Resolution to the Midlife: Sangha

As I was struggling, described in the last two posts, you know what am I doing, what am I not doing et al. The first person I thought of was my BFF Cara. She really is a touchstone for me. She was in New Orleans for most of the freak out, at a Jazz festival. She asked if I wanted to go, and I said I couldn’t afford it, I don’t have any money. She said, “I have money…” because she is awesome and wonderful like that. Of course I couldn’t take her up on it, because no. I have no forseeable repayment in the future. I understand the instinct though because if I did have money, nothing would please me more than to spend it on her.

Years ago when I saw the movie “Sideways” I called her saying although neither of us are near as dissipated the interaction between the two main characters reminded me of us. After seeing the movie she called back laughing and agreeing only letting me know about the scene where Miles breaks into the house to retrieve Jack’s wallet, “I would have been the one breaking into the house!” I didn’t have to tell her she would have been Jack.

I have also always hated Merlot…

Anyway, because we have been friends for soooooooooo long, despite never actually talking about my midlife crisis, which she should be having too btw. I imagined our conversation in my head.

Me: I don’t feel like I have accomplished enough.

Cara: Oh stop you have done x, y, and z.

Me: Yes, but I haven’t done g, h, and i.

Cara: Neither have most people, get over yourself. complete with eyeroll.

Me: I just want more, I want to do more, I want to do something else.

Cara: Okay, then DO it, then we can decide. this she would give a wink and a laugh to, in reference to the time she got so frustrated with me when we were 20 or so and she asked me if I thought she should become a chef. If I thought she was a good cook.

“Okay, why don’t you cook something and then we can decide” I said.

She spent the next seven weeks cooking EVERYTHING. We had seven layer cakes, meringues, elaborate everything I would pick at, and then when it was ready claim I wasn’t hungry. Until she finally blew up at me. She still isn’t a chef but my nerve hitting comment is a long standing joke between us.

There is no replacing longtime friendship.

I saw her, in my mind’s eye, loving me, mirroring me, putting me in perspective. So I got old. I am lucky to have and will only get older. There is nothing wrong with taking stock of one’s situation, there is nothing wrong with setting sights higher.

The things that were surprising with my stock taking were, nowhere on my list of things I want to accomplish does the word adoption appear.

Nope.

I mean I do care about adoptees and their well-being. Personally, while not perfectly, I think I have done more for individual adoptees than I ever dreamed possible. Obviously, there are those that hate me, google my name if you doubt that, yet I have impacted people’s lives, I have been a friendly hand to finding their own self-worth.

It also got me thinking about what the Buddhists call Sangha, the tenet that you learn about yourself through your community. Of course with them it is some type of sacred place where they have decided to be a part of something.

Really though, it is absolutely as common as the flesh that clings to our bones. You only know who you are through who you know. For example, we Americans are convinced that 21 is young now, decades before us it wasn’t. It is more than that though you or me are not capable of being ANYTHING, unless we are reacting to another. The individual disappears.

We are not capable of being strong, compassionate, weak, malicious, vain, loving, visionary, introverted, sexy, repugnant, shamed, proud, in love, loveless without another to make us so. Granted you could argue that you could embody these qualities without human interaction, sure but you may be arrogant surrounded by roaches.

Alone we are nothing.

Which brings me back to adoption. My mother says I call our family weird. I do. They are weird to me. The people who raised me are held on a pedastal, even though I can clearly see some of their faults. It is hard for me to not hold them in the place of righteousness and myself in a place of error.

I am weird to me.

I struggle with considering my good qualities good. They weren’t reflected to me as positive or normal. With my son, I see him and his father’s family laugh happily about their idiocyncraies. They make up nicknames actually and laugh about their odd commonalities.

It just occurs to me that my family has no idea what they took from me when they left me in I am assuming a plastic bassinet, because no one really knows, no one looked upon me, no one looked to see if I was being taken care of before I was placed into foster care.

Then the whole foster care thing is unknown as it “violates my birthmother’s privacy” as if.

I find myself old sure, but I find myself in those that have bothered to love me. I need the reflection, I am saddened by those that ignore and disregard what adoption does to our identity. How we learn about ourselves, we should be more than those that escaped the abortion mill or we should be abortions. It is too much to hold us as both.