Because I can’t find the right section in Hallmark…

I didn’t buy any Mother’s Day cards this year.  I suck.  I went down the aisle and got all choked up when I realized this was the first year of my life that I didn't have a grandma to send a Mother's Day card to and decided I would go back later and then it was Saturday and that just wasn't going to work.

I used to always have cards bought and mailed at least a week before the holiday.  Even the seemingly cardless holidays like St. Patty’s Day and Halloween and National Hot Dog Day.  I was a card sending fool.  Then I had another kid.  Then I had another one after that one.  And then I got a cell phone and a laptop and a Facebook and it suddenly became much easier to procrastinate until the eleventh hour and so I have fallen victim to the way of the new millennium. 

So here I sit, with one mom up the road, one Ma in Alaska, a mother-in-law two hours away and two grandmas in heaven, one of which is a recent inductee, thinking about mothers and the contributions of them on my life.  And they don't exactly have that section in Hallmark.

My mom is Rebecca Jane Neal Stover Redman, also known as Becky, or to me, Mama.  I could sugar coat this and tell you that we had this beautiful, magical life together for my first eighteen years, but that would be a lie.  We didn’t.  We fought like cats and dogs and we bumped heads at every turn.  You will never catch me saying that she didn’t (and doesn’t) love me though.  She and my dad also had their fair share of head butting.  It wasn’t the most harmonious marriage to say the least.  I retreated to my room quite often and found my outlet in paper and pen.  Given different circumstances, who knows if I would’ve found writing down my crazy thoughts so necessary?  I’ve tried to explain my “need” to write to some of my non-writing friends and they don’t get it.  Sometimes when I feel something (good, bad, or ugly) I HAVE to write.  Sometimes I feel like I can’t catch my breath until I write.  It’s way down in me.  And maybe if I had a perfectly harmonious childhood, I would’ve never thought to seek refuge in my journal.  My mom was silly also.  I’m pretty sure I inherited a little silliness.  My mom always made time to go see and do for those in need.  She volunteered at nursing homes and was constantly taking food to shut ins.  She had (and still does) a heart for the elderly.  When my Momaw Stover was ill in the nursing home, she would go down and visit her as frequently as any of the rest of the family.  I saw something not long ago that said, “Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to love you doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.”  She loves me with all she has.  No doubt about that.

My mom’s mom was Kathleen Eileen Knight Neal.  Momaw Neal to me.  She was a sweet, loving woman.  She had four children and four grandchildren.  I remember going and staying with her when I was a kid.  She was a widow and she could drive, unlike my other grandmother.  She would drive to the post office down the road in Pratt and right before the post office was a railroad track.  I can remember the arms coming down to indicate the train was coming and my Momaw saying that train was was down the track and she wasn’t waiting and she would just zigzag right through those arms.  I guess I got my danger and bad driving from her.  Ha!  She had a heart of gold and would do anything for anybody.  

My dad’s mom was Thelma Mae Settle Stover.  Aka, Momaw Stover.  If you know me, you will know what she meant to me.  If you’re some random person in Ukraine who stumbled on my blog, I will need to explain.  My Momaw held my heart.  At the top of the extremely long list of contributions was her time.  She talked to me, she played with me when I was a child, she constantly prayed for me and she listened to me.  REALLY listened to me…like nobody in my life has ever listened.  She was quiet and just listened.  She didn’t listen and interrupt and try to give me advice.  She listened purely and genuinely and as much with her heart as her ears.  If I asked her for advice, she would offer it and usually she was right.  And by usually, I mean always.  She always encouraged me to do the right things.  She was so selfless and I admired that so very much.  She bragged on me like grandmothers do, even though I certainly wasn’t worthy of all of her praise.  When she was ill in the nursing home, people used to tell me how lucky SHE was to have ME.  I used to think…If they only knew how I was the lucky one.  There was no other place that I would’ve been than by her side.  She devoted her entire life to being by mine.  This year she gets to spend Mother’s Day with HER mom though and that’s pretty awesome for her.

My mother-in-law is Brenda Starr Pruitt Griffith.  She has been in my life since 1996.  She has always been there for me when I needed her and unlike the textbook mother-in-law, she butts out when we don’t need her :)  When anything comes up suddenly, we know she is just a phone call away and will be at our side as soon as she can hop in the car and get here.  I remember her coming and staying with us after third-born entered the world and it was such a blessing to me.  She helped me with the other children so I could take care of my new baby.  She cooked and cleaned and I remember crying when she left because I didn’t know how I would’ve done it without her andn I wasn't sure how I was going to do it when she left.  She was with us during and after the infamous derecho and taught me how to brew coffee without a coffeemaker and quite possibly saved my life and the lives of my family members who I may have killed if I went much longer without coffee.

