Grand Mothering

Eat, Darling, Eat
2 hours ago
7 min read

(by Kathy Lenney)

Meetings like ours weren’t supposed to happen. In the 1960s, once you signed a relinquishment, you permanently gave up your rights to ever see your child again. But Pat found a way around the rules. She paid a private investigator $200, and after a few months, she had my contact information and mailed me a letter inviting me to call. When we spoke on the phone for the first time and I heard her voice, so similar to mine, it felt like God had finally gotten around to me. I’d been staring into crowds for over two decades looking for my birth mother, and as it turned out, she’d been there looking for me too.

I arranged for us to meet about 30 minutes from my home in Orange County, California, and she agreed to make the drive up from San Diego. I chose a restaurant that had the décor of an old barn house. It was out of the way, with big roomy booths—perfect for anonymity. Nobody would see us, and I’d never have to drive past the restaurant again if things didn’t go well and I wanted to forget all about meeting her.

When I pulled into the parking lot, a middle-aged woman stood near the entrance looking off into the distance as if waiting for someone to arrive. She had auburn hair—the color of mine before I highlighted it. When I walked closer, I could see she had my pale blue eyes too.

“Pat?”

She smiled. “Kathy?”

I felt my throat close. It was her.

“Is it okay if I hug you?”

I nodded, and as her arms encircled me, I waited for it to feel like the connection I’d been longing for. But that feeling never came. I should have expected that. We were strangers, after all. It had been 27 years since she’d said goodbye. I gently pulled away. “Should we go inside?”

She nodded and dabbed her eyes.

We were seated right away. We ordered barbeque chicken and baked potatoes, but I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t come to eat. I held her hand while she told me the story of why she wasn’t my mother, why she had given me up. She cried freely. Thankfully, we were left alone. My tears were stuck inside. It felt like I should cry, but I wasn’t sure why—because she had let me go or because she found me again.

After lunch, we walked out to the parking lot and made a plan to talk on the phone again later that week. I could tell we both wanted to try to foster this new relationship with one another. She stopped at her car and announced that she had a present for me. She handed me a two-foot-tall teddy bear smelling of her spicy perfume.

“People at my support group suggested it would be good to give you something that smelled like me,” she said.

“Oh, okay.” I took the bear and put it in the back seat of my car, but once I drove away, I pulled over to the side of the road and stashed it in the trunk. I was afraid my parents would see it and know instantly how much she loved me and would worry that even though I was all grown up, she’d try to take me away from them somehow. Also, I needed to get the smell of her out of my nose.

After the initial shock of meeting Pat wore off, I began to feel more comfortable with the idea of having her in my life. I could tell my parents weren’t so sure by the way they avoided the subject of her. But she offered a way for me to learn about my biological history, and to understand the deeper parts of myself. Something in our DNA felt very similar. She and I are both counselors, good listeners, and enjoyed speaking on the phone late into the evenings. We talked about important things like who my birth father was, but it was the little stuff that kept us giggling; like how hard it was to buy shoes because our big toes were so long. Building a relationship with Pat was like falling in love—you know you should hold back, but the thrill of being seen makes you throw your whole self into it. I felt a little guilty, as if I were cheating on my mom.

My relationship with Gail, my adoptive mom, was built upon years of happy memories. Having dealt with infertility, she was 30 when she and my dad adopted me, and she stayed home full-time to be my mom. I loved spending time with her. On the weekends, she and I would hop in her long black Cadillac and drive to Laguna Beach. When the waves rolled out to sea, we’d hold hands and run screaming through a stone arch in the sand trying not to get wet. Later she’d sit on the beach and watch while I boogie-boarded. I don’t think she ever took her eyes off the water because anytime I looked over at her on the shore, she’d wave.

After reuniting with Pat, I had to find a way for both of my mothers to co-exist in my heart. There were times when I felt I had to choose, especially after the birth of my daughter, Emma. One day, as my mom and I stood in the kitchen, she noticed a photo of Emma and Pat on my fridge. Wearing a denim hat pulled over her blond curls, Emma giggled as Pat pushed her on the swings. With her blue eyes and light auburn hair, Pat claimed her resemblance to Emma without even trying. I wondered how my mom felt to be the only brunette in my kitchen.

