Why Write?

When I did the audio recording for You Don’t Look Adopted, I was surprised by how holy the process felt. It was like I was in a confessional (having never been in one, I’m guessing), only there was no priest and no sin, only breath and sound. While I read my book out loud , I thought about my mother’s voice and how the only recordings I have of it are the three voice mails I’ve saved from when she had reports from her oncologist to share with me. The breathy, “Hi, Love…” The nervous voice. The shaping of bad news into news told to love.

I was leaving my voice for my daughter if she ever needed it after I was gone.

If my mother had been around to do the Audible version of her book Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams, I would often listen to it. I wouldn’t be listening to what she said as much as how she said it. I would be listening for her as she read.

I lived so long with the fear of being wrong when I wrote. Of making mistakes, of getting the spelling or punctuation wrong, of getting verb tenses wrong, of looking stupid. This translates into living life in a similar manner. I am passionate about helping people get their stories to paper for so many reasons. One is so they can record their work and leave their voice for anyone who might need it.

My mom burned her journals when she was young.

I wish I knew what she had written. How can we get full permission to be ourselves when people closet their truths and present what they feel should get them an A? It’s so boring to have a mom and to be a mom who is trying to be who she isn’t. More than boring, it’s excruciating, because if she can’t be herself in front of you, and if you can’t be yourself in front of your child, how is it okay for a person to be themselves anywhere?

I wanted to be a good mother. I still do. In part, this invites costumes, masks, tightness, refusal of truths. I have come to deeply appreciate the idea of good enough. My mother was good enough. So good enough. I’d like to go through a people version of a deep-clean car wash and blow out every fashion magazine I’ve ever read, every TV show and movie I’ve ever watched, every imagine of a person that was in some way retouched to look more perfect than the original just to see how my brain perceives myself and others then.

I’d like to have had pictures of my biological family taped to a full-length mirror when I was a child, so I could see my DNA when I saw my own reflection. If I’d had that, I’d like to see if I felt any different in my body now.

I was going through my father’s files when we moved him into assisted living, and I found a folder marked "Bereavement.” In it, there were three small pieces of lined white paper stapled together. “Dear Margery,” my father had written. “I love you. I love to write your name. Margery.” He’d taken a bereavement class a year after my mom had died, and it looks like he’d been asked to write a letter to my mother telling her about his life and how he was feeling. He’s still alive, and the letter feels too personal for even me to share here, but it was the beginning I wanted to show you, anyway.

We write, we live, so we can say the names of people and things we love.