I almost grew up in Lebanon...

Christmas of 2021 I found out the truth about my birth, before being adopted.   I have found both sides of my adoptive great grandparents families in Lebanon.   I mainly used social media to find the families as all Lebanese records are not on Ancestry or any other search engine.  I have met so many of my Lebanese relatives its hard to keep track of all my cousins.  I have really gone out of my way to work on my birth family tree, and I have really succeeded.  My birth woman did not know where her grandparents even came from, or her own grandfathers first name.  Nor did she know what town her grandpa came from.  She had many old photos of her Lebanese family and she had no idea who any of them were.  I was also given copies of some of the old photos.   The birth woman knew literally nothing about her Lebanese side, as her grandmother died when she was just turning 11 years old.   Her mother was American, and her Lebanese grandma did not approve of her full Lebanese son marrying a Non-Lebanese.  

My cousin Susan and I are related because her grandmother and my great grandmother are first cousins.  She is in contact with most of her family in Lebanon.  They knew about me being born, and they knew that my Lebanese grandfather did not want me given away.  The story goes that he was planning on leaving his family and taking me back to Lebanon to be raised by him and his extended family.  He supposedly had it all planned and was ready to leave the USA until his wife, my grandmother had another plan.  

I have to go back in time for a minute and tell you about something I had found accidentally while searching.  I found two birth records for myself from the State of California.  One shows my name as if I was not adopted,  my now known birth father's surname with my name being "Tina Marie" which was originally Athena Marie, changed by the nuns because it sounded too ethnic.  Then my birth woman surname as the mother, which is an unusual surname because it is a Lebanese name.  I also have a second birth record showing my adoptive parents surname and the name I was given by them.   This pretty much proves they kept me and took me home after I was born, and it makes sense the stories I heard from my own birth woman that did not make sense until finding the second birth record and hearing this story from Lebanon that I was almost raised there.  

I was shocked to learn this, the thought of being raised in another country when I didn't even know I was part Lebanese to begin with.  That I was kept by my own birth family only to be dropped off later on and placed in the adoption pile, sickly and distraught as an infant.  What kind of person does this to their own, and by the way first grandchild?   My own maternal grandmother, when my grandfather was away at work, took me and dropped me off I was told, to be given away to Holy Family Adoption Agency.  

Can you see now what you've done mom?

Can you see how much pain you have caused me ?  Can you now see that your  silence and  sweeping all the abuse and dysfunction under the carpet did not work out in the long run for your family?  By never standing up for what you believe to be right,  has permanently divided your family.  You wanted your daughters to be best friends after you are gone from this earth, however what you did while alive, made that absolutely impossible.  Never telling your birth daughter she is wrong and asking her to behave or at least be decent , by giving her the power to continue to be a controlling and miserable person has absolutley backfired   Can you see that favoring your birth daughters children has forever damaged my family?   At your funeral I had someone say they could feel the divide  and actually see it in the photographs.  

My sister and I got together to make a collage of our photos for moms funeral.  I brought about 20 photos, and my sister must have had at least 100.  As we laid the phtos out on the table, I was  in shock, seeing the actual proof, the evidence was hard to deny.  Photographs prove the lack of involvement my mom had with my family.  She never showed up for my daughters college granduations, she had 2.  She never made the trip up to Northern California to even see her college.  She did however travel to Arizona and Northern California to see both my sisters children graduate college.  My dad was so sick for my nieces graduation but they made the trip anyhow.   Last year mom didnt come to my daughters wedding either.  I guess it was too much work for my sister to travel with her.  I can somewhat understand that, however going back in time, and seeing the photos strewn all over the dining room table as we assembled the photo collage and hearing my niece and nephews eulogy at moms funeral just about stuck me in the heart with an arrow, I could feel the piercing of that arrow as they spoke their truth.  And I was in a trance as I pasted photos on this giant poster board I bought to make this collage for everyone to see at moms funeral.   

Because I am older now and have learned that being quiet and saying absolutely nothing is much more productive than speaking my truth to these people I call my family, I went through the motions, helped my sister as she froze not being able to cut up the photos for the collage, I did the job, but I did not enjoy this project as I found it heartbreaking to see how involved my mother was with my sisters children.  I was there but my heart was broken, seeing the undenyable proof in front of me.  

Adoption, in my case, is a four letter word.  The gift that keeps giving exclusion.  

Lets face it...

 Let's face it...."My Son" was mom's favorite,  my sister tells me.    My sister and her x husband came to see our newly remodeled home, we took them  for an early dinner and we had a good time. We both had a small drink,  and I chose each and every word that came out of my mouth, very, very....carefully.  I listened more than I spoke.  I am always cautious about what I share with my own sister.  She still, to this day, shares pretty much nothing of importance with me.  I guess I always find that to be an untrustworthy trait, for a sister at least?  I used to share way too much with her, and got tired of her sharing absolutely nothing with me about her life.  My husband, for years, urged me to stop telling her about our life, it took me many years to finally stop.   She waited six months to tell me that she and her husband divorced and he had already moved out before I was told.  We live 19 miles from each other, not 19 hours, and we've always lived very close to one another our entire lives.  Our families shared almost all Holidays together, mom & dads birthdays , anniversaries, you name it we were all together.  

My sister, feeling brave after having a drink,  goes on to list all of the things her son did for our mother.  A list of reasons in her mind, that made her son, our mother's favorite grandchild.    

I was at such a loss of words , I stood there, almost frozen by her coldness and listened as we walked to our cars.  As the words were coming out of her mouth, she was speaking it seemed, in slow motion.  At one point I couldn't hear her any longer, I could hear my heart beating in my chest, and I felt myself floating away, thinking I couldn't wait to get into the car and leave, and what seemed like an eternity as she told her story about her angelic son.  I was bargaining with myself, very quickly...do I shout at her and tell her to shut up, or maybe just punch her right in the nose?  Instead I stood there, with my mind contemplating all of the horrific things she's said and done  to me while our mother was slowly slipping away as she tries to prove to me that she and her son did more for our Mother than it seems, anyone else.  I chose to say nothing, and to be honest...after her first few sentences, I have absolutely no idea what she said to me as we said goodbye.

Let's face it, I was nobody's favorite, how could my children be "Our Mothers" favorite I thought?  How can she say such ridiculous things to me?  After all that has been said and done, she still feels the need to "One up me" or to hit me below the belt.  She still, after both of our parents being gone now for years, feels the need to flaunt her superiority,  proving that "She" is the important birth child and that her children still are our mothers favorite, and how she feels about our Mother is much more meaningful than how I feel about her.

Lets face it,  my sister feels that because she is our Mothers "Blood Relative" that her feelings, her regrets, her sorrow and grief are more meaningful and more important, than mine.  With her cunning words, she downplays anything and everything that I shared with our mother,  the time and precious moments we shared together.  

Lets face it, my sister still feels threatened by me,  as I wipe the tears running down my face as we drive home, I will always be my Mothers daughter and as much as she hates that idea, she can never change it.  Adoption, is a four letter word, it is the invisible abuse, the life altering decision nobody wants to talk about.  The others want to pretend that it's "My fault" - never wanting to own their part in the dysfunction and feelings they have about the fact that I was not born to my mother.  But trust me, at age 59, I can hear that pain in my sisters voice  and her lack of really saying to me..."She was MY mother not yours" and telling me that her pain, the loss of our Mother is much more meaningful to her than it is me.  If she could, I think she would say I have no right to anything that belongs to her.  

Let's face it, adoption doesn't always work, and I have to find a way to live with this reality.