not you but flows
into you like a river. Where you lie down and breathe
the sweet honey of the grass and count
the stars; where you fall asleep listening
to the simple chords repeated, repeated.
Where, resting, you feel
the perfection, the rising, the happiness
of their dark wings.Mary Oliver.

Things I always tell Tomtom,

1) Remember people will always disappoint you, that is the one thing you can count on, not because they are mean, or weak, or lazy, but because they are people. That is what people do, do not burden any one person with your well-being, they cannot manage it. You will disappoint others too, forgive yourself and others.

2) Never snub people, you don’t know who your friends are, things may fall apart and your most beloved friends may be indifferent, and someone you didn’t notice at all, may come to your aid. Look down on no one.

3) I am your only real friend. Everyone else just wants to betray you.

Okay, number 3 is a long time joke, he doesn’t believe that, we joke about that.

Numbers 1 and 2 are a bit more difficult though.

To follow one of my favorite sayings, “Take my advice, I am not using it”

Disappointed, yes I am.

In others, in myself, all around, I let myself fall trap to the same failings that we all do. I forgive myself, I forgive others, I feel like an outsider and that is okay. I feel raw and sorry, confused and angry. I have been sleeping way too long in the mornings, losing myself in my dreams, having premonitions, feeling betrayed, lost, feeling way too emotional.

watermelon is in season

I mean why shouldn’t I? I grewed-up a child, I am losing my motherhood in the nature that it has existed for all of my life, since I was a child myself I was a mother, now, I am a consultant and financial donor, Tomtom is his own person. I am the person who gave up everything for him, for him to find me greatly lacking.

asparagus is in season

Maybe it is because he is exactly half my age now, we looked through his year book, I pointed out the pretty girls, he said, “I think this girl is especially pretty, but kind of weird, she makes her own clothes, she looks like Raggedy-Anne” I sighed, big sigh, that is what they used to say about me, I used to make my own clothes, and looked like Raggedy-Anne, and he like my Raggedy-Andy doll, he doesn’t remember that, but I have pictures. He is half my age, one third his grandmother’s age. There has to be some magic in there somewhere.]

I wanted to show him my picture at the same age, I was so tiny, but my hair looks like crap, and I have tons of make-up on. Gross.

The same age that I was having him, that I was losing my best friend, whose dad had become my guardian, at least before I got married, so between 15 and 16, awesome better life that I had.

How we leapt in the library fountain when I was pregnant with him, how we always hung out in the library reading, reading, and singing, “Jeepers, Creepers, where’d you get those Peepers? Golly, Dolly, where’d you get those eyes?” Until we were kicked out, my extensive report on the Congressional reports of criminalizing LSD, which gives me lots of weird trivia now for cocktail parties. Which genrally blows people’s minds.

So I got pregnant, and I loved my baby, before he was born, and H. who was a little bit older than me started doing H. as in Heroin, under the tutelage of “Spider Sam” who’s real name was hello, fucking, Brad, I don’t care if these people find me, I won’t cryptify their names.

“Sam” was so cool, so looked up to.

H. was like a sister to me, I loved her. I remember the last conversation we had as best friends, in the alley leading up to my apartment. She was telling me how Kendra was “talking shit” that is the phrase I remember most, and I turned on her, “talking shit?” it sounded like such a druggie phrase, not my library friend. “Talking shit?!” I repeated, “I am pregnant, you are my best friend, and you are doing HARD drugs!, I need you, and you are killing yourself, and you want me to pretend like this is okay, you want me to pretend like I don’t notice. I can’t, I won’t lie to you, take your shit and stop”

At that point I was at my apartment stairs, my eyes were full of tears “I WILL NOT PARTICPATE IN THIS” I screamed, and she turned and walked away from me.

Boy did that hurt, but I didn’t know how to be any other way.

When S. died, when he killed himself, he wrote a letter, about how everyone in his life had betrayed him, you know surviving suicides is tough, so I betrayed him according to his letter, so did Eric. I felt a lot of things, one of which was angry, he had taken so much from us. So many nights he had pleaded that we understand him, that we always failed at, so many nights where he never concerned himself about our situations, and then he shoots himself.

