Here, in my firstborn daughter’s own voice, is Rebecca telling the story of our reunion. Who Am I Really? is a project of Damon Davis: a series of very personal podcasts about the life journey of an adoptee and their search for reunion. Rebecca’s is Episode 18:What I Gained Through Reunion Is Context.
Listening to Rebecca’s voice, I definitely hear Joani. And I hear my daughter Colleen’s voice, too. Maybe even my niece, Lauren’s, as well. Not just the timbre of our voices resonates but how we all string words together. We use the same verbal punctuation. It is uncanny.
And Rebecca’s description of reunion dovetails incredibly with biomom’s. No coordination involved. Just DNA. Incredibly delightful.
So take a listen to Rebecca and let her fill you in on Who She Really Is!
Back in the day in Del Ray, when I still had a yard, this was my gardening mantra:
If it’s green, leave it alone.
I should have had better garden sense, having once upon a time worked at a plant store called “Great Plants Alive”. But truth be told, my house was kind of like a hospice – where plants came home to die.
I depended on Mother Earth to till my soil. Whatever grew, grew — and whatever withered, withered. My yard was a little city patch of green. And since I had no green thumb, this was my golden rule:
If it’s green, let it grow.
My lawn was covered with crab grass, wild violets, clover, and dandelions. The fence was covered with tangled honeysuckle vines, ghetto pines, a struggling maple tree, and poison ivy. Plastic baseball bats and dead tennis balls dotted my lawn.
Occasionally I would attempt to tame this wilding place with my push mower and my weed whacker. But much more often, I would retreat and recline in a plastic chair on the patio to read a good book.
But I did learn one thing of worth at “Great Plants Alive” from a South African gentleman who came into the shop. I noticed him admiring the orange calla lilies just outside the front door.
“Can I help you. Sir? Those lilies are beautiful, aren’t they? Just three dollars a pot.”
“Back home these are WEEDS. Why are you selling weeds? We tear them up and throw them away,” he said.
One person’s weed is another person’s flower, you see.
Good seeds. Bad seeds. Whose to know the difference?
Consider your life a garden, crumbly creative dirt. Watered by grace, seeds sprout, reach for light, struggle to grow:
Seeds planted by parents who raised us.
Seeds planted by all the beloved, bewildering people in our lives.
Seeds planted by all of the puzzles we solve and by problems we invent.
Seeds planted by poets who inspire and by writers we have read.
Seeds planted in all of the ages and stages of our growing up.
Seeds planted by the predicaments and the challenges of our times.
Good seeds. Bad Seeds. Flowers. Weeds.
Whose to know the difference?
Over the course of our lifetimes, whose to know the difference?
Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned but gather the wheat into my barn. Matthew 13:30
This burning thing makes me very uncomfortable. My personal and favorite heresy is the denial of Hell – at least the three-tiered universe kind of Hell, with Heaven above and Earth below. The flames that burn for all time, fire and brimstone, that eternal damnation kind of Hell.
No, I do not believe in it at all because, if you excuse the expression:
What in Hell kind of God is that?
But I do believe in a more personal hell, more of a purgatory really, where we burn through, burn off, burn up the weeds that have choked out the wheat.
This refining fire is something we all walk through. Like the winnowing of wheat, all of that crappy chaff flies away, and we are left with just a handful of kernels, a few kernels of wisdom. (Maybe.)
Anne Lamott did a Ted Talk a few years back. One of my favorite authors, she is funny, earthy, poignant, and profound – in the most ordinary of ways. Her Ted Talk is called: “Twelve Truths I Learned from Life and Writing.”
On the eve of her 61st birthday, she decided to write down everything she knew to be true. Twelve things but by my count sixteen. Let me briefly paraphrase them for you.
Lamott shares:
;I am every age I have ever been, though my paperwork says I was born in 1954, I feel 47. My true self is outside myself. A friend in his seventies says, “I feel like a young person just with something really wrong with me.”
All truth is a paradox. Life is at one time a precious, unfathomable, beautiful gift. It is also hard and weird. Filled both with heartbreaking sweetness and heartbreaking poverty. I don’t think it’s an ideal system.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes and then plug it back in. Including you.
Help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don’t get your help and goodness all over everyone.
You can’t buy or steal or make anyone else’s happiness. You can’t run alongside of your grown children with sunscreen and Chap-stick on their hero’s journey. You have to release them. It’s the respectful thing to do.
Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides. Everyone is broken, insecure and scared. They are more like you than you can imagine.
You also can’t fix or save or rescue anyone else or get anyone else sober. One acronym for God is the “Gift of Desperation.”
