It's All Fiction

I called my brother Ross the other day- Ross lives in Boise( my home town) so I do not see him very often. I should communicate with Ross more then I do. Ross did not attend the reunion this summer. I am not surprised. Ross feels he has been forgotten by the family actually I do too and it is not necessarily forgotten possibly more like disowned or removed. I really don't think disowned is the right word but I know what he means. I have labored the point before that we ( our family)was all adopted one way or the other. I have know this forever. The fact that I am adopted child was never hidden from me. In fact the fact I was adopted was always a point of honor between my mom and myself and my world. Mom would always go on about how she had choice of accepting and adopting whom she did.

I think I really first started feeling an “outsider” in the last years of my mothers life. I started noticing more and more a feeling of difference between me and the rest of the kids and how mom treated us. It there was nothing sinister of despicable, just different. I noticed more contact with the cousins and aunts and uncles. Mom was always writing letters and send cards and trying to keep the family together but we were drifting or at least I was. There is always the incident of dad's funeral and how I almost missed the whole event because I was not called—I wrote it off as just getting lost in the mill—so much was happening. Dianne and I made it to the funeral proceeding but just barely, after driving all night. Then there is all the missed ball games, church programs and barbecues where we just were not invited. And I know my sister Faye, is going to call me 'crybaby' and who know, Faye may even be right but isolated an disowned is what it feels like.

In the past couple of years since all these feelings have been popping out between me and my brother I have tried to down play the whole phenomenon, first to my brother, my wife and even to a little bit my grand daughter,who is always searching for someone to play with and of course one always looks to cousins but the cousins or opportunities were few and far between, seeming to have to move heaven and earth to pull off such an event. So I noticed with interest, I was engaging my brother Ross,for the first time as a confident and visiting the issue of being the family outcasts. I am still not at the point where he is where he just will no longer engage with family or participate in family functons.I most likely, am just in denial or fear that Ross is right ( which I believe he may be) I don't want to face the beast head on and cut myself loose—I do love these people,I do. I did not move. I still have and history and feeling with those I felt I was raised. I still have a need to see them and hear their voices and know how they are doing. I need to have the “Walton experience” of belonging to a tribe of believing I have the Saturday Evening Post cover of Thanksgiving: huge extended family sitting round a holiday table laden with the turkey, and fixens and unconditional love and acceptance. The great American fiction.