I read the letter to Eric, and Eric mentioned, he could have just as well said, “every person I came in contact with, cared a lot about me, that would be just as true”

So I guess it is perspective.

Mine is skewed, I got all shook up this last week, that is why this post is so rambling and goofy, I have been thrown back into my 1/2 life, with my son’s life, he is so much better off than I was, I am doubling back, because I gave birth at the same time my mom did, my mom who left me, I see the difference, I know how I was hurt in a way that my son has never been hurt, despite the fact that I had less than my mom.

I really think I was hurt in a way my mom wasn’t. My mom lost a baby, which is horrible, I lost myself, the right to be alive, I lost connection to people.

I became a grateful unit and little else.

I will never belong, and I accept that.

My natural family, ditched me without any regard for me.

I know that. They told me, and I deserved it because, because, because, I was born.

Once when I was in a fight with my mom, I complained that she got all this inheritance just because she was born, and she responded, “I did a lot more than being born”

Which most of which was being a normal daughter, something that was denied to me.

The caring, and love, however misguided was denied to me. The pieces of our history, the pictures, the letters, the furniture. I got one stained rag with ducks painted on it. Ouch.

My mom didn’t want to upset her family now, her husband, who said, “no step-children!”

I mean I know, I know, I was abandoned, as Cara has always said, “what do you expect from people who would give you away?”

I don’t know, and easy for her to say, she was born in love.

Then I work for adoptee rights, for those of us that apparently don’t deserve rights, and just piss everyone off.

I was born, through no fault of my own, I was exploited by the people who were supposed to care for me and I am supposed to be grateful for this.

The people who feel quite satisfied with their own roles in their own families.

Fuck me.

So yes, you have.

Still, I have a lover who loves me, I am heading out for a respite among really big trees, hopefully, when I come back I will be a nicer person, with more clarity, less hurt, more friends.

I have spent my whole life being told how happy I am, how joyful I am, how there is nothing else to call me but Joy-joy

I want to tell all those people to fuck themseves

I am beautiful like me.
I lived through all that and more.

I deserved nothing for my life.

Stanley Kowalski: You know what luck is? Luck is believing you’re lucky, that’s all… To hold a front position in this rat-race, you’ve got to believe you are lucky

When I was in art school, I believed I was on a pilgrimage. I didn’t graduate the year I completed my course work because to graduate you had to put in an application for graduation, and when I went to school, there were all kinds of changes happening in California and it may have been in my best interest to not be awarded a degree.

Anyway, the following year I put in my application, there was a special ceremony held in the university gallery for the art students, showing current student work. We went, laughed and drank champagne, of course, but the images of the current students made my head swim, they looked so much in the style of a lot of my friend’s works, we had been called the “golden age” by our teachers, we were important and different, we were tight, we suffered through the worst kind of dispair together, a cluster suicide. We were on a mission, but clearly we weren’t.

A lot of our style developed by being taught by the same teachers. The same teachers teaching this new crop of students and beyond distilling the essence of the human condition we were caught up in nothing more than a visual fashion show. Or at least that is how I felt upon leaving, what mattered so much to me, clearly didn’t matter any more than Versace. I had had something to believe in, and it was stripped from me.

I went home distraught, I called my mother. “I am just so disillusioned” I plaintively cried. Why I called my mom I don’t know, of course she met me with her new-age bullshit, (sorry, mom, but it is not like you don’t know this about me) “Well, that is good” she chirped, my mother who if we landed in Dante’s fifth ring of hell together would smile at me and say, “hey, at least we don’t have to pay PG&E anymore!”

“Why is that good?” I mewed –claws out,

In her bird-like cheerfulness she replied, “because now you get to move past the illusion, to what really is“

Howl, I did not want to move past to what really is, really she doesn’t understand anything.

Except she does, and she was right. I understood, and I got past it and really think in the long run, my art, my relationship with art improved tremendously, although it hurt, and I was sore for a while, in the long run it was the best thing ever

So anyway, I remembered this when I recently read, “ I think adoption rights is a dead issue. Too much infighting. Too much bullheadedness. Disagreements escalate into major flame wars with insults traded back and forth. You can’t even get involved on a local level because there is no organization to speak of. … I certainly don’t want to be involved in it anymore. To what end? All I keep hearing is, “We tried that and it doesn’t work!” Ok, fine. Then nothing works. It’s a dead issue, ” from Kevan, that is the only cite I can give.