And last but not least is Frances "Rose" Faulker Gasparetti, or "Ma."  I have Faulker in me.  Maybe it was destiny that I would love to write.  She’s the woman who carried me for nine months and gave birth to me and held me and sobbed and then handed me over to my mom and dad.  I found Rose last year after a lifetime of wondering who my birth mother was.  It was an amazing journey and has continued to be an amazing journey as we learn more and more about each other.  We have so many similarities and it’s so much fun when we discover something and one of us says, “Oh my gosh!  Me toooo!”  Rose taught me about selflessness and sacrifices.  Finding her has given me a sense of confidence that I have lacked my entire life.  She came to visit a year ago and we gathered with my friends and family and I will never forget the words of my best friend the following day.  She said, “You should’ve seen you.  I have never seen you shine with such happiness and confidence.” 

Happy Mother’s Day to ALL of the MANY women in my life who have helped shape me and nurture me and love me!  It really does take a village.

~Until next time,

Lightning Bug

Forsythias & Roses

March 14, 2014

Today is the one year anniversary of finding my birth mother.  I kept notes along the way and thought I'd share a few of those today.  The last year has been an incredible journey full of amazing discoveries and amazing rediscoveries.  

"Adoption carries the added dimension of connection not only to your own tribe but beyond, widening the scope of what constitutes love, ties, and family. It is the larger embrace."-Isabella Rossellini

1-4-13

I filled out the necessary forms that will be submitted to the Virginia Department of Social Services.  I don’t know if these forms ever existed when I began my search in 1996.  I have my information in a folder up in the attic.  I’m going to go up there this afternoon and see what I can find.  I think I remember sending a letter to the Covington DSS basically saying that I give my consent to be placed in connection with my birthparents if they ever came looking for me.  I actually think I typed that on a..wait for it…typewriter.  The internet was just coming into play in 1996.  Records weren’t kept in databases and there certainly weren’t any online search engines for reuniting adoptees and birth families.  

I also sent a letter to the Virginia Department of Vital Statistics under the exaggerated fabrication of “I’m doing a genealogical study” and looking for original birth information. 

1-5-13

I have so many questions.  Thirty-five years gives you a plethora of quiet opportunities to imagine what the circumstances of your life that you don’t know might entail.  I’m trying not to set expectations.  I know all of this could lead to an unhappy ending.  What if my parents aren't even alive?  What if they are never located?  What do I expect?  How can you NOT want the fairy tale ending, no matter how much you tell yourself not to set any expectations?  And what are these impossible expectations that I won’t set anyway?  If I could imagine who my birth parents are, what would that even be?  I’ve never even allowed myself to imagine a father.  I’ve imagined a mother at different times in my life.  I was in a jewelry store in Bluefield, WV one time and I saw a woman who immediately struck me as someone who looked like me.  That was the first time in my life that I had encountered someone who I thought looked like me and that was the first time I let my mind travel to the possibility that there is somebody out there who I might look like…

1-13-13

“The truth is what you live through while you're looking for the truth.” ~Marty Rubin

1-15-13

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

-Robert Frost

 Always been a favorite poem of mine.  Today I claim it for myself.

1-16-13

Home for a Bunny(a Little Golden Book):

Despite my desperate search for biological parents, I was put where I was meant to be. God puts us where we need to be and that's one of the things I'm learning throughout this journey.

And I never realized in all my 35 years of having that story read to me and reading it to my own kids...I never realized it as anything more than a bunny trying to find a home with other bunnies. Last night I saw it for the first time as a child searching to find acceptance and "likeness"--a good fit--a family. 

2-7-13

Settle down

It'll all be clear

Don't pay no mind to the demons

They fill you with fear

The trouble it might drag you down

You get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone...

-Phillip Phillips

2-15-13

I was downstairs putting the laundry in and thinking about everything.
Roots.  I was thinking about what my adoption did to my "roots." I was thinking about how basically when I was born and taken away and given to somebody else how it was like severing the roots of a plant--and I was thinking about how after you do that, that the plant doesn't grow and thrive. It eventually dies.

Then I thought about the forsythia--my absolute favorite thing to see in spring. My daddy had beautiful yellow forsythias all down one side of our yard.
Do you know that you can literally cut a twig or a branch from a forsythia and stick it in the ground and it will grow...even without roots. And then it forms its own roots. 

I just thought that was kinda cool  I'm a forsythia.

3-13-13

The war you feel within - that restlessness, the unending uncertainty - is not to be dismissed, avoided, hated. That internal conflict is not dark, it is a beaming light trying to focus you, the rolling thunderous call of courage, the rays of greatness seeking to explode beyond your skin to touch once more the Spirit of Possibility.

-Brendon Burchard

3-14-13

I was in the beauty shop getting my hair done. I looked down at my phone and saw where I had a missed call from a number I didn’t recognize. There was a voicemail, so as I was sitting in the beauty shop chair, I dialed my voicemail and it was Social Services and asked me to call back. I called her back but she was in a meeting. You can imagine how long that next couple of hours seemed to me. I called her back around 2 pm and she asked if I was sitting down. She told me that she had found my birth mother. She said that my birth mother most definitely wanted to be contacted and gave me her phone number. That’s when she proceeded to tell me that she lived in Wasilla, Alaska! I just shook my head and thought…of COURSE she lives in Alaska.  *rolls eyes*

Social worker told me that I needed to be aware of the time differences in Alaska. When it’s 9 pm here, it’s 5 pm there. They are 4 hours behind us, so it makes for tricky communication.

