The Life-Changing Nature of Lies

Posted on 03/19/2011 by Jane Devin

I’m at a point in writing my memoir where I am admitting some really ugly truths. Those closest to me know what they are but I’ve never made them public. If I were to think about how other people might judge me for my past, I might never write this book at all. So I don’t think about writing in terms of possible consequences—I think instead about how even the worst truths aren’t as devastating as the best image-keeping lies.

The child in the Hawaiian print shorts is very likely my brother or sister. I tend to think brother, but there’s no way to know for sure. What I do know is that this picture was taken in June of 1959, on a Navy base—2 years and 7 months before I was born. The girl sitting on the floor is my eldest sister, Dawn. We look nothing alike. I look nothing like my other older sister, Dianne, either.

I look like the child in the flowered shorts and so does my son. Same coloring, hair, lips, eyes, and ears. Same face shape and expression when tired.

This picture was discovered and given to me after my mother died, but she wouldn’t have told the truth or given me a name even if she had lived another six decades. She was married when I was born, to a man that was so obviously not my father that it only took me about five years before I began suspecting the truth. It took 30 years beyond that to get her to admit her infidelity fully. Still, she wouldn’t tell me anything about the man who fathered me. I don’t know his name or his nationality. I don’t know one-half of myself and it’s a blank history I’ve passed on to my children. I suspect that the affair between my mother and biological father wasn’t short—that he was also married and stationed on the same ship and Navy bases that my stepfather was.

This post isn’t about unsolved mysteries, though. I’ve sadly reconciled to the fact that I have almost no chance of finding out who the child in the photograph is or who my real father is—my mother had no close friends and held onto her secrets tightly.

What I want to say—what I want to scream, really— is that this is why people should not lie. Not to their children and not to others. Lies are not contained in a neat, singular vacuum. They have far-reaching consequences, for the liar certainly, but even more so for the ones who have been told the lies.

My mother was ashamed of me and her husband resented me. I felt it, I knew it down to my bones, but I didn’t know why. I turned myself inside out trying to be better, trying to understand why I could never, ever be good enough. I was about seven the first time I ever thought about suicide. My child brain reasoned that since I was the source of her misery, my death would make my mother happy—and nothing makes a child feel so good as when they can please their mother. Over time, as my own pain grew, my suicidal ideation became a self-comfort. “If it gets too bad, I can end it.” I comfort myself during hard times with the same thought today.

Most people, even the very young, I think, can feel the truth of a matter even if they don’t know the finer details. If a person feels lied to, even if someone close to them is insisting that they’re telling the truth, then there’s probably some divide between the information that was wanted and what was offered. My mother, for instance, used to point to my birth certificate as “proof” that her husband was legally my father. Legally is not actually—it didn’t square with the truth I wanted—but to her it was close enough. As an older child, she tormented me with teasing games of misinformation when I pressed the issue, telling me my father was Rod McKuen, Warren Beatty, or some stranger she met in a bar. Later, she’d recant and go back to the birth certificate. I can laugh at some of the stories now, but it’s not a happy laugh. There will always be some part of me that craves the truth even if it’s almost impossible to find.

A woman I recently met felt that something in her twenty-plus year marriage had changed and that her husband had grown more distant. At first he denied her feelings and then he blamed work, tiredness, and even her—if she didn’t nag him about it so much, maybe he’d be happier and more interested. For two years, she wavered in a space of swallowing her own feelings for his comfort, hoping he’d recover, and rising up to ask for the truth, or counseling, or some clue that she could work with. In the end she found out that he’d been having an affair. It was a brutal revelation, more so because it came late and it didn’t come from him. When faced with the truth he admitted to it but now, a year or so after the fact, what lingers for her isn’t the infidelity, but the two painful years she spent living with a lie, desperate to reconcile what she felt with what she was being told.

Two years, thirty-five years, or a lifetime…lies cause far more pain than honesty ever could. Had I been told the truth as a child, I might have better understood the why of being treated differently than my siblings. I might not have internalized the shame and resentment. Today, being told the absolute truth, under all circumstances, even if it has to be dug out of rock hard ground, might not be so very important to me. Had the wife been told from the start that her husband was having an affair, she might not feel so bitter about the two years she spent feeling desperate, abandoned, and confused.

