Aimee, listen closely.
First. You will meet your mother. This will not solve all your problems, though you wish it would, and this will be a pitfall so deep it will nearly cost you your relationship. But she will look like you and smell like you and talk and walk and move like you. She will act like you and overreact like you so when people say your adoptive mother says oh, you really have no sense of humor, Aimee and you’re being so dramatic, Aimee, you will realize it is your mother you are being exactly like. She, too, is very serious and dramatic. When you and she are this way together, you will roll your eyes and laugh conspiratorially because it is so uproariously funny. She is adopted too, which you will find means you share your deepest fears and worst behaviors. You will have moments of surprise twinning, which bring you closeness, and moments of fury and frustration, which bring you near estrangement. It will be humbling when you realize it is you who tries to slam the door on her while she wedges it open for when you are ready. You will be overjoyed when the birth of your first daughter seems to resolve all your mutual adoption trauma and shocked when she dies before your second pregnancy. You will name that baby after her and miss her every day for the rest of your life.
Second. You will meet your father. He will also not solve your problems. He will look just like you in the ways you don’t look like your mother. He will be difficult and quirky, but he will rain down unconditional love upon you, his first child, and you will be equal parts infuriated by and endeared to him. You will see yourself in him, and you won’t be able to get enough of him. You will be unable to do much when his behavior changes abruptly, he loses his sobriety, and he calls you at weird hours to beg you first for help and then forgiveness. You will be confused and devastated by his suicide.
You will learn you are loved. You always were. You will spend much of your life thinking your existence has no meaning because you were born and no one wanted you. Because you spent six months in foster care. Because your adoptive mother never told you she loved you. Because you don’t know how to be a human being and you will try more than once not to be. But it is your father, your sweet, resentful, addict father, who will tell you that you were born of love. He and your mother were kids, he will say, but they loved each other like they never loved anyone else before or since.
This will ground you when you hear it and remind you that you might not have been planned, but you were not a mistake. The world needs you in it, and you will come to savor every minute of your life.
Wait. I have a few more things.
You are beautiful. You will realize it when you see your birth mother. She is shaped just like you: small frame, big butt, thick thighs, and she is so stunning that she lights up any room she walks into. Seeing her makes you understand that whenever people said the same thing about you they were telling the truth.
Know, too: you are wildly talented, brilliant, ambitious, and determined. You are inquisitive and an acute observer. You learn quickly and retain much. You will accomplish many things in your lifetime. You will be a spouse and a mother, and your children will come from your body, and that will be the very best thing you ever do. And you will write about it all someday.
Read this many times as you need to hear it. Soak in it. Revel in it. Loved, beautiful, brilliant. And that makes you powerful. You will do so much.
But Aimee, that doesn’t mean things will be easy. You will fight for every minute of joy, but when you feel that joy, Aimee, it will taste so good, and you will treasure it.
Imagine me slipping this letter into some secret pocket for you to carry with you every day until we meet again.
Love, Aimee
***
Rumpus original art by Madeline Kreider Carlson