I looked at that comment a long time.

Dead? Doesn’t work? Yes, I have heard that a lot, I get an idea, and then I pass it by people who have more experience than me, and have been told time and again, it doesn’t work, we tried that, it is useless, hopeless. Children will be exploited, denied the basic facts about their lives and there is not a damn thing we can do about it, we don’t have a billion dollar budget, we are fighting the NCFA, who is happy to make money of the backs of babes, we can’t even get along with ourselves. True enough.

I think of the models we have been following to secure our rights, they imitate the models that other groups discriminated against have used. We are not other groups though, we are unique. We can’t call upon the brute strength of numbers, what we are is a small subset of the general population, within that tiny subset, there is a much smaller subset of those that have the freedom to examine their own feelings, many, many adoptees are not supported by their friends, their families, their communities. I am by all. I am supported by my adoptive family, my natural family, my friends (of course only the very close ones know), my community. Although I don’t admit my own adoptee status, I frequently make not-so-nice comments about the classism inherent in adoption, and have not been ostracized but instead frequently understood. Nevertheless, speaking up about adoption has taken me years into reunion to be able to manage, it is handsdown one of the most painful things I do. So you have the tiny subset of us within that subset that can manage to face it.

We get smaller still.

Of those of us that are aware, who have the support that we need to go forward, there are many of us with small children, with jobs, with money woes. I don’t have a small child, but I do have family obligations, I do run a business, I do have money woes. There are no adoptee ghettos, we are by nature of our status isolated, we can’t fill busloads of adoptees and drive them down to the protest, we can’t visit adoptee-universities and inspire them. We can’t go to adoptee bars or bathhouses and distribute literature.

On our side, on the other hand, our biggest former opponents in real life, our adoptive parents many from an older era, for the most part are no longer at odds with us, there is a new generation of adoptive parent who says, being an adoptive family is good enough, I don’t have to pretend, and it may not be easy, but I want what is best for my child. My aparents got me my own records, despite being told they must be crazed by their peers.

They cared about me enough to take that risk, you know that old saying, if you love somone set them on fire I mean free.

It made me love them more. I felt respected and supremely loved. That is huge. Now adays they would be more average, more and more adoptive parents are on our side.

The fact remains we can’t use other social change models to make the social change that is so long overdue.

We have to be smarter.

We have to reinvent the social change wheel.

We are tiny, those of us who can speak out, but we speak for millions, we are telling the truth, we just have to learn how to be more potent.

Like mean little adoptee coffe beans that get bitten into, we have to matter.

We will win, we will find the right places to bite, we will find the right legs to undermine and release of their illusions that these antiquated laws serve anyone, Australia did it, the UK did it, we can too.

The United States is absolutely high on the notion of rugged individualism, the nannying of sealed records flies in the direct face of popular opinion.

We can do this.

I didn’t think I could go to N.O., It is actually a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be. I am only going for a few days, not even half a week.

We can change public opinion, our blogs have proved that, so many people have been turned to see our point of view.

We are smart, we are capable.

I can visit my local ACLU office and talk to them about adoptee rights, I can undermine their arguments for denying me my rights, I can write letters to the NCFA, I can make them see that sealing records makes no sense, I can call my state legislators, and I can get my friends call, my boyfriend to call, my son to call, and so can you.

xoxoxoxoxooxox

see you in N.O.

N.O. means YES!

hahashhahahahahahaha

OH and I promise I won’t make any more boring posts about politics for at least a week, but then you know, I also promised to proof-read.

Oh Foucault it.

Excuse my French, really.

Okay, I have been a very good girl about this, I would have made my aparents proud, they are nothing if not gracious, and I love that about them.

