Last Suppers

I read in the Saturday paper that an artist has started a sideline of delivering a duplicate of the last meal ordered by the prisoner of your choice on death row just prior to execution. Apparently, thus far, he has had a dozen takers. (An interesting number, it suddenly occurs to me.) He provides this service for $20.00. He says it isn’t a money making proposition.

It’s always interesting to hear the philosophical underpinnings to people’s actions. The artist says this isn’t about food. He says it’s about how a glazed doughnut can make you think about your own mortality or about moral issues like the death penalty. There can be no substitutions. He says his clients consist primarily of “young, white, educated men.” He has delivered to diverse areas of the city – from public housing to the equivalent of Georgetown or the Upper East Side.

There is a meal that I have always thought of as my last supper. It was served to me, ironically, by my boyfriend’s mother who ran a diner and did not know I was pregnant by her son at the time. I don’t recall specifically why I ended up having this meal but I remember exactly what it was – a hot roast beef sandwich. I can see myself eating it as I write this, feeling very much like a condemned man. I suspect I asked for something to eat because I was trying to delay what was going to happen next. After a long talk and drive in the country, my boyfriend and I were going to tell my parents that I was pregnant.

I wonder now as I write about this – I have never told anybody about that meal before – why I didn’t blurt out the truth to my son’s grandmother as she served me that sandwich. She and I got on well. I always thought she liked me a lot. She met my mother on the street one day after I had had my son and expressed sorrow that her son and I had broken up because she always thought we would get married. We had been going out for almost four years.

My mother, of course, said nothing about me being pregnant.

I wonder if I had told his mother that day of the roast beef sandwich if she might have been my last minute appeal to the governor – the reprieve. She might have had a different attitude than my parents. But I didn’t. It didn’t even occur to me so much had I bought into, I hesitate to write shame but I think that’s what it was – the shame of my(?) predicament.

My boyfriend and I went on to tell first, my father who came out to the car. I had the impression my boyfriend could not turn me over to the folks fast enough. Then my father and I went in to tell my mother. It didn’t go well. There was much screaming. Accusations. Nasty words used to describe me. I remember my dog giving me a lick and being very concerned as I sat there crying. Dogs – a lesson in unconditional love.

My boyfriend’s mother never met my son. Sadly she died, at a relatively young age, before I found him. Too bad because I think she would have liked him a lot and would have been quite happy to learn of his existence.

A few years ago, just before the trouble in our relationship suddenly started, I travelled across the country to visit my son. We had a wonderful time. He told me he instructed his girlfriend to only say good things about him. He cooked dinner for me. He showed me projects he had done to make their apartment better. He took me to a secret place in the woods that he liked to visit when he was walking his dogs. He took me to a place in the country where he hoped to buy property one day. He introduced me to his business associates as his Mom. We celebrated the 18th anniversary of the day we met in a beautiful restaurant with a magnificent view of the Pacific.

His girlfriend and I went on a girls’ road trip to a resort about an hour away. We had lunch and she kept telling me it was so strange to look at me because it was his eyes looking back at her. He told me later she said she felt much more comfortable with me than his adoptive parents.

The day I left, as we said good-bye, I was determined not to cry because I worried I might not stop. But he did, he had tears in his eyes. We clung to each other in a final hug.

I talked to him many times but only saw him one more time after that. He stopped in on his way home from Europe. He brought my daughter a beautiful outfit. He took the three of us, me, husband, daughter, out to dinner. About 6 months later, the trouble started.

I can’t remember what I ate that that Sunday night he took us out but I hope it was not our last supper together.

I would pay way more than twenty dollars to sit down to that meal with him again.

Peace

UM

Did I hear this right?

I clicked over to Good Morning America for just a second this morning and there was a panel discussing the pregnant Palin teen. Brief discussion about Juno, changing views on pregnancy and then I thought I heard one of the group say, “[Unlike Juno], she’s going to do the right thing and keep her baby.” I don’t think it was in relation to abortion I think it was in relation to adoption.

Are we finally getting somewhere?

It’s all relative, morality wise …

From Wikipedia:

In philosophy, moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition’s truth; moral subjectivism is thus the opposite of moral absolutism.

Relativistic positions often see moral values as applicable only within certain cultural boundaries … or in the context of individual preferences …. An extreme relativist position might suggest that judging the moral or ethical judgments or acts of another person or group has no meaning, though most relativists propound a more limited version of the theory. In moral relativism there are no absolute rights and wrongs, only different situations.