Be full of yourself. Being at home in your own cranky self allows others to be at home in themselves. Being full of affection for one’s self is where world peace begins.
Chocolate with 78% Cacao is not actually a food. It was never supposed to considered edible. It is best used to balance the legs of wobbly chairs.
Writers all write terrible first drafts. But they keep their butt in their chairs. Their truth comes through little by little. Just take it bird by bird, her dad told her brother when writing a report for school. Tell them about each bird in your own voice. Bird by bird, God awful first drafts — really good advice for all of life.
Success will not heal you. It will feel good for a while but it will not fill the “Swiss-Cheesy holes” in your soul. But fostering old dogs or painting murals might
Families are hard, hard, hard — no matter how cherished or astonishing they might be. Remember that it is a miracle that any one of us was conceived and born. And Earth is forgiveness school. So, we might as well start at the dinner table. This way we can do this work in comfortable pants.
And food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.
Grace. Spiritual WD40 or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Vladmir Putin and me and you exactly as much your new grandchild.
Laughter is bubbling grace. It is really “carbonated holiness.” It allows us to breathe again and again and to renew our faith in ourselves and in one another.
And Grace always bats last.
A good name for God is “not me”. The happiest person on earth, Emerson says, is one who learns from nature the lesson of worship. Go outside. Look up!
And finally, death. Wow. Yikes.
We never get over these losses and against what our culture says, we are not supposed to. Tears of grief bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize us on the ground on which we walk. Take off your shoes, God says, this garden is holy ground. All evidence to the contrary, this is the truest thing of all.
Death is as sacred as birth.
When all is said and done, we’re all just walking each other home.
Lamott says she will get back to us, if she thinks of any more.
So, winnow through your own wheat and toss out the weeds. What kernels do you come up with?
I came up with three on my way home from Montana. A frequent flier, I am not, and turbulence is not my friend. I tightened my seat belt and rattled my rosary on a very bumpy ride out of Missoula. Usually it is terror that I taste coming up in my throat, but on this occasion, tears smearing my mascara streamed down my face. Three little words popped into my head.
Love. (OMG! I love you God.)
Thanks. (Thanks for EVERYTHING. Thanks for EVERYONE. I can’t say THANKS enough.)
Hope. (I hope I made a difference. At least a little.)
And then we were safely on the ground. Thank God.
I hope to hold onto these kernels, these little scraps of God given grace – from United Flight 3054.
Love. Thanks. Hope.
And with my feet firmly on the ground, I pray, that they take root, sprout up, and grow all over the place: my place, your place, everyone’s place.
Let the weeds grow up with the wheat, let them grow together until the harvest.
Since way back in the AOL days, my email address has been “celticjlp”. I am more than a bit of a Celtophile. I have made three pilgrimages to the Emerald Isle. On all things Celtic, I have facilitated forums, I have led retreats and I have tutored a disciple or two. I am steeped, as steeped as I can be, in the history and spirituality of my chosen people. And in all five of the churches I have served I have concocted and celebrated Celtic worship, orthodox and otherwise. I am Celtic to the core and have the tattoo to prove it — a little green shamrock on my left shoulder. (A Christmas gift from my children!)
Let me recount just a few of the things that connect me so deeply to my Celtic ancestors. They worshipped the sun and the moon and the stars. They wove the sacred into their most ordinary of chores. They hallowed each and every very hour of each and every day with prayer. Their sanctuaries are the forests and the meadows and the cliffs. Holy spirits indwell their streams and inhabit their oak groves. Holy winds blow on their most remote islands and holy waves crash on their island’s shores. Every little blade of Celtic green grass practically shimmers with the divine. Well almost.
Not to over romanticize my chosen people, the Celts were a nomadic people who probably practiced human sacrifice. Not too often — but one human sacrifice is one too many. The Celts were a warrior people who liked to collect the skulls of those they conquered as trophies. They were a tribal people where both women and men exercised royal power. Yes, women in power. What’s not to like?
And this brings me to Boudica, the Celtic Warrior Queen.
Boudica, for those who do not know, was queen of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe of Britain in the 1st century of the Common Era. During the time of the Roman occupation, Boudica’s husband was able to keep his crown. Upon his death, however, the Romans rolled over the Iceni. They captured its people and confiscated their property. Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped. No one would have blamed Boudica, if she gave into defeat and despair. But hell no, Boudica rescued her daughters, climbed into her chariot, and led the Iceni army in the charge against Rome. She put down the 9th Legion, destroyed the Roman capital and went on to conquer London, another stronghold of the occupiers. There was bloodshed beyond measure and Boudica was eventually beaten back. It is said she took her own life to avoid capture. No one knows where Boudica is buried. But all of Celtic Britain knows her story, every little boy and every little girl.
