Tag: family

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9/11

Posted on by debthumanblog

My grandmother was a diehard republican. According to her, there was never a good democrat nor a bad republican. Only once did she say anything positive about a democrat and only once did she criticize a republican. I was a little kid when we talked about Truman dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. Even then I knew what we had done was wrong. My grandmother insisted atomic bombs were the only way to end the war. Many years later, she expressed her fury that Bush went to Hirohito’s funeral.

I’m from a suburb of Buffalo, NY but have lived in NM for the past 26 years. I retired from the NM Public Defender Dept. 10 years ago. On 9/11/01, I spent most of the day in a state of shock and disbelief. When I arrived at work, a colleague said a plane had hit one tower and the second plane was timed to be reported live. Another colleague told me the towers were gone. I was scheduled to be in court that morning. Partway through the docket, the courthouse was abruptly closed.

When I went home for lunch, I made the mistake of watching the news and seeing people who had jumped from the towers falling, falling, falling as they waited to die when they splattered themselves on the sidewalk.

The following day, I went to work and was asked several times if I knew anyone who had died in the attacks. I wanted to ask what I had done that gave them the impression I am so cold that I would come to work the day after someone I knew was blown up by a terrorist. But I didn’t. Instead, the following day I wore a tee shirt that I had purchased when I had been in New York City a few years prior. The tee shirt had drawings of tourist attractions in New York City including the twin towers. I had seen the towers and considered them incredibly ugly buildings. Unlike the romance and hope built into the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, the towers were huge, black cracker boxes devoid of personality or imagination. I considered my tee shirt a warning: say something I don’t like – such as suggesting I’m so cold I’d come to work after a friend had gotten blown up by a terrorist – and I’ll respond from my gut.

My emotional responses to 9/11 were about two weeks behind the rest of the people in the office. While my coworkers were recovering from the trauma, I was starting to feel the trauma for the first time. It was a weird disconnect that I felt I couldn’t discuss with anyone.

A few weeks after 9/11, I met with a juvenile client in my office. I had my law licenses and law school diploma on the wall behind my desk. The client saw I had graduated from law school in Buffalo, NY. The client said something about 9/11 and me being from New York. I don’t remember what I said. I do remember telling myself not to react or to say how I felt. That was harder than the times I couldn’t react when juvenile clients disclosed they had been raped by pedophiles.

I didn’t process the trauma I felt until 2021. Twenty years to carry trauma is an incredibly long time. That September, I watched all the documentaries I could find about 9/11. I thought I was done processing.

This year, I realized I am not finished processing the trauma. Last night, I was binging on episodes of Bones. The episode I saw was about 9/11. I cried through the entire episode. Then, I watched, for the third time, The Looming Tower – a documentary about how the CIA knew well in advance of the attack that an attack was coming but withheld the information from the FBI.

I take classes at New Mexico State University. I sit in classrooms filled with people who were born after 9/11. To them, 9/11 is history. To me, 9/11 is personal. To me, Pearl Harbor is history. To my grandmother, Pearl Harbor was personal.

Now I understand why she was furious that Bush attended Hirohito’s funeral.

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The End of Inhumane Secrecy

Posted on by debthumanblog

Recently, New York started allowing adoptees to get a copy of their original, pre-adoption birth certificate with the names of the birth parents. When I joined ALMA – Adoptees Liberty Movement Association – in 1987, pre adoption records could only be obtained on the black market. The price all throughout the east coast and as far west as Texas was $1500.00. I thought it remarkable that the entire black market had the same price. That smacks of an organization controlling access.

Instead, I spent hours and hours in Erie County Hall looking up property records. I spent hours and hours in the basement of Erie County Hall looking at jury records, immigration records and anything else that I could find. I discovered that my family on my mother’s side isn’t from Germany. On my great-great-grandfather’s immigration papers, he renounced allegiance to the kind of Prussia. They were from Dittersdorf, East Prussia.

I found my great-grandmother’s marriage records and discovered that she was several months pregnant when she got married. When I was born, my great-grandfather, perhaps remembering his own history, put a silver dollar in my hand.

For $45, I got documentation that originally I was not only not allowed to have by law, but was also not allowed to even know existed..

This is my original birth certificate. My mother made up my father’s middle name. What she didn’t know until I found my father and later told her is that my middle name, Lee, is a Harmon family name. It’s also