“Hey Kath, when are you going to tell Emma who Pat really is?”

“What do you mean?”

“She isn’t just a ‘special friend.’”

“I don’t know, Mom. It’s complicated.”

“Not to a three-year-old.” She filled my teapot with water. She also took lunch meat, dill pickles, and mustard out of the fridge for baloney rolls, her specialty. “In your line of work, haven’t you dealt with this before?”

“Of course, I’m an adoption counselor.” I sat down on a stool and watched her roll the baloney around the pickles. “But this is about my child. It feels harder when I imagine telling Emma.”

“What would you tell your clients to do?”

I thought for a minute. “I’d say ‘keep it simple.’”

“There’s your answer. Tell Emma Pat is her grandmother.”

“But you are her grandmother.” I stared at her. “I don’t want to take that away from you.”

“We both are.” She brushed away tears. “We are both Emma’s grandmothers.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She looked past me, out my kitchen window, at the rose garden she helped plant last spring. “A long time ago, Pat gave you to me. Now it is my turn to share.”

I stepped off the stool and our arms encircled each other, remembering the thousands of times we’d embraced.

(with Emma)

“Whatcha doing, Nanny?” Emma called from the living room.

My mom pulled away and squeezed my hand. “My granddaughter is calling.” Then she turned and left the kitchen.

I put the baloney rolls, a few cookies, and three tiny teacups on a tray, and then carried our snacks out to the living room. I sat down next to my mom on the couch and took a deep breath.

“Hey, Ems, I need to talk to you about our special friend Pat.”

“Okay,” Emma said, her head deep in her dollhouse.

“I want to tell you something special about her.”

She and her Barbie peeked at me over the rooftop.

“Pat is not just a friend,” I blurted.

“Who is she?” Emma looked from me to my mom and back to me again.

“She’s your grandma.”

Her blue eyes widened.

I rushed on to say, “You’re lucky. Most people just have two grandmas, but you have three. Nanny, Grandma Bonnie, and Grandma Pat.”

“Whose mommy is Grandma Pat?” She reached for a roll.

“Well, you know how babies grow in tummies, right?”

Emma nodded her head hard, her mouth full of baloney.

“Well, I grew in Grandma Pat’s tummy.”

Emma wrinkled up her nose, confused. “Why didn’t you grow in Nanny’s tummy?”

I took a sip of tea and glanced at my mom. “Nanny’s tummy was broken in that way.”

With all the concern a three-year-old could muster, Emma looked at my mom, somehow knowing a "broken tummy" would make her sad.

I could have said, "Pat chose an agency who chose Nanny and Papa," but that was too complicated. I could have told her that on one night in the spring of 1968, Pat and her boyfriend were on the beach making out but stopped before having sex because they were Catholic and wanted to wait until they were married. As the story goes, I was conceived through underwear—definitely not a thing to tell my three-year-old. I could have shared what came after—Pat’s boyfriend married her but then left two weeks later, or that Pat had depression, her parents were alcoholics, and she just couldn’t think her way through how to build a life for us. I chose a less complete truth.

“Pat was very young and not ready to be a mommy, so she chose Nanny and Papa to be my parents.”

“She did?”

“Yes.”

Emma went back to playing with her doll house, seemingly content with my story.

I, however, felt the need to mold these unusual facts into a pretty narrative. “I was lucky because I got to live with Nanny and Papa.”

Emma jumped up from the floor and said, “Can we go to the park now?”

I knew one day Emma would have more questions about our family and its many mothers, but I also knew when that day came, she’d understand. I’d keep it simple. And I knew eventually these all-important figures in my life—mother, birth mother, daughter—would weave their own unique relationships. Sometimes surprising, often challenging, always heartwarming.

Isn’t that what family is after all?

Isn’t that love?

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Kathy Lenney lives in Southern California and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and mom to two wonderful grown children. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and will be forthcoming in Quarter After Eight. She can be found at https://linktr.ee/kathylenney.