During the break I gave the most important and difficult reading I may’ve ever given.
I recently participated in a weekend gathering centered around black and transracial adoptees. I was asked to read and host a Men’s Writing Workshop for the dudes who participated in the weekends events. AFAAD was created by a friend, Lisa, and this was a second annual retreat for people of color who were adopted, though i saw mostly transracial people, primarily women, who were adopted into white families.
I found out I was adpted when I was 19, and hadn’t suspected anything. I began consciously writing and performing poetry at around 23. Poems about my life and experiences in family didn’t start trickling out until years later, well after I’d began to get a better kind of handle on what it all meant for me. Well after I began to understand myself and where I stood in these dual families and dual identities (Spoiler! My handle on it didn’t happen for another damn near 18 years)
Myronn is a friend whom I promoted to cousin since we get along so famously, have similar backstories, and since we’re practically neighbors have been kicking it on the regular. He too is a writer and came with me the Friday night I read for that group. Many of the readings I’ve done in the past I attended alone– having no girlfriends, close friends and certainly no family that wanted to support what I was doing. I was used to being alone yet didn’t realize how much support I needed around being there until I was already on stage and was comforted just by knowing Myron was in the audience. Beyond him and a busy, currating Lisa, I knew no one else in the room.
That night I’d gotten ridiculously lost finding the place, even though I was a half block away from where I needed to be. The venue was a two story art/performance space with a gallery on the main floor and a nice size stage above. I felt terribly shy and quiet as folks began filing in.
The evening was set up with short narrative films about identity, then readings. Outside of the lead actor in one of the films, I was the only male on the bill. The room was full of women. Children, and yes a couple of men. But it was surprising that it was mostly female. I wondered: ‘where are the dude’s who’ve gone through this experience?’ Is it only women who even want to deal with the emotional work around identity and adoption and place in family?
A while ago, after reading some of my poems, I was told it was rare to hear this kind of story from a black male. Only now do I really believe it.
And the reading was important to me because of that. Because here’s an audience that understands first hand what my poetry is about. For many audiences & readers, they’re like: wow, that’s powerful. I feel you. Yadda yadda. But those people have parents, extended families and can only empathize with what it is to be stranded with no one. Or to be with relatives and feel like a stranger to them, and yourself.
Lisa did a scene from a theatrical monologue. In it, she’s a child practicing for a church solo. Then she’s her white mother, first reading through the instructions on a box of relaxer, then struggling to understand how her daughter’s hair gets so ‘tangled’ in such a short time.
The mother struggles combing through young Lisa’s mop before giving up and reaching for a pair of electrical clippers. The room is silent while she pantomimes having her hair sheared. Then, in character, she says flatly: “Stop crying.” Before finally reprising her church solo.
I followed her. The room was in a warm stasis while I read– to a degree I felt guilty. Maybe I should have done some jokes. But in my life there had truly be so very little that was funny. So much of what i wanted to share was about loss, my dead fathers, my mom, etc. I read slowly, wanting the words to settle over the listeners and for them to follow me. Going to slams recently was, well, ‘odd’. Maybe I’m no longer the target audience, but it didn’t seem that many of the slam poets wanted to be heard, ironically enough. Their delivery tumbles forward so fast as to preempt comprehension. Perhaps I’m not the audience they’re wanting to reach. But I want to be heard and be clear and I find the words chosen to be as important as the story being told. But that was digression: I read slowly as to squeeze all juice from the lines and to allow the audience to be present in the story with me. It left the room silent.
The night ended with three Korean drummers breaking the tension in the room. How quietly we all helped to neatly stack the chairs away…How effeciently we all worked together.
***
The next day I returned to lead a Men’s workshop. All week I’d known about the workshop and attempted to pull together a curriculum (can’t even spell it– had to look that up) but for whatever reason, I could barely pull it together. When I arrived at the luncheon Saturday, just prior to the workshops, turns out there were only three men, including me, vs. the 30 or so women who participated.
When the groups broke by the sexes, we men decided to go to the park two blocks down the street. We sat at a bench and talked for three and a half hours.
What little prep I did for the writing workshop was worthless. The ultimate purpose was to talk. For me it was invaluable and touching and strange. I hadn’t realized there was so much about my life, so much I’d felt or thought or gone through that I’d never said aloud to anybody because I never expected to find anyone to identify with. It was the first time I talked and felt truly heard. Was the first time I felt truly present with the memories and stories someone else was telling me.
The men’s group ended. One of the three of us broke off for something else, leaving me and another dude to return to the hotel. When we came back, the women’s discussion group was still happening. They turned to us standing in the doorway and swept us out with their eyes. The other man and I took a walk, went into a deli until it closed, then walked a couple of blocks before finally coming back.
I wanted to leave, but was compelled to stay where I sat in on a circle about Meeting Your Family Of Origin. As people began sharing their stories, I was surprised to hear my own experience mirrored back by others. I wasn’t alone. Neither in how I felt, nor specific events that had happened. Everyone felt varying shades of abandonment– as if they were given up by their mother’s twice. Once at birth, again as an adult.
I learned there is the honeymoon– the finding of one another, the explicit glee in feeling whole. But then comes a drop off. Then comes a time after the honeymoon when the honeywell has run dry. This is where I found myself. And all the others in this circle all nodded as stories were related.
What do you do, one person asked the floor. When the communication just kind of stops?
I thought about my last few years. About what happened with me; falling into a void of silence. Realizing that no one was reaching out to me, no one seemed to miss me or maintain any connection as I had attempted. It took so many years to negotiate this, to come to terms with what was happening and what I wanted out of it.
I said: Its up to you. When I’d gotten sick and missed a few holidays and got no one to reach back for me, no one to cuss me out or even find out if I was still alive, I had to think, what did I want from my birth mother? What was I missing? By walking away, what was I saying no to that I’d miss? And sadly, the answer was nothing. It turns out I didn’t want anything from anybody except to be and feel loved. And I knew Love was not available in my birth mother’s house. One can’t switch one mother for another. One cant switch one identity for another. What happens next is you get to choose the kind of relationship you want. You now get to control it. You can’t force anyone to feel anything. You can’t force anyone to behave in your predetermined way. What happens next is up to you.
I decided to stop. What you decide is up to you.
And that was that. I left for home after that circle.
What I was left with was a thick fog of melancholy; an emotional stew of sadness, emptiness, grief, loneliness…Regret. Yet i was also gratified to have certain people in position in my life. I was happy for the relationships I’d been building with people I genuinely loved and swept into my orbit as surrogate family– Myronn, the three Steve’s I know, so many others.
The weekend left me feeling like an emotional livewire. I had to take a day off work to decompress. What I realized is you build family. You create the kind of relationships you want with people who consent to playing certain roles for you. No relationship should be taken for granted– even if its relationship to family. Every connection has to be worked on and maintained. Every relationship has to be built with your specifications. There are things I wished were different. But it is what it is. You roll your sleeves up and knead it to smoothness, or you leave it alone.
What’s the word for when you finally realize that everything will be fine without you?
