Adopting

One might think a mother of many would be grateful for having healthy, intelligent functioning adults out in the world. Yes...I am B"H. But there are a few factors that have culminated in the past few years, some from research & study, some from therapy.

This is very difficult to write about. In the 2 decades since being separated from my biological children, the craving to mother, to be a mother never left. Its like I'm stuck in a silent place I cannot quite see in my mind's eye that seems to be a room of abandonment ( my own)and wanting to be be a mother, again.
This feeling may not be something anyone can understand other than a woman who went through similar extremes, but having multiple children less than a year apart, while nursing, without family and a disinterested spouse, did not allow me to mother. I cooked, fed, washed, read bedtime stories,loved each one, but honestly was on auto pilot because of exhaustion, depression and poverty. The grinding filth, never knowing where rent/bill money was going to come from. Month after month...with no where to turn.
There has always been a black hole inside me that contains things even I cant fathom. A light comes on in the hole when I hear children crying and many do in my neighborhood, the parenting style here seems to be let'em scream it out.
I had an emergency hysterectomy in 2001. Thought then that all purpose in my life ended. The possibility of ever having another child was gone. But having children was to fix something, something of my parents. I'm always fixing something. Was the appointed fixer of my father's nightly J&B, fixed him to his bed and unfixed his shoelaces while singing him to sleep. I fixed the parental battles that raged for years, I ran messages from one enemy camp to another. I fixed their poverty by applying for foodstamps for the family at age 16, then my mother refused to be seen using them, I fixed that by shopping myself, further away from our toney West End Ave apartment.
When my father died and was about to be cremated, I tried fixing that mess as my mother's relatives came to the apartment to go through his things, I wanted him to have a kosher Jewish burial. After he died the hole opened because there was nothing left to fix and nothing left to hold onto.
He was an older frightened man who married a younger woman who took him for whatever she could, had 2 children she tried hard to avoid each day and despite himself, he was a parent. He wanted me to be something, a lawyer. With almost no education, he talked and talked to me, shared his life stories, shared his religion that had excommunicated him after he married my mother. He gave himself while needing too much from a child and got little from a wife who sought her comfort elsewhere. She was always looking to be rescued and when actual rescuers threw her a lifeline other than surreptitious dates between 9 and 5, she returned to home base.
Most of this is written about elsewhere and its only tangentially relevent to the slowly approaching point (!) which is, I bought a doll.

It seems I'm not the only older mother suffering maternalis-interruptus
. Apparently there are baby dolls created to look and feel like new borns. Some are so well crafted that cost hundreds of dollars. But I wasnt needing something that critically theraputic. Looking back, for whatever reason, my mother did not buy or allow dolls. We had Barbies, but I hated Barbie. She was a hard stick with huge breasts, enormous legs and a frozen expression. I think the more comprehensive view on this is that we did not have cuddle toys. The one stuffed bear I had, who had a bell in one ear came to me pink and when she took him from me, had turned grey and lost most of his curls from being held and picked at. She would come into the pitch black bedroom a la Joan Crawford, hissing at me to stop twinkling the damn bear or she'd take it away. How she heard that tiny bell as my father recited her sins in his slurred nightly performance, I cant say. Maybe she came in threatening me because she needed a break from him.

I bought a small doll, its not here yet. It's owner was selling it, so rather than leave it orphaned on eBay, for $5 plus shipping, I await her arrival. Yes, its a girl. She doesnt have a name yet and she doesnt have a bell stitched into her ear, so no one can complain about the noise. I never let my children 'scream it out' so she wont be sobbing, trying to catch her breath if she's hungry or scared because she's alone. And there's time now to be a mother. Maybe having time to love and hold a child without being under the threat of hiding from a hateful or drunk parent or an ever persistent husband tapping his fingers waiting for me to perform my 'wifely duties' instead of being a mother.

A life spent doing for others what I need for myself. This is a strange way to live because when there's no one to 'do' for, I cease to exist. It's been very healthy not living with a man, under a man, for a man, terrified of a man. Learning that there is no wind behind me chasing me to hurry hurry
get finished with whatever I'm doing on auto pilot (disconnected? dissociated?)so I can move on to the next thing on the list...list at work, those were never ending never good enough lists.

Survival, though touted as a feat, is only meant as a compliment when something is accomplished that society has deemed important. As all the bits and pieces floating in that black hole have begun surfacing I realize what feats I have accomplished to survive and adapt. I can only pray that my children have developed similar skills but do not suffer from the pain and loneliness that comes from the physical and mental toll this kind of survival has taken from me.

I'm thinking of naming her Pessie...dont know where that came from, except my father had a sister Pearl but I didnt know his family.