Dear Patricia...

 
Sharing a Rumi poem posted by a friend today:

There's courage involved if you want to become the truth
There's a broken, open place in a lover
Where are the qualities of bravery and sharp compassion in this group?
What's the use of old and frozen thought?
I want a howling hurt
This is not a treasury where gold is stored
This is for copper
We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and ...change

Luke warm won't do
Half hearted, holding back well enough, getting by, not here
There's courage involved if you want to become the truth
 
(All of us who are members of the triad know about COURAGE!)

I do not sleep very well...but the night of May 8th it was almost impossible to sleep...perhaps I got a couple hours before the morning of the 9th. I checked my e mail to see if there was a response to my mail. It was now Friday....he would be at work, perhaps he lonely checks his e mail once a day after work....perhaps I should be patient...PERHAPS! Here I had nothing to go on for 42 years and yet I felt an urgency to connect with him immediately. But then the series of what ifs came into play again...What if he no longer wanted to hear from me? What if after 11 years of searching he had given up on me...and resigned himself to be okay with that? What if he no longer had that e mail address? What if I was fooling myself completely and this was not him? What if I was not lovable or on the right path?

What if....what if...what if?

And what was I suppose to do while I waited? Did I say I was a patient person? Did I say that instant gratification was a wonderful thing? Was I checking my e mail box every five minutes? Was I making myself crazy, more nervous, more upset with each passing hour? YES...YES...YES! I called my new/old friend from facebook and told him that I believed I found my son...that I had written e mails to several different addresses...He suggested that I write another giving him a little more information about myself....so that he might believe I was really his mother....after all there are lots of mistaken identities out there. He suggested that I find him on facebook and request to be his "friend". By mid day I was once again on the internet. I was once again looking for him...and I was constantly going back to his picture which I had now saved on my computer. I knew this was him...my heart knew it...but how do I get him to know it? I did not friend him on facebook...but rather I sent a message to his wife...woman to woman I wrote her my hearts story. Perhaps if he was fearful she would be able to help him to get past that and contact me. By late afternoon when I still had no response (did I say I was a patient woman?) I called my dear friend, who always called me on my sons birthday to see how I was doing...I had left her a message the night before asking that she call me...I had no urgency in my voice the night before and did not say it was important...I suppose it sounded to her like...Hi how are you? Call me back message. On this new message I was crying...I asked her to call me as soon as possible that I needed to talk to her. Little did I know she was on vacation...she was on the golf course...when she called me back...she was concerned because of the urgency in my voice. When I told her that I had found him...she said that she would call me right back after she finished her game.

She listened as I told her about the "friend" on facebook...how I had the birth date break through...how he was on the adoption registry site...how I looked all over the internet and found pictures of him and his wife and children....how I sent out the emails to him and one to his wife...how I had heard nothing from either of them...I told her all my fears of not being "good enough" for him to want to find me anymore. BREATHE she told me...and then she asked me if I had called him...called him?...you have got to be kidding me...call him? Heck he wasn't answering e mails...I couldn't call him. I just couldn't call him....what would I say...Hi I'm your birth mother....you know the one who gave you up for adoption 42 years ago...care to talk about that? She was a voice of reason...perhaps the email addresses are no longer active....perhaps he did not check those addresses because they were 11 years old...perhaps he was on vacation....In all your searching did you find a phone number and address? Write a letter to him she said...although that is going to take more time....CALL HIM! No....there was no way I was going to call him on the phone...I couldn't....the fear was to great....the fear of rejection was more that I thought I could handle....his e mail silence was deafening enough....Think about it she said....don't rule it out.

I kept checking my IN box...there were many e mails there but not the one I was hoping for my friend called back early that evening...by now, I was a complete and utter mess...OKAY she had called her son, (she had been reunited with for 13 years now) he also lived in the New York City area, as did my son. He offered to call him for me...thinking perhaps talking to another adoptee might let him know that it was safe to call this woman....that his mother knew her and a she was a wonderful person...or my friend would call him for me and be the middle person....either way she and her son KNEW that the phone call needed to be made and that they would give me till 4:00 on Saturday afternoon to call, otherwise they were taking matters into their own hands for me. They would alleviate my fears...Friday evening the 9th was a long difficult one for me...checking e mails over and over....looking at the pictures of him and his family...crying....and crying some more. Who could I call and tell....who could I talk to about this? I needed some sort of assurance that I was going to be alright, and yet I did not want to tell anyone else, just encase he didn't choose to talk to me. And what was I going to tell them, that I thought I had found my son...this was almost more pain then not knowing where he was...this was questioning myself over and over about not being good enough because of what I did so many years ago with placing him for adoption...this was raking up all the guilt and fear that I felt...all the feelings of why would he want to know me....I haven't been there for him...this was painful.

On Saturday, May 10th around noon, or one or two o'clock (I don't remember but I knew it was before four) I decided to pull on my big girl panties...after all I was 60 years old! I composed the message over and over...finally picking up the phone I dialed the phone number. After a few rings the answering machine came on (thank goodness I thought to myself) it was not one of those messages that said, "Hello...you have reached the (insert name here) family. We are not able to get the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number we will get back to you as soon as possible" But rather it was the robotic voice that prompted me to leave a message that afternoon, that told me nothing about the family that lived there. Nervously said..." This message if for (I am leaving out my son's name here) my name is Patricia Mosca, my maiden name was Patricia King. I am from Rochester, New York, Monroe County (he seemed to think on his sites that this was an important piece of information) and I believe that you and I may have a connection. You can reach me at (insert e mail address here) or by phone (insert phone number here) I hope to hear from you soon. I kept it as generic as possible, there were children who lived in the house and I had no idea how much they might know about me if they happened to listen to the message, and really because of the robotic message I had no idea if I even had the right number. I called my friend and told her that I made the call and now I had to wait once again to see fi I actually got a call back. She was very proud of me...he will call back she assured me.

The next 6 to 7 hours were so difficult...every time the phone rang, which I kept in my hand...my heart jumped out of my body as I looked at the caller ID (thank goodness for modern technology) It was not until after 9:00 (at least it was somewhere around that time) that evening when the caller ID revealed his name...

I picked up the phone and said Hello (insert son's name here)...How are you?

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