People lie for many reasons, but one of the major ones is to make themselves look good. Denying the truth of my father meant that my mother didn’t have to admit to being unfaithful. Other people wouldn’t think less of her. How she looked in the eyes of others was more important to her than the pain her lie caused me or even herself. It couldn’t have been easy for her to have and raise a child she did not want. Had she been willing to be more honest though, she might have given me up for adoption and saved us both from decades of turmoil. She might have looked bad to family and acquaintances for a while but the shame she felt would not have been as long lasting and the consequences not as heavy.

I’ve no doubt that the woman’s husband lied to look good, or at least better, too. He didn’t want to admit to an affair because that would mean that he was responsible for doing something unethical. It was easier for him to put the burden of their failing relationship on his wife because he could still look like the good guy. He wrote the story of an overworked, tired man with a nagging wife and wanted her to follow along until maybe, at some point in the future, when it was more convenient for him, he was ready to leave home and start a new life with someone else.

There are common lies of omission and less commonly, differing definitions. My ex-lover would insist that she loved me but her actions toward me didn’t match her words. In the end I didn’t feel loved, so the chances are that I was not—at least not in any way that would have matched my definition. Love invites in, it doesn’t shut out. Love is special and rare and not easily replaceable. Love is willing to fight for itself. Everyone has their own definitions of what love is and isn’t. Had I known that her definition was so far off from my own—had she told me that her feelings about love were, in fact, quite opposite, I might not have invested so much of myself into loving her, and the end of our relationship would not have been as fraught with confusion and anguish. I would have been quicker to forgive her for not being able to return the same kind of love I gave to her, and I would not still be working on healing months after our final goodbye.

Lies are not solitary, isolated events. They change people—mentally and spiritually—which means they also affect that person’s present and future—and never, it seems, for the better. Lies add pain to situations that are all ready painful. The truth is not always kind but at least what people might feel as the result of an unhappy truth is real. It’s not clouded with confusion, suspicion, and lack of knowledge.

A harsh truth might cut deeply, but only the first time it’s told. Lies, on the other hand, are like a continuous poison that can seep into years, even decades. It’s easier to heal from a swift truth than a slow, drawn-out lie.

For that reason I’m all for telling people, including my own children, the truth even if it doesn’t make me look good. I know I’ll recover faster and so will others.

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Missing Something on Mother’s Day

Posted on 05/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Being Mother’s Day, I wondered if I should write a post about my mother but then I thought, no. It’s too sad, really, and not the kind of tribute others want to read. Many mothers, it seems, left dark mysteries and heartaches as legacies to their daughters. Mine was no exception. It would be more fitting to write about MJ on some other occasion, like a cold rainy day, when there’s no sunshine to compete with my pen or my memories.

I then thought maybe I should write about my kids, but everybody who reads this blog already knows how much they mean to me, and Lis and Mac have heard it a thousand times over. We celebrated Mother’s Day early this year, and I was beautifully spoiled, but in a grown-up way I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to. Not that I don’t appreciate the thoughtful and lovely things my children pick out, but let’s face it — they’re not exactly finger paintings or handcrafted dinosaur dioramas. They’re not rhinestone studded potholders or construction paper cards. They’re not Mommy presents, but presents for a Mother. With a capital M. Meaning mature, meaning older.

I miss the days of getting misty-eyed over Crayola drawings. I miss reading children’s books out loud. I miss writing stories for my own kids. I miss the smell of freshly shampooed heads, and the feeling that the crook of my arm had a divine purpose. I miss having a little person to go places with, and I miss how everything that was old and boring to me was brand new and exciting to them, like light switches, twinkling stars, ice cubes, and telephones. I miss the grade school essays they wrote about family, even when they were embarrassing. Along with “I love my mom. She is funny and good and paints my fingers,“ my daughter also once wrote, “My mom’s favrite thing is be naked and eat spaggetti.” (Meaning — I like to take baths and eat spaghetti. Separately. One is a naked activity, the other is not).