Today, I am staring at the computer screen, with a big project on my desk, with a phone in my ear, with an associate asking me, “how was your vacay Doll?” to which my first impulse is to respond, “who the Foucault cares how my vacay was? I know you are just tyring to charm me with interest in my personal life, but want something from me, consider me charmed and cut the crap” Instead I droned on in cliches about how well-rested I felt, how relaxed, away from a computer, la la la. I love cliches, I mean they really get the job done. Simple understandable. So many cliches originated in Shakespeare and I would hardly call them useless. It is like putting someone on hold, Joy’s not here, but listen to her cliche noise and leave a message, she will get back to you about two days after you would like.

Sometimes I get just plain jealous of my aparents and their very cooled jets. They are Scandinavian, I on the other hand, inherited from both sides an stubborn argy bargy side. And I am taking back my promise to proof-read my posts, that is just boring. Okay, so about 5 years ago, my old roommate brings home this stupid magnet that says “Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History” because it reminds her of me.

Belch.

I have never wanted to make history, I want to write a book, I want to travel, I want to go to expensive restaurants, and drive a shiny car, I want classical music, and flowers that the gardner grew for me. I want to be loved, I want to laugh, and read poetry, paint pictures and never show them, I have such an Emily Dickinson side. I want to be kind and gracious like my aparents, full of dinner parties and fanciful conversations. I read in my Mary Olive book today, “A Meeting”

I meet them
I can only stare

To be utterly
wild.

Which causes me to think of my trip to Magisco’s of her and her children, of her faith in me, of her understanding of me despite her lack of personal involvement in adoption. It causes me to think of the hand-painted sign above Tomtom’s crib that read, “Blessings on the Wild Child” that I painted.

Before I rejected myself as too much, too unlike the gracious academics that raised me.

Okay that is me, I don’t have to start my life over, I have been completely wild, and I have succeeded. Awesome. Thank you Lord, Thank you Jesus. I can accept myself.

Here is a nice insult I have received as of late.

Mike Doughney said…
Oh, look! A school of dysfunctional, ignorant, anonymous, illiterate, revisionist, narcissistic piranha, biting at everything in sight! Feeding frenzy!

Monday, June 9, 2008 3:17:00 AM

This is the result of one woman’s work along side her boyfriend’s. My boyfriend will not get engaged with my adoption stuff, he is kind of busy with his own life. Besides I don’t rely on my beau to fight my fights for me, I find it rather beneath me.

Fortunately, yes, I can speak about Foucault, if a state legislator comes up and strikes up a conversation with me, unfortunately I will have to be honest I am a Chomsky girl, specifically,

” Power, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate. The burden of proof is on those in authority to demonstrate why their elevated position is justified. If this burden can’t be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic. “

But unless a leggie wants to engage in whether or not I am a communist or anarchist, I will keep my trap shut and hand her or him a piece of lit. that a first grader could understand.

Cuz, I am dumb like that.

Amazing, all I have done for adoptee rights awareness, all that I have haphazardally, done typos, misspellings and all. All that I have fallen into. All my dumb luck, I am still not good enough, I am being told this by the people who supposedly have my best interest at heart.

I am not smart enough, what matters is how I scored on my GRE, very well thanks, I fail to care about that though, all that I am is not worthy. My story doesn’t matter, the way I have made intitmate parts of my life available for thousands does not matter.

I am weak and useless, if I listen to my elders.

I am a toothless pirahana.

I mean nothing.

Well, okay.

My useless ass is showing up, and speaking out. I don’t know what else to do. My adoption life was made inherently easier by those who suffered slings and arrows before me. I got my records at 18 without even asking.

I have been in reunion for half my life.

I am supported by both sides, adoptive and natural families. I am the blessed one.

None of my family members are jerks.

I have nothing to gain. Nothing.

My nmom says she has already taken her vacation this summer, she can’t take another one, believe me this is no vacation this is service to humanity. Not all of us were so lucky.

Let’s change that.

The rest of you can fondle each other’s philosophy books and congratulate yourselves on not being part of hoi polloi.

I am the proletariat, I am proud to be.

You can be better than me all the day long, and you my dears can keep it.

I am in service, and I say not sarcastically, thank you Lord and thank you Jesus.

She wanted to hike this super crazy big mountain and she did! She totally did, and it was totally nutty, she was gone from 8:00 ante meridian to 9:00 post meridian walking and hiking and seeing her beloved flowers.