And so this brings me to Brigid.
In the second half of the 5th century, there was Brigid, Bishop Brigid of Kildare. Brigid is both the name of a Celtic goddess and the name of a saint. For the ancient Celts, Brigid is the three-faced goddess of poetry, metal work, and fire. And for Celtic Christians, Saint Brigid is the founder of the monastery at Kildare, the Church of the Oak. Kildare was a “double monastery” home to both religious men and women. And these Celtic Christian brothers and sisters were permitted to marry and raise children in service to the Lord. And Brigid, the abbess of Kildare, Celtic history tells us was consecrated as a Bishop. Carved into the stone altar rail at the Rock of Cashel, Bishop Brigid, crozier in hand, leads a procession of the twelve apostles. The Roman Catholic Church turned her crozier into a butter churn and demoted Brigid from Bishop to milkmaid. Hopefully and forever, the hierarchy thought they had put in her rightful and inferior place.
Until there was Fildelma.
The real Brigid did not remain buried forever. She has been resurrected and reincarnated in the fictitious and fabulous Sister Fidelma. Fidelma is the creation of Celtic scholar turned mystery writer, pen-named Peter Tremayne. Set in 7th century Ireland, the Sister Fidelma stories are a delicious combination of history and mystery. Fidelma is of royal blood, a princess of the Eoghanacht, educated to the level of dalaigh, an adovocate of the Brehon courts, just below judge. She is also a member of the monastery at Kildare, and married to Brother Eadulf. Yes, married to Brother Eadulf, a Saxon monk, who is Dr. Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. And by the time Fidelma and Eadulf are solving their 20th murder or so they even have a baby. Crack open one or two of these books and you will be hooked. Tremayne gives them hokey Agatha Christie titles like “Absolution by Murder”, “Shroud for the Archbishop”, “Our Lady of Darkness” and “Whispers of the Dead”. Who says women can’t have it all?
Boudica. Brigid. Fidelma. When feeling the need to slay a dragon or two – or just feeling a touch grandly grandiose — who better for my bipolar brain to channel than the spirits of these holy three, this Celtic and o so feminist trinity. Boudica — queen, warrior, widow, mother and savior of her people. Brigid — goddess, abbess, priestess, bishop and saint. Fidelma — princess, sister, lawyer, detective and murder mystery solver. Their icons and statues grace my halls and walls. Their books and biographies fill my bookcases. I have embraced their stories and made them my own.
It may seem silly, but to tell you the God’s honest truth, I believe these three women are kin to me. And O my, my this little trinity has given me the energy to get my warrior on — from time to time.. And so I believe myself to be their sister – their soul sister. Joani, the soul sister of Boudica, Brigid and Fidelma. Crazy, huh?
Yes, Crazy, bipolar Celtic crazy. The best kind of crazy there is. The best kind of crazy of all.
So friends, whose spirits are you channeling today?
The pajama drawer of my dresser is stuffed with over a dozen pairs — and yesterday, from my favorite store — I brought home two more.
Sometimes spelled “pyjamas” and nicknamed “PJ’s, jimjams, and jammies”, pajamas derives from the Hindustani word for lightweight drawstring trousers traditionally worn by Islamic Continental Indians. Perfect for lounging. Perfect for sleeping. Perfect for so much more.
Like interchangeable monastic robes, each pair I wear depends upon my manic-depressive mood.
Mostly manic and mostly mystical, in the sanctity of my sacred space, I call home.
Yoga stretching.
TV watching.
Blog blogging.
Coffee drinking.
Netflix binging.
Life contemplating.
Psyche orienting.
Decompressing.
Soul relaxing.
Head raising.
Life strategizing.
Event planning.
Day scheduling.
Church organizing.
Kid connecting.
Book reading.
Breakfast eating.
iPhone tapping.
Pillow hugging.
Couch surfing.
Spotify hopping.
Coffee drinking (Yes, again, coffee drinking.)
Mood mellowing.
Evening praying.
Inward looking.
Brain cycling.
Tightrope balancing.
Politics pumping.
Crazy resisting.
Fire dreaming.
Self loving.
Spirit restoring.
All in my pajamas: fleece, flannel, cotton, short and long, worn through and brand new.
All in my pajamas, in an hour or two, I collect my thoughts and reconfigure my gut,
at least for the next day or so.
I recommend it most highly — in these most exceedingly strange and stressful times.
Growing up in chaos, Catholic school was both blessing and curse.
While family arguments, yelling, screaming, and name-calling by the so-called grownups in my house, flew over my little eight year old head, I would escape into the 1960’s institution known as parochial school.