My son once told his school principal that I gave him fifteen names, and then proceeded to tell him all the derivations, terms of endearment, and nicknames I gave him. The principal called me and told me I was confusing my son, who apparently didn’t know what his birth name was. Of course MacKenzie Richard Cooper Ross Love Honey Boychik Sweetie Handsome Boo Bear LittleMan Mackie Deega Daw knew his name. He just thought it was funny to string the principal along. The same way he thought it would be funny, at three years old, to sneak to the top of my closet, where I kept a whole bunch of promotional materials left over from radio remotes. One of the boxes contained colored and glow-in-the-dark condoms. Mac decided these would be great for preschool. We were living in uber-conservative Montana then, and the preschool owner was a devout Christian. I got the call about an hour after dropping Mac off. She was not amused, and Mac was kicked out of preschool. (Is there a doubt which of my kids were the problem child? Of course, it was the one most like me).

I really should have had 10 more kids, spaced two-four years apart each, so that I could always have one in tow. It’s strange to me being the mother of grown-ups. I still have a lot of child left in me, and am often surprised by the mirror image of a 46 year old woman. I am nineteen, fourteen, ten, and five in so many ways. I remember viscerally every moment and milestone of childhood — my own, and my children’s. I remember the taste of Pixie Stix even though I haven’t had one in years, and I still get a little thrill over seeing old favorites like Old Maid, Chinese jump ropes, Jacks, and real roller skates in the toy section of the department store.

I coo over other people’s babies and toddlers, and think how very lucky they are. And I have to admit I feel a small pang of envy every time I see one of those big toothless smiles from an infant, or watch a toddler doing the it’s-all-new-to-me mummy walk. I still browse the children’s section in a store, and wish more of my friends had babies so I’d have an excuse to buy tiny shoes, jeans, and dresses.

Neither my recently engaged daughter or my college-attending son want children any time soon. My daughter hasn’t decided if she wants children at all. She dreams, instead, of an inter-species ranch, with dozens of feathered and furry beings to fill her time.

So I’m in the in-between stage. No longer a mother to little ones, and not yet a grandmother. (Yikes. If I don’t feel old enough to be the mom of grown-ups, I sure don’t feel old enough to be called grandma. Still, if it happened tomorrow, I’d be thrilled. And I’d be called Nana). In the meantime, of course I think about it. Adoption. Giving birth. Doing it all over again, but better, with more experience, more wisdom, and more purposeful intentions.

Then I look around. The world outside is growing colder by the minute. People are just a shade crueler than they have ever been before. Apathy not only abounds, but has become a way of life for millions. Irrationality is still acceptable, and even promoted and catered to in some circles. Opportunities slip and slide and no matter how good or smart a person is, there are no guarantees of success. There are pains involved in raising children, and those pains almost always involve other people, like bad parents, bullies, and tired teachers. The rest of the world will never care about or want to protect your children as much as you do.

I look, too, at my clean apartment. There are no crumbs on the floor, no piles of school papers on the kitchen table, no mountains of laundry waiting to be done. Didn’t I wait for this? Didn’t I long for the day when I wasn’t mopping up after muddy shoes and endlessly folding clothes? Didn’t I yearn for the day when I could take a long, uninterrupted bath, or write for hours at a stretch? Of course I did. But the frustrating part of parenting was the smallest part. The larger part — the gold stars and long talks, the small hands in clay and the school age dramas — never got old. Only my children did. I, on the other hand, hardly aged at all, unless one counts in years and biology. I don’t. I count in words and memories. In experiences and feelings.

And on this Mother’s Day, I feel both fulfilled and empty. Like a mother, of course, and one who is well-loved and appreciated, but one who’s also missing the days of being a Mommy. Missing the goodnight kisses, the tuck-ins, and those sweet hours between their bedtime and mine, when I actually relished my “alone time” and felt compelled to do something grand, special, or important with it. Now there are many such hours. I fill them as well as I can, with work, writing, books, projects, friends, pets, and more — but.

I just miss being a stroller-toting, school work correcting, dinner fixing, Band-Aid carrying, bath running, toy buying, tickle your back, love you to infinity and bigger than the universe, crook of the arm Mom.

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A Radical Notion: Children Come First, Period.