I think I accompianed her for approximately 2 hours, or maybe it just seemed like 2 hours, I balked at the idea of getting my feet wet, and there were so many people, and climbing this mountain has never been anything I wanted to do.

Luckily my sister is more adventurous and capable than I am in this arena and was there to happily make it to the top with her.

I was content to putz around strolling, as that is much more my style, making sketches, reading, napping.

I was worried that being with my sister and my mother for an extended period of time would make me feel all left out, confused and hurt. I really didn’t though, I felt quite fine.

With my sister, and can I say she is just so freakin’ cute, the differences between us were amplified by watching them interact. They are much more earthy than I am. There definetly is a level of culture shock.

I don’t know how aware they are of it, but they did break into peals of laughter when I asked my sister if she wanted me to pass her the plate, as she kept standing up and reaching over the table to get to the cheese plate. I think they think I am prissy, but that doesn’t really bother me. I was raised to be prissy, and yet when I am with my afamily, I always bust out way too earthy for their tastes, so I am always not quite there, but it is not like it bothers me, or I am willing to give either aspect of myself up. I kind of like that salty/sweet combo.

The energy thing is so weird, my mother, my sister and I all share different versions of that personal energy, how it feels to be around someone, despite our differences. I guess that is genetic mirroring, it is so strange to have something like my self to bounce off of, to relate too, to understand. Sometimes it feels really good, sometimes overwhelming.

All and all I was quite happy. That is the second time in one financial quarter I have seen my mom, which may be a first for me. I was a little intimidated because my body tends to get really distracted, it is like there is not that much going on in my head about it, but I can’t escape the stress it causes me. In fact an associate did mention two days before I left that I seemed “distracted” and that is not how she usually thinks of me, and do I want to talk?

“no” I said, and walked away.

“That’s okay” she called after me, damn right it is I thought.

On my way home I got to visit my best friend from college who lives out there, in a house she built with her husband, literally built, all out of reclaimed materials and it is incredible. It always amazes me how many friends I have that can do really wonderful, exciting, and inspiring things and do them beautifully.

I have always had the best luck attracting exceptional people, it is my biggest natural blessing. She asked me about my trip, she knows about my adoption, and all we lived together in college after all, she listened carefully, and nodded frequently, commenting, “yeah, that makes sense” she asked me what I thought about Juno.

“Of course I can’t say, I haven’t seen it, but I am not too keen to see a comedy about the most painful event in my life, plus the language was so silly and self-conscious even the 30 second promos grated” She laughed and said she couldn’t watch it but the language was the reason she couldn’t watch it either.

It is nice thought that she thought of me, that she saw the ads and wondered what it would be like for me, to see a comedy about it.

I am so blessed.

You can bump and grind, have a good time… I drive a royal’s royce, cuz its good for my voice Marc Bolan

I have always gone straight for the lemonade, seriously, my favorite drink. So the protest got some lemons, a sudden withdrawal from Bastard Nation.

I want to clarify a few things about that. First off Marley is right, there is no grudgieness going on, stuff happens, decisions have to be made and decisions have been made, it is a done deal.

Like most professionals, I am familiar with the saying, “Bizness iz Bizness” there is a reason that falls off my colleagues lips, getting the job done is not personal, it is about getting the job done.

Bastard Nation is the first ever adoptee-rights group I ever heard of. I have tremendous respect for their work in bringing awareness to these issues, for their positions, for Marley’s writings. You get the picture, Bastard Nation’s responsibility is to their membership. The leadership is obligated to make the best use of their resources on behalf of their membership, I have every faith that this was at the forefront of their decision making. There is no bad blood between the Adoptee Rights Day Organizers and BN. We want the same ultimate result, open records, and we are not so foolish to let anything detract from our shared objective.

That said, the lemonade part of our fresh lemons, is that we get a little more freedom here. While I understand the political reasons for BN’s singularity of purpose, only adult-adoptee rights, we are no longer bound by them.

