Loose Bindings

A memoir belonging to a girl who is being placed up for adoption.

Loose Bindings

 

 Families are forever so I am told. A mother, a father, maybe even a sister or a brother.  This is the picture one gets when they think of family. Families are as strong a book’s binding. If the book’s binding is strong the papers are protected. If the binding is weak, the papers are exposed allowing their knowledge to be lost forever. Families have the binding of love. Sometimes even the binding of love is not strong enough to hold all the papers safely.

 

 On June 6, 1991, I fell out of a family’s binding. The process was slow and gradual. Most papers in a binding are original, put there intentionally by the authors. Not me. I was the paper that was grafted into this family’s binding. I was adopted seven years previous by the same family that I was being torn from.

 

 Have you ever seen a paper drift in the air as a gentle summer breeze carries the paper softly to the floor? This is how my falling happened. I was not ripped out by violence or out of an angry outrage, it was a falling so soft I had no idea I was being ripped from the family until that very morning. Soft whispers were in the air giving me the tell tale signs I would one day be ripped from this family. However, they were so gentle like the changing of rocks under a gentle stream. There are changes but ever so gradual one can almost not see them with the naked eye. Perhaps if I was able to know with my heart what my head already knew I would have been able to glue my ripped soul back together enough to change their minds and stay in the safe bindings of their family. However, my doom had come like a raging fire, consuming me one burn at a time.

 

 That June sixth morning was a morning like any other. My routine was exactly the same except for minor details. A name brand outfit lay on my bed. All my dressers were empty, as if I had never lived in the room for the last four years. My clothes went ahead of me to Texas my final destination. Even though, I woke up to my parents the papers were signed weeks ago. That morning I woke up an orphan. All they had to do now was put me neatly on the plane. I was cargo belonging to someone else now. I was a ward of an adoption agency that placed me with them. I was being returned. I wondered if people got refunds for children. I guess not. The ten thousand put up was not returned for the legal fees for both my brother and I.  It was a cruel reminder that indeed I was a bad investment.

 

 

Loose Bindings

 

 The rain pitter pattered gently on the window as I got dressed in a room that was no longer mine. It would be turned into a study as soon as it aired out. I sighed at the thought and tried to imagine it differently to no avail. To me it was my room. The gentle falling of rain coming down resembled the tears I could not cry. I guess the clouds themselves felt sorry about my plight and spilled over in sorrow on my behalf. I went downstairs for my last breakfast. The things that bind families like meals together had been lost a long time ago. Even today I ate by myself. I was a page alone. A page can only go so far. I was only a piece of the story. As they were giving me up, a piece of their story would be lost forever.

 

 A part of my eleven year old soul died that day. I know how it feels for a prisoner to have their last meal. You relish every bite and memorize your surroundings. Unsure of what awaits you on the other side. Fear and loneliness kill any morsel of hope that dares pollinate any part of your mind and soul.

 

 Time goes by quickly and I have to make my rounds of good-byes. Like a doctor in a hospital saying good bye on his last shift to his patients on their last leg of life.  I make my rounds to everyone in the house for my final farewell. I drag my feet to say good bye to my brother who was two when he entered into the binding. He was a young page that could be molded and cut to any form to fit the size of the book. I was burned and abused and literally there was nothing left to cut away. To cut me to fit me to size there would have been nothing left of me. He was salvageable. I quickly hug and kiss him and turn away before I start to cry. I lug my feet back down the stairs to kiss their naturally bound daughter good bye.

 

 Then time stands still as I have to say farewell to the lady with beautiful blond hair and enchanting blue eyes. I know that in reality I could never be hers. I have wild curly auburn hair and bright mischievous brown eyes. However, staring in her face that morning my heart longs to stay even if I don’t fit. How do you say good bye to your mother? I do not know the agony she faced hearing my tears and looking at the back of my Annie like hair and not cling to me one last time. She did not though. She followed me into the kitchen and I walked out to the garage with my father. That was the last time I saw those perfectly matched blue eyes, to this day I have never seen a hue quite like them.

 

 As I walked that short distance from the kitchen to the garage to the vehicle, I realized how damaged I truly was. Too damaged to be repaired by doctors or shrinks, I was a lost cause and now I would be alone. I would never fit back into this family’s binding.

 

 My dad talked the whole way to the airport. All I could think about was Texas and the group home I was going to. To me it was a recycling facility. All the papers that did not fit into their bindings for whatever reason were sent there. No one cared about them even if they were burned in life’s fire, they were considered a burden. Yet mostly it was because really bad things happened to us. I had my secret shame that would take years to be released. I wonder if the book is not perfect is that the book’s fault or the owner of the book? The reality is my first family had no bindings. I was thrown around like garbage. My second family could not put me in their binding because I had pieces I could not give them. They could not get to the treasure in me because half the map was missing to my heart. It stayed that way for many years.

 

  We finally arrive at the airport. The rain is still pouring down. I was sad and very happy the sun did not shine that day. We walk through the terminals and he kneels to look me in the eyes. I see a sadness that I cannot quite explain. The question running through my mind, if this is making you sad why are you giving me away? However, I am not brave enough to ask and simply carry on. I want to blend in and not make a scene. He then hands me over like cargo to a lady that is tall with bleach blonde hair and he never looks back. I watch him until I can no longer make him out in the crowds of people. He was a solder in Vietnam. I though no man got left behind? Now he leaves behind his eldest daughter to face her own war within herself. I will always be that page he never got to the end. I feel bad knowing that he will one day regret this. If he does not by the time he gets to his car, I would be surprised.

 

 At that very moment I am now the lost paper with no binding. No protection from the elements. No protection from strangers. I have no identity. I am a nameless sheet among the masses wondering if there is a book that will take me in. Waiting always waiting to be grafted this is how I will always be. Perhaps one day, people will read the beauty between the lines that are hidden and priceless and will want me just as I am. However, for today I am an orphan that fell out of a loose binding.