It was my salvation. I ate it up big time. I was a little parochial school girl extraordinaire.
I dressed the part. It was required, of course: plaid jumper, peter pan collar blouse, saddle shoes and chapel veil.
Middle child and peacemaker at home, I was quite the expert at disappearing into the woodwork, keeping my head down, not rocking the boat. (I could go on but I am running out of metaphors.)
But in Sister Regina Clare’s third grade class, I was a star in the movie of my own making.
I raised my hand every chance I got.
“Call on me, Sister. Call on me!”
And call on me, Sister did. Teacher’s pet and smartest kid in the class, I would do just about anything to delay going home after school.
“Who can clean the blackboards and clap the erasers?”
“Me, Sister, me!”
“Who can alphabetize all these test papers for me?”
“Me, Sister, me!”
I would even volunteer to stay after school and clean the convent. Yes, CLEAN THE CONVENT! That is how desperate I was to stay out of the cross hairs of chaos called home.
(But I did get a scandalous eyeful of the nuns’ underwear hanging on the clothesline! BONUS!)
Catholic school was my salvation but it was not free. No cheap grace here.
There was the ever present threat of eternal damnation, everlasting hell fire: pretty f*ing scary to an eight year old.
So I memorized the hell out of my Baltimore Catechism.
“Who made me?”
“God made me?
“Why did God make me?
“God made me to love and serve him for all eternity.”
I rattled my rosary beads like there was no tomorrow. (Well, maybe there was NO tomorrow!!)
Scarier than Hell was getting stuck in the eternally boring feedback loop of Purgatory – not just for myself but for all of my dead relatives, as well. Whose full names I wrote in the back of my Saint Joseph Missal:
Bernard Francis Peacock, Sr.
Benjamin Joseph Cady
I wrote their full names, I guess, so God would not get my grandfathers mixed up with anybody else’s grandfathers.
One loop of the rosary, could buy them a thirty-day get out of Purgatory early card. Two loops could lessen their sentence by sixty.
Eight years old, I was responsible for their immortal souls! Scary, scary stuff.
And God forbid, I commit my own grammar school mortal sin. MORTAL – meaning just that – that I would go straight to Hell if I forgot to confess it – if I should die before I wake.
(And whoever came up with that crappy, crappy prayer for a little child to pray as their parents terrifyingly tucked them into bed? To Purgatory they should go.)
So at Holy Family School, every Friday, I was first in line for morning confession.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession. Father, I have (FILL IN THE BLANK).”
Thoroughly prepped on Thursday by Sister Whoever, having examined my conscience and run through the Ten Commandments, I went into the booth fully armed with “THE LIST”.
Which I would pad with a few extra sins, here and there, just to be on the safe side.
No false gods? No problem. I did not worship Baal this week.
No idols? No problem. I did not carve any graven images this week, whatever that means.
The Lord’s name in vain? Put me down for two “God Damns” and three “Jesus, Mary, and Josephs.”
Sabbath holy? Holy Day of obligation? No problem. Stars in my crown. I get my butt to Mass every Sunday.
Honoring mom and dad? Truth be told. I have been disobedient all over the place. Put me down for ten.
Adultery? Sister says that’s “impure thoughts.” The lust of an eight-year old. Put me down once for Michael Spillane and twice for Jimmy Sinkieweiz.
False witness? Well, not in a court of law but fibs, white lies abundant. Put me down for six.
Coveting? What the hell is that? O, wanting other people’s stuff. Veronica’s red patent leather sparkly shoes. I confess to one.
Stealing? Well, a cookie or two, out of the cookie jar. Purely, grade school stuff.
Murder? Murder? I did think about bashing my little brother’s brains in but I managed to avoid the temptation.
And this is just for one week. Saving my soul was exhausting. And by the fourth grade, the system started breaking down. Little cracks were beginning to splinter my little Catholic psyche.
My little hand kept shooting up in the air, of course. I knew my catechism, just about better than other little RC kid in my class. But having reached the ripe old “age of reason”, I started thinking on my own.
Catechism answers turned into questions. Lots of questions.
“Hmmm. ‘transubstantiation’. Sister, why would Jesus want us to eat him and to drink him? That makes no sense.”
“Hmmm, one true church? True? According to who?”
“Hmmm, limbo? Poor little, unbaptized babies sitting in the dark for all eternity? What kind of f*ing God is that?
(I did not really say the “F word” but I do enjoy writing it that way.)
By seventh grade, my questions grew bolder.