So yes, WE ARE INCLUDING THE MOMS IN THIS, WE ARE INCLUDING THE DADS, ANYONE’S NAME ON THAT RECORD OF VITAL STATISTICS, because they are important to us, and we want to show that respect. God, that feels good. We believe unequivocally in open records, just like the real kids. (and if any of you moms or dads reading this think this is a tacked-on thought, absolutely no, many of us were just afraid of upsetting the apple-cart, we have always been pro-parents, now though, it is OUR apple-cart so we can wheel it around in pleasure)
Secondly, retreating to my roots, we are so ditching the term DAR, we cannot hope to successfully co-opt and acronym that most Americans will associate with the Daughters of the American Revolution, a organization, that for one leaves a nasty-ass-elitist taste in my mouth, I am already subjected to being “classed” by circumstances of my birth which through no fault of my own gave me second-class status, I am certainly not going to turn around and claim some kind of didn’t-we-flee-Europe-to-escape -classism-but-missed-the-point status org. Secondly, from a marketing p.o.v. it creates confusion, just like I wouldn’t vote to call it Adoptee Awareness and go around calling myself part of A.A. and talk about my A.A. meetings, and my role in A.A. that would give whoever I am trying to give my message to, an opening line for a joke, a dismissal, a backwards step, oh no, that isn’t what I meant.

Or Mothers and Adoptees Demanding Documents, MADD, too bad so sad it is taken.

As adoptee rights believers, the word activist makes me shudder just out of experience, there are some hard truths we have to face.

We are not big enough of a constituency, we are not well known enough to have earned an acronym. We are not doing a million man march. We can’t pull up to Minnesota and load a bunch of KADs in a bus and drive them down to N.O., well maybe in Minnesota we could but nowhere else.

We have long been invisible in mainstream society, we pass, I haven’t been denied a job because I am adopted or a place to live, I wasn’t raised by adoptees, in an adoptee neighborhood, although everyone of my pets is adopted, but none of them vote. By our very nature we are isolated, and even bringing awareness to our cause is huge, HUGE.

Okay, so we have strikes against us, our tiny size, our isolation, the shame involved, the divided loyalties that make it hard to speak out, or even explore our feelings, these are all legitimate.

On top of that we are asking people to leave their homes, their families, their jobs, and spend gobs of money in a town that very much needs gobs of money spent in it, but we are asking a lot. It is a hell of a lot from where I stand, it WILL be a hardship on me. Hell I have a family and run a business, it is not like I am someone with freetime, or a lot of excess funds. This means I am not going on my real vacation in October, that was cancelled. Hey where is my martyr emoticon when I need it?

Most of the ones I know attending, have their records. This is a labor of love. Why?

Because Closed Records Kill

Because the Rule of Law is on our side and you can say no Joy, it isn’t there are laws written that you don’t deserve your records and should have been aborted, bring the abortion question up with my mom, I had no choice and yes, it was legal when I was born. Bad law is passed all the time in the legislature, I refer you to your 8th grade government exam for future clarification. Or was it just my school where we had to pass an exam about the 3 branches of gov’t before we got that diploma?

When I was a young politico-spaz, from about 17-23, I got a ton done, but you know I hated it, kind of like I hate it now. You know the way too many chiefs, the late-comers with new ideas, the offended frequently and easily, the liars, the hypocrites, the grandstanders, the flakes.

You could say, but Joy you are a late-comer with new ideas, you are frequently offended, you are a liar, you are a hypocrite, a grandstander, a flake, blinded by loyalities. You would be right. I am made up of the same human dust you are.

I am also right. I am right in that adoptees need access to their records. That moms deserve to know what happened to their kids, that transparency is paramount.

Politics is just people at decibel 10. I know lets take it to 11, kidding. Had I known I would end up where I am now, I wouldn’t have been as honest and real as I was when I logged on in 2006, I would have wished more people peace. I wouldn’t have lashed out, or been as personal. I would have checked my lousy spelling, and I swear I will start proofreading at least my blog posts, not my Adoptee Cornish Game Hen Posts, tomorrow.