"You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it."~We Bought a Zoo

At 10 pm, I went downstairs and I dialed part of the numbers and I hung up.  And again and again for probably 30 minutes until I finally got up the courage to let it ring.  And I have never been so scared in my entire life. What on earth do you say to someone when you call them up after finding out they are your long, lost birth mother? She answered the phone and said “Hello, This is Rose.”   I said, “Hi Rose. This is Amanda Griffith. I think maybe you were expecting a call from me.” She was in complete disbelief. I said “This is the most awkward, scariest, most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life” and she agreed. She was so happy to hear my voice. She had to put me on speakerphone so her husband could hear my voice. Emotions ran high. After that first awkward moment, we talked like we had known each other forever. She asked me what color my eyes were. She has blue eyes. My eyes are green. She asked if I had red hair. 0 for 2. Ha! I told her I was tall, long legs and she said she was too.  Things that normal mother and daughter know about each other from early on, we were just starting to discover. 

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3-14-13

Me

To roseloveshair@hotmail.com

Mar 14, 2013

I wrote this a few years ago on Mother's Day eve...Mother's Day has always been bittersweet for me.  I always hoped one day you'd get to read it.

Happy Mother’s Day from the adopted child…

I do not know you

Have you seen me?
In a crowd of people
Would we be able to see

That we are connected
In some cosmic way
By something we would do
Or something that we would say?

How old are you?
Are you even still alive?
Maybe you are fifty
Or maybe fifty-five?

Is your hair dark as coal
Or maybe laced with gray?
Do you remember back thirty-three
Years ago this day?

The only Mother’s Day
You would ever share with me
For you must have loved me so,
Because you set me free.

You carried me inside of you--
Nine short months is all we had.
With every kick and wiggle
Were you happy or were you sad?

I know not the reasons
You had to let me go
I am not certain
If I will ever know.

Do you think of me today
As I think of you?
Do you wonder where I am
Do you wonder what I do?

Do we look like one another
Do our voices sounds the same?
I wonder if you even know
That Amanda is my name?

Amanda means loveable
And rightly named was I,
For I love with my whole heart
And when it breaks I cry.

Do you have squinty eyes
When a smile glistens your face?
Is your life blessed with laughter
Or is that really not the case?

Is my Grandma still alive?
And what about my Dad?
Do I have brothers and sisters?
I want to know so bad.

I was raised by two people
Who thought I hung the moon,
I was far from perfect though
They would find out soon!

I had my share of rebellion
Got in trouble a time or two,
But all in all I wasn’t bad,
The exceptions were quite few.

I grew up and got married
And had three children of my own,
I wish there would’ve been some way
That I could’ve made that known.

I wish you were around
To talk and just to chat,
To do mom and daughter things--
Paint our nails and stuff like that.

I have love all around me,
But I have never felt quite whole,
I have always wanted to know you
In the deep depths of my soul.

So on this Mother’s Day night,
I will look at the stars above
Blow sweet kisses into the wind,
And send you Mother’s Day love.
~A

~Amanda Griffith

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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From: roseandarnie

To: amandaandkevingriffith@yahoo.com

Sent: Fri, Mar 15, 2013 14:55:05 GMT+00:00

Subject: Emailing: Family013

Your poem brought me to tears and made me so proud. I don't think there ever was a day that my thoughts about you didn't cross my mind. I cannot wait to get to know you and your family. Your family is beautiful and so are you. Your daughter looks alot like me when I was that age. Emotions here are running at full capacity, as so they should. Take care Amanda and thank you for reconnecting us. Love Rose

----- Original Message -----

From: roseandarnie

To: amandaandkevingriffith@yahoo.com

Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 5:50 PM

Subject: Happy

I am home from work. Let me tell ya, you never left my thoughts all day. I feel like screaming to the world how HAPPY I am that you have come back into my life. I had an hour break today  so I drove to my girlfriends work to tell her about you. CRY,CRY,CRY,HAPPY,HAPPY,HAPPY.  Love Rose

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Me

To roseandarnie

Mar 15, 2013

Aww :) 

I'm so happy too.  I shared the news with some of my closest friends today and everybody was crying :)  I have held it together pretty good until Tracy told me about how she used to rub cocoa butter on your belly and how you guys have a picture of me!  You are probably the only person who has the picture.  I never remember seeing a picture from the hospital. I am absolutely exhausted tonight.  I think I slept about 3.5 hours last night, so I'm going to get snuggled in.  It's almost midnight here.  What's your favorite color?

Sleep well.

Love, A

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