The First Phone Call

May 16, 2000

Excerpt from my birthmother Irene's letter to me:

"Kate, I agree with you that a phone call would be great now. Here's my phone number....I promise to try not to cry the whole time. When? I will leave it up to you. Looking forward to hearing from you soon."

May 29, 2000

From my journal:

I talked with Irene, my birthmother, for the first time today. I was really nervous. I thought about her phone number all weekend long. Burnin' a hole in my brain. Knew it would be today, had to. Couldn't go through another week without calling. Panicking - is this the right time? What if she doesn't answer? Do I leave a message? What if Larry (her husband) answers? What if Susan (her daughter) answers? Oh my god.

Irene answers. She knew it was me right away. She said she'd wondered, as she picked up the phone - "I wonder if this is Kate?" 3:15 pm on an unsuspecting Memorial Day. A 43 year-old woman talks to her mother for the first time, ever.

I listened so carefully to her voice. I wanted to hear my voice in hers. Did I? I don't know. I wanted to. I told Irene, at the end, that I had listened so carefully. She said she'd lived in Pennsylvania so long that she'd picked up an accent, and mine, well it was a New England accent. A New England accent? I wanted to sound like, I don't know, her daughter, her baby, beautiful and pristine! A New England accent? "What's that?"....I hope not a Boston accent. I hope she liked my voice, what if she didn't?

(NB: in case you don't know, New England is full of regional accents - I grew up north of Boston and I have a distinctive accent (watered down now by living in Oregon), but not what some might call a Boston accent, which is really south Boston - think Teddy Kennedy).

We talked about mundane things, gardens, husbands, children, who cooks dinner, who doesn't. Fred loves gardening, Larry doesn't. Girl stuff. Married lady stuff. Is it daughter stuff? I don't know. What's a daughter? Who is the mother? There's mother and there's mom. Two completely different people. But I want to belong to both. I want to belong to two families. I want my sisters and my half-sisters, my mother and my birth-mother, my dad and my who-the-heck is he...my birth step-dad? (Referring to Irene's husband Larry.) I need to meet them, to meet her, to reject her, accept her, to find my ground with her, with them, with my half-sisters. The only blood relatives on the planet that I know of, besides Justin (my son). She's Justin's grandmother! Yikes!

Her voice was lyrical, thoughtful. I was thinking of sunlight and backyards and green lawns and rolling hills while I talked with her. I'm not scared anymore. Look at how far we've come. We were two scared people and now it's okay to feel like mother and daughter. Maybe okay, we'll see. As Irene always says "When things settle down." Aren't I lucky?

Her voice was like a song, it lilted with the wind. It was slow and thoughtful and careful and patient and oh so sweet. Like a breath of air on the wind. How painful is this to her? How strong is she? Can she hold up under this weight that I'm thrusting on her shoulders?

My birthmother Irene at her retirement party in 1997

Irene - at her retirement party in 1997