December, 20th
Margaret:
Few people would understand my relationship with Sylvia Bell so I never discuss it with anyone; among other things because there are a handful of facts really hard to stomach. Nevertheless, I understood long ago that life is hard and what makes it worthwhile is love, love in all its forms and shapes, even when love means sacrifice.
What bounds me to Sylvia is love, love in its purest, most primal expression. She is my birth mother, she carried me and nursed me in her womb and gave me up the moment I was born because she knew other people would be better parents than she. She knew that she was making something against her deepest maternal instincts but she also knew the Hales, even if she hadn't met them, were waiting for me and would love me.
And love me they did. I had my suspicions (why did my parents look like everyone's grandparents was the clue), but my father confirmed them when I was five. We were in a wedding and my father said the bride was now in our family because she was loved by us, just like me, who was part of the Hale family because they loved me so much and God had chosen me to be with them.
It never felt strange or awkward and I don't think I'd ever reached for my birth mother if I hadn't been so sick that horrible time. One spring break from school I had hepatitis and my liver looked so bad that the doctors starting looking for a donor within my family. And then my mother, in desperation, reached out for the woman who had given her a daughter.
I was lying in a hospital bed and floating in a cloud of painkillers when I felt someone stroking my hair. A finger would curl a lock around it and would let it slip very quietly. I don't know for how long this must have been going on, maybe just a moment. I was alert and when I opened my eyes I saw Sylvia. For a moment she had that deer in the headlights look in her eyes but recovered and retreated. I raised my hand, and hollered from the depths of the drugged well I was in, "Don't go". And she stayed. And we talked.
I didn't need the transplant. My liver recovered and hasn't complained since but I kept in touch with Sylvia. At first I didn't want to make my mother upset so I waited until I started my University studies to start seeing her regularly. She understood and she waited too.
Sylvia invited me to an exhibit and I saw her art. It didn't look familiar, it didn't ring any bells. Nothing about her, except for her porcelain skin (which is not so peculiar after all), looked familiar: her brown eyes, her coppery hair, her small physique, were all hers and nothing mine. It could have been disturbing but I dwell on it being reassuring. I am a Hale.
She introduced me to her partner, a woman in her mid fifties named Melanie Sanders, and I surmised (correctly) that Sylvia had been raped at a young age, probably 16 or 17 years old. How tough is it to find out that I wasn't the result of clandestine love, or teenage horniness and a defective condom? Not nice, but all things considered I had been nothing but a secondary product of that situation. Sylvia had forgiven life for that traumatic event, and if anything, she was thankful it had taken the blindfold from her eyes to find Melanie. That attitude and mindset was what encouraged me to approach her and stay close.
Melanie and Sylvia are so different that many people are surprised by the strength of their relationship, which was already a decade old when I met them. Sylvia is an artist while Melanie is an investments manager. Sylvia is petite and looks younger, while Melanie is massive and older. Sylvia has an bell like laughter while I've seen Melanie smiling just once.
They own a penthouse in a fashionable London district and a summer house in the New Forest, in an idyllic place named Helstone. I've been there once and it made me think of the Hundred Acre Wood from the Winnie the Pooh tales. Melanie is a wizard with money and I am under the impression they are very wealthy, but they don't squander or flaunt it.
They have made clear, though, that if I am ever in an emergency they can help. Or if I need someone to invest in me. As if they hadn't, already.
I didn't go to Sylvia's latest opening. She knows my mother is dying and with dignified sensibility offered the emotional containment I need. She listens to my fears and advises on how to have a positive outlook. But she doesn't expect me to ask her to be my mother and I'm thankful. Because if she did she would break my heart.
A/N: Margaret's views on being adopted were based on a letter by someone named Candace published in the blog PostSecret during July 2012. Sylvia is another character that doesn't echo anyone from the original story; her own personal story (having a child very young, giving it up for adoption, becoming a celebrated artist and reuniting with the adult child) is based on Sinead Cusack and Joni Mitchell's stories.