Ten
Years
They divorced and I packed my books,
piano music, and journals to move away from the house with the chair by the kitchen
window and my secret mountain. I gave my homeless friends the rest of my money
and my large, well-organized bundle of bus transfer slips before hugging each
of them good-bye.
I walked across the street, turned
around, and said, “Stay strong!” just before getting on the departing bus.
When he remarried there were no more
threats to have my arms or legs broken and I no longer worried I would be
locked in my room at night. The New Wife guarded my boundaries and protected me
in the same way my older brother had years earlier. The scabs and bruises on my
arms healed and she took me shopping for short-sleeve shirts. I never asked
anything of her but she always knew what I needed and it was always better than
what I would have asked for myself. Whenever I had a dress-up event to attend,
she always handed me her silver fox jacket and pearl necklace to borrow. I
never felt I deserved to wear anything so expensive, but the look on her face
as I wore it made me feel nothing less would have been right.
The New Wife had been adopted as an
infant and she told me the story of the gold Star of David she always wore
around her neck. As an adult she searched for her biological parents and found
out they had been a young teenage couple who were both Jewish. She gave me
books about the Holocaust and we spent hours talking about the Righteous Among
the Nations and what we would do if we were in a similar circumstance.
Everything I did and dreamed to do she
told me was good and wonderful. Every day she hugged me and told me I was loved
until one day I believed it. At seventeen, I now had a Mom.
When I was married at eighteen, my Mom
bought my wedding dress, hosted my bridal shower, and helped me in the dressing
room before the wedding. She graciously ran interference as the peacekeeper to
keep me safe from others who wanted to bully themselves into this chapter of my
life.
Before my Mom adopted me, she raised
five other children and lived in Nome, Alaska. I loved everything about my Mom
and as a voracious reader, I spent the next twenty years reading every Alaskana
book I could get my hands on.
I moved to Norway and back again, raised three
sons, became a homeschool activist, Boy Scout leader, Girls on the Run coach, and
renovated a Victorian house. I started a non-profit rescue mission for domestic
violence survivors and gave motivational speeches to create a surreptitious
income to buy plane tickets to move women to shelters far away from their
abusers. My Mom helped me secretly purchase $50 savings bonds every week for
twelve years, before I was finally able to rescue myself and move to Alaska.
Over the years, my non-profit work became
more than simply buying plane tickets to relocate women and grew into rescuing
women and children from situations around the world many people turn away from.
On one of my trips I stopped off in Paris for a week. I walked the streets of
Paris to honor my Huguenot ancestors who had escaped to Switzerland in the face
of religious persecution. I took a train to Rouen to see where my childhood
heroine, Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake. As I serenely sat beside an
ancient fountain while enjoying a hot Nutella crepe I thought how wrong it was
on so many levels my Mom never got to see Paris and I did.
Almost thirty years after my Mom
adopted me, I lived in Israel for three months. As I walked through Jerusalem
every day, I frequently thought of my Mom’s love of her Jewish heritage. I
kissed the Western Wall every Shabbat for my Mom before I slowly backed away.
Our lives intertwined in more ways than my
Mom ever knew. Over the years I serendipitously adopted four daughters one by
one. A deep part of me didn’t want anyone else to wait seventeen years like I
had to know a mother’s love. Two of my daughters came into my life just shy of
their seventeenth birthday, one was eleven and one was fourteen. My Mom’s
adoption story continues to live on through my family legacy.
In the ten years since my Mom’s passing, I've accomplished so much more than I could ever have imagined for myself. All is good and wonderful and I know my Mom is proud of me.
In the ten years since my Mom’s passing, I've accomplished so much more than I could ever have imagined for myself. All is good and wonderful and I know my Mom is proud of me.
http://www.capitalcityweekly.com/stories/042915/ae_1246291993.shtml
http://juneauempire.com/art/2015-04-29/writers-weir-ten-years-memoir
http://49writers.blogspot.com/2015/05/alaska-shorts-ten-years.html