As for anyone who doubts that this adoptee is tough enough, if I could handle Diane Feinstien as a teeny-bopper, if I could with stand the slings and flares of the L.A. Police Dept. ,Born Again Christians, and have them actually say to me, “You know, I never thought of it that way”

I have lots of bad memories of my early feminazi days, I also have tons of fun ones. Some of my fondest memories and deepest bonds are from people like Q. who was listed as Johnny Lydon on the cover of the L.A. times as protesting for abortion rights. Hanging out with Booger, and the roller-skating nuns…State legislators and small protests don’t intimidate me in the least.

When I left that life, because it was too public, and I am more of the Emily Dickinson, so public like a frog nature, I believed in truth, I still do, but when I saw people compromise themselves I was horrorfied, I still am, but I am older now, I know some more about compromise.

Okay, a couple of tidbits for all of you that will be writing. Remember if you can’t say it in the first 30 seconds, you can’t say it, brevity, brevity, brevity, don’t trust the press, don’t talk to the press, refer the press to people prepped for that, and then prepare for them to be grossly misquoted, short, sweet, and upbeat. Simple language people, and I am telling myself that, you alienate with airs.

When I was working hard in politics, before I gave up the gasbagging, we were told that for every constituent ( I said I will start checking spelling tomorrow) that calls their state legislature, counts for 10,000 who feel the same way.

Okay, so how many constituents do I count for if I leave my home, my work, my life, to go talk to them? I don’t know the number, but I will make sure when I approach the CA legislators that they know where I came from, how many miles I travelled, in this economy, right now, and that I have my records. I will hand them something very simple that offers a point by point explanation that a first-grader could decipher and I will do it in a few seconds.

Those of you that can’t come, can call and let them know to look for us, those of you that can’t come and can should.

Just for fun, the whole DAR thing left this song in my mind, weird video cute kid, wonderful song, the version I grew up with, although of course heart T.Rex .

“knock yourself out but you won’t fool the children of the revolution, no you won’t”

God T.Rex. the Violent Femmes. So Awesome. I bet they fought too.

I know I hardly ever write about political stuff, because lets face it, who wants to?

Not me.

The Good News is that I am officially nominating Adoptee Fried Chickens Name to be elevated to Adopteed Fried Cornish Game Hens, *nods to Issy* on account of its elegance, which we need ever so that people can have the opportunity to admire our incredible fabulousness.

The really SAD news is that Bastard Nation is not able to continue to co-sponsor the Adoptee Rights Protest. It is a total bummer that we can’t share this with them, but I understand and support their decision. The important thing is that we share a common goal, even if things don’t always work out like we would like.

Other news that people might be interested in is the questionable donation, is not going to the protest.

The glittering gob-smacking news is that despite regrettably losing the support of Bastard Nation, those involved in the protest are as resilient as socko-balls and there are still many capable hands who are unwilling to discard the blood, sweat, and tears that have already been expended by our resident adoptee-goddess, otherwise known of Queen-of-All-Adoption-Shit, Kali. A young woman whose experience and commitment belie her years.

I know going to NO will be a hardship for many people, it sure will be for me, but who cares?

Why we should suffer through the absolute slogging that goes into pulling somethng like this off?

1. Closed Records Kill

6. Civil Rights, The Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. the Board of Education that separate is in fact not equal, our rights need to be restored, the codification allowing the creation of a second class of people is unconstitutional.
Okay, that is my short list, I could go on, but why? That is more than enough.

I know the protest won’t be perfect, I know mistakes will be made, I know this is a historical and first time event. It is a baby, and needs to be nutured. We are not going to open records in July, but we are going to plant seeds and pave the way so the wrongs committed against us can be righted.

If this becomes a tradition, I certainly hope it is short-lived. We need results not wheel-spinning. I hate doing this crap. I want it done.

I can’t tell Theresa, Kali, Michelle and Amy how thoroughly grateful to them I am, how much I believe in them.

All my logical points aside, this is about love, whether it is love for yourself, son, daughter, sister, girlfriend, husband, mother, it is about their honor and doing the right thing.

It is about shirking off the second-class citizen status, about losing the whole adoptee-as-defeatist self-esteem lacker, and reclaiming our dignity, because dammit we are worth it.

So clear your desks, take the time off work, get out the charge card and come.

You will never regret it, because at bastardpalooza we know how to have a good time. Come and show us the love.

But I share the sorrow, the anger, and great respect that so many others do.