Posted on 02/07/2008 by Jane Devin

She had a felony arrest for child neglect last July, but the Department of Childrens Services was not monitoring Latasha Morris, or checking up on her children. In between December 2007 and January 2008, Morris was arrested four times. On February 6th, Morris, a chronic alcoholic and drug user, passed out on top of her 2 year old son, Sheldon Bartley. The toddler died.

It does not appear that Morris was without people who tried to help. Sheldon’s paternal grandparents often cared for the children, and were making plans to get Latasha into rehab, where she might receive treatment for her decade-long battle with alcoholism.

In the meanwhile, six year old Estajah and two year old Sheldon were left unchecked and in their mother’s care, with disastrous consequences.

My January 29th article on adoption garnered a lot of response, including some disturbing mail from an anti-adoption group which seems to be made up of a handful of birth mothers who resent their decisions. They rail at a society which, they say, does not do enough to financially support them. They rail at adoptive parents, claiming they are thieves. They rail at adoption agencies, claiming that they are a corrupt, money-making industry. They take a few stories from unhappy adoptees, and twist them into propaganda to buoy their anti-adoption creed.

It’s difficult to read their tales, because no matter how matter how vague their actual stories are, or how many gaps of logic are apparent in those stories, the facts of these women’s lives — and their regrets — are drenched in pain.

One wrote to me and said that my plea to young mothers to consider adoption would not be heard by those who would do harm to their own children, but only by those whose love was so encompassing that they would give their children up before subjecting them to any harm at all.

She’s very likely right. The majority of birth mothers that I have spoken to are women who love deeply, and whose thoughts were centered on what was best for their child. They chose adoption not because it was easier for them, but because it was gut-wrenching to consider raising the child they loved in anything less than good circumstances. To me, the love and care they expressed through adoption is heroic. Often, they placed themselves in the line of fire from others who questioned their decision – they struggled with their internal emotions and the perceptions of the outside world for nine months – and in the end, chose to put their children first.

There really should be another Mother’s Day just for them. One in which the whole of society acknowledges the unconditional, selfless, agape love of women who placed their faith and hopes in adoption in order to give their child the best possible parents, circumstances, and opportunities.

Not heroic was the note I received from a mother who is outraged that her children were “stolen” by the foster care system due to abuse perpetrated by the mother’s boyfriend. “Not my fault” was the tone of the letter, and “they had no right” was the message. Her children, her choices. She didn’t believe society should have any say in how her children were raised, but she did believe that none of this would have happened if society had supported her. If school was free, maybe she’d have gone, and gotten a better job so she wouldn’t have to live with others. If there was free daycare, maybe she wouldn’t have had the boyfriend babysit.

I don’t know what she expected from me, but she was writing to the wrong person.

I know a few things about pain. I know what it is like to be a child born at the wrong time, to parents who had their own personal problems. My body still carries the memories of their problems – their narcissism, impatience, and rage. At 45 years old, I still flinch when someone moves their hand too quickly or too closely to me. I startle easily, and always have to have my back to a wall in a crowd so that people cannot surprise me from behind. In personal relationships, I have a reflexive tendency to just slip away whenever a confrontation is impending. I go away easily. Arguments frighten me – I always fear they’ll end in disaster.

I know, too, the feeling of standing outside of life’s gate, with no clear way in, and no invitation. To be the girl who feels no sense of place in the innocent, carefree world of others. To be the one with the dark house, the bad teeth, and the worn hand-me-downs, who can only pretend a sense of normal, while dreaming, always dreaming, of being somebody-somewhere else.

And I know passion. I know that at some point memories became a protective instinct, dreams became missions, and that my perspective from outside the gate had a value, if only for those who had not yet seen beyond the iron slats of their own similar experiences.

No one wants to think they’ll be a bad parent. My parents, I know, like so many others, leaned on the bromide of “we did our best” as both excuse and salve. The truth is they did not. The truth is that they both had affairs, and decided to bring a child into the world that was the result of their lack of control, and their lack of love or respect for each other. Instead of being born with a blank slate, I was born into turmoil, shame, and bitter feelings. My coloring was a sign of guilt, and my character was questioned even as an infant. I was too quiet, not like her other daughters, but when I cried it was all wrong, it grated on her nerves. I read too early. I was too athletic. I was too dreamy, too willful, too different, and too much.

As an adult, I once asked my mother why she did not give me up. In a rare moment of honesty, she told me she tried to abort me several times, but it didn’t work. She thought about giving me up then, but it was too complicated. She was married, and people would ask questions.

Embarrassing questions, it seems, were harder for my mother than raising an unwanted child for sixteen years. Instead of temporary feelings of guilt, my mother chose – not just for her, but for me as well – years of despair and hurt.

I survived. Too many children do not even have that opportunity. Many others will go through life feeling disconnected, lost, or alienated. Some will wrongly mistake rage for strength, and seek to become stronger than those who hurt them. Some will even end up with emotional and mental damages that are beyond repair.

The point I made in Dangerous Choices is, I think, clear to those who would hear its message. Children must come first, period. Children are not chattel, and they should not be considered the property of unfortunate birth parents who cannot, will not, or should not care for them. Childhood is a short-lived experience, a limited window of opportunity, and children should not have to suspend their needs, waiting on parents whose histories have already shown a propensity for neglect, abuse, and danger.

The foster care system needs a radical overhaul, and a new mission statement: Children Come First. Period.

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There Is No Shame in Surrender

Posted on 01/29/2008 by Jane Devin

Please listen.

There is no shame in understanding that it’s too much, or in recognizing your limitations.

There is no shame in giving your child up for adoption.

Please don’t let shame be your weakness, or let it decide your child’s fate. Those eyes that surround you, whether at school, at work, or at the family table, cannot see into your future. They are not the ones who have to be emotionally, financially, and physically responsible for a child.

They will not be there for the all-night crying jags, the teething pains, or the earaches. They will not be the ones responsible for bottles, diapers, doctor visits, or daycare. That will be you, and chances are, only you.

There is no shame in knowing that you are not ready. Maybe you are too young. Maybe your temperament does not yet have the patience necessary to parent. Maybe your financial situation is unstable with no promise of a quick or easy recovery. Maybe there are dreams you’ve yet to fulfill that you would regret forgoing if you stopped to raise a child. Maybe this is just the wrong time, or you’re with the wrong partner.

You, and more importantly, your child, do not have to be the victims of circumstance. You can, instead, gather your courage and strength, face your own truths and reality, and with no small amount of pride, you can surrender.

You can surrender knowing that no matter how other people in your life question your decision, or how they may judge you, you have made a decision based on the the purest,and most unselfish kind of love. You, through adoption, have given your child the ultimate gift — a secure home with people who are excited about being parents — who will love your child and provide him or her with stability and every opportunity for happiness.

Maybe you didn’t have that kind of happiness growing up. Maybe you imagine that all that love you have stored up inside will make up for everything else.

Please know — and this is a hard, hard truth — it doesn’t.

Love cannot buy you the time it takes to care for a child. It cannot provide a paycheck that will cover your expenses. At three in the morning, when your child is crying, love does not buy you patience. At three in the afternoon, when you’re bone tired, it won’t buy you a much needed rest. When you want to go out at night — when you need to have some fun — love will not buy you a babysitter.

Love is not a cure for desperation. A child’s love, as defenseless and unconditional as it is, will not fix the broken pieces of a life. Having a child is not a cure for sadness, loneliness, or depression.

No matter how many others in your life are excited about your pregnancy — no matter how many declarations of love, baby showers and well-wishes there are while you are pregnant — eventually you will be left alone with a helpless infant. One who is totally dependent on you 24 hours a day. One who will be dependent on you for many years, not just for love, but for every single thing in their existence.

If you are not ready for that, if you are not prepared, there’s no shame in surrender.

There’s no shame in surrender when they are newly born, or even when they are months old.

There is no shame in picking up the phone and saying –

I need help. I thought I could do this, but it’s too much. I can’t.

Somewhere, there are loving, patient, ready arms waiting to hold that child. Somewhere in your heart is the courage to surrender what you created so that he or she can have the best life possible.

There is no shame in surrender. Only in hanging on past the point of reason. Beyond the point of love.

(For further information, please see first comment).

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