I’ve been trying to understand why I cried before my adoptive mother’s funeral. I didn’t love her, most of the time didn’t even like her, and her passing meant that there was one person less in the world who had the capacity to hurt me.<\/p>
\nHer old house has been cleaned out at this point, and I kept very little except for the doll collection they got me when I was a kid.
\nSeeing them makes me sad, and for the same reason that I wept at her funeral: I miss the days when I was a little girl and felt secure in that house, before my adolescence and her poisonous jealousy and competitiveness destroyed our relationship.
\nIt may be that some scenes from my childhood are dear to my heart, but they have nothing to do with that house. Rather, I’ve only recently found the answer to a mystery that has puzzled me for years: why I like the area around Jamaica Pond and red brick, ivy-covered buildings.
\nIt’s because I have an association with that area and being driven back and forth with one or more adoptive parents to Children’s Hospital, where I was treated for health issues that required regular follow-ups.
\nIn those visits, they were “mine”, not to be shared with their “real” daughter, my younger sister. It was probably on those visits that, as much as I hated the manipulation by the doctors, the nude photos and other humiliations, I was nonetheless happy, not having to feel second-best to my “perfect” sibling.
\nIt’s a damned sad legacy, and I feel badly for all of us: we all deserved so much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been trying to understand why I cried before my adoptive mother’s funeral. I didn’t love her, most of the time didn’t even like her, and her passing meant that there was one person less in the world who had … Continue reading