Some moral relativists — for example, the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre — hold that a personal and subjective moral core lies or ought to lie at the base of individuals’ moral acts. In this view public morality reflects social convention, and only personal, subjective morality expresses true authenticity.

My uncle died yesterday.

He was a nice man, the youngest of 7 children on my mother’s side. He worked hard, raised four kids. A quiet man, married to a vivacious French Canadian woman. Once he told me that when he was a little kid, the teacher in kindergarten thought he was so cute that she used to hug him all the time.

When the older members of your family pass away, you realize a door is closing that will never be re-opened. The people of your childhood are disappearing. Opportunities to learn more about who you are have been lost. That the visit you were meaning to make, well it’s too late now.

His oldest daughter, my cousin, relinquished a child, a boy, to adoption. She’s had some trouble in her life. (I wonder why?) She’s never looked for her son. She knows I found mine. She’s met him. When I’ve hit rocky patches in my reunion, she’s said maybe it’s just as well she never looked. I guess she’s frightened.

Her son would have been my uncle’s first grandchild. I wonder if they look alike, blonde hair blue eyes. Good looking. He’d be almost 40 now. He probably has a wife and some kids.

I wonder if he felt a little tug on his heart from somewhere yesterday? A little something wrong? Did he hear the click of a door closing in front of him – forever?

About ten years ago, the same cousin’s youngest brother fathered a child. He was not in a committed relationship with the woman but she had the baby and he shares custody and brings his son to many family occasions.

Sunday my husband and I are driving to attend the memorial service. That son, no doubt, will be there with his father, helping to remind him that life goes on and family matters.

People tell me that when I write fiction “moral relativism” is one of my recurring themes. I like to think they say that because I create sympathetic characters who the reader understands and even approves of when they do things society usually frowns upon. ( I wonder why?)

Forty years ago my cousin did one of the worst things a girl could possibly do. She got pregnant. Her son is lost to her and us. A terrible price to pay.

Ten years ago her brother did the same thing.

Her brother’s son is part of the family. The same people who took attitudes of moral indignation over her situation (and my own), welcome his son with open arms.

That is a perfect example of moral relativism to me.  And why on my Facebook page I describe my religious views as flexible.

Peace

UM

Suppose you are pregnant…

Suppose you are pregnant and it doesn’t look like your relationship will or can turn into a permanent one. Suppose you are young. You are all these things? Then read on.

I’ve been there and I know how terrifying it can be. You feel trapped, frightened and alone. Nothing like Juno.

No matter what anybody tells you, no matter how smart-assed and cool Juno was and no matter how much everyone thought that movie was great, it was, in all aspects, not realistic about the emotions of relinquishing a child for adoption. You will not just give birth and go back happily to play the guitar with the guy you liked or were in love with. And if you do, you will do it by shutting down the part of yourself where you feel and it will take years to get it back, if in fact you do get it back.

Will they make Juno II in eighteen years when Juno may just meet that child and he, who no doubt will be just as smart ass as his mother, will say “Why did you give me up?”

“So I could play the guitar with my boyfriend,” won’t sound like a very darn good reason to Juno or to him.

Statistically, 60% of women who relinquish a child for adoption never have any more children.

If your decision is to continue with your pregnancy, think about it, please. For your sake and your child’s.

Look seriously at your options and your prospects for the long term not just the short term. Think about where you can find support, emotional and financial. Don’t let adoption be a long term solution to a short term problem.

Adoption is no guarantee of a wonderful life. Don’t let anyone convince you that you represent the deprived end of the spectrum and prospective adoptive parents represent the perfect full and happy life end. There are no perfect people. No one can make any such guarantee. It might work out well but then again it might not. Adoptive parents can get divorced, die, fool around on their spouses and maybe even sometimes not be warm and loving to the kids, just like everybody else. They may have money and you don’t but, money does not guarantee love. The United Nations has said that it is a child’s right to be raised by it’s own parents.

Don’t listen to people who want to get their hands on your baby or people who just want the whole problem of your pregnancy to go away. Giving a baby up for adoption may seem like a short term gain but it is long term pain.

I am a happy person, I don’t want to be angry or bitter or anything else. I am married. I have a family and a dog. I have two university degrees. A good life. I don’t feel guilty but I do feel that giving my child up for adoption was a BIG mistake.

You have the benefit of our voices. Listen to them. We didn’t have that. I know you are probably young and frightened but please – just think.

Peace

UM