“Hmmm, French kissing? Tongues touching is a mortal sin? A kiss on the lips is a venial sin? A kiss on the cheek is okay? Where is that in the bible, Sister?”
And in my sophomore year, at Immaculata Preparatory School, I took on the Pope himself – and Humanae Vitae – Pope Paul VI’s crazy encyclical banning birth control.
Star of the debating team, I gave a speech taking on the persona of an unfertilized egg – yes, an unfertilized egg — which I followed all the way through the menstrual cycle and the reproductive system in great detail.
The egg triumphs!
Legions of sperm go down in defeat!
And not a single life is lost!
Yes, I said these things.
Brilliant, right?
Well, to me, yes, but not so much to Sister Mary Clare, the principal at my prep school.
She called me into her office.
“Joani,” she said. “You have to stop. You have to stop asking questions in religion class.”
“Why?” I shoot back. “That’s what school is for, right? Learning? Asking questions?”
“Not for you, Joani. You have to stop. You are confusing the other girls.”
“Really?” And thenI risk one more “why?”.
“Yes, my child, you have to stop.”
And then Sister says, and I quote, these words which have forever hence changed my life.
“Joani, you are intellectually gifted but spiritually retarded. You are risking your immortal soul – and theirs too.”
Yes, Catholic school saved me. This conversation with Sister Mary Clare saved me.
So, I skipped my senior year at Immaculata Prep and got early admission to Catholic University. (Yes, Catholic University). There, at CUA, I became a philosophy major, where I could ask all the GD, F*ing questions I wanted.
Sorry, Sister Mary Clare. You might be right. I might be about to lose my immortal soul. But I will truly be damned, if I am going to lose my mind.
A mind, you know, is a terrible thing to waste.
And I am very fond of mine.
(And truth be told, this is how I grew up to become an Anglican.)
Besides being the 1st Sunday after Christmas and of course, New Year’s Day, the 1st of January is also the Feast of the Holy Name.
And this conflating of dates got me to thinking: what’s in a name? Where do they come from? And what do they mean?
Family names, of course, come from family. But what about our first names? What about what we used to call our Christian name – given to us at our Christening?
Born in the winter of 1955, I am the third baby bird of six. My mother, on her third day of lying in at Providence Hospital, still had not come up with a name for Baby Girl Peacock.
In walks a nurse, a Sister of Charity. “What’s your name?” my mother asks her. “Joan”, she says, “Joan.” So that’s what my mom writes on my birth certificate: Joan. And for a middle name, she throws in her own: Louise.
Joan Louise: named not for Joan Fontaine, not for Joan Crawford, not for Joan Rivers and not even possibly for the Catholic saint – Joan of Arc . This Joan was named for a kind yet random stranger.
Adding insult to injury, my name is also just a single syllable, as plain Jane (or as lonely Joan) as you can get.
As a kid, I tried very hard – on paper, at least, to stretch my name into something more significant. I added letters: J-o-a-n became J-o-a-n-I- became J-o-a-n-i-E became J-o-a-n-N-i-e.
As a middle child, who regularly disappeared into the woodwork, I wanted my name to matter. I wanted it to mean something.
So what’s in a name, your name, and what does it mean?
And since it’s the Feast of the Holy Name, what’s up with the mysterious and mystical name of God?
The Hebrew name of God was so holy and so sacred it was unspeakable. Marked out by four consonants – YHWH – it was never to be pronounced. Never to be prayed aloud.
But that did not keep God’s people, old and new, from calling on HER by every name they could think of (and to name just a few:)
I AM THAT I AM
Ancient of Days
Adonai
Elohim
O Holy One(s)
El-Shaddai
The Almighty
Wisdom Divine
Hagia Sophia
Everlasting
The Most High
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The God of Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel
The Desire of the Nations
King of Kings
Lord of Lords
Prince of Peace
The God of Mary, the God of Joseph
Yeshua
Jesus
Emmanuel
The Light of the World
The Word Incarnate
The Word made flesh
Meister Eckhart, a mystic of the middle ages, wrote: “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” And each person born into this world is a “little word” of God.
EVERY person born into this godforsaken world is conceived as a little word of God.
And no matter our “Christian” names (or Islamic or Hindu or Jewish or Mormon or Agnostic names), we are put on this earth to name and proclaim all that is holy and good –
– in ways both little and large.
To name it and proclaim it — in the midst of all that is NOT so holy and NOT so good.
In the fallout of all things 2016,
this 2017, let’s make a resolution or two,
that with God’s help, we remain faithful to, all the year long.
To no longer label and segregate our neighbors –but — to love and serve our neighbors, as ourselves;
To tame our wicked and wounding tongues,
so that we may make flesh these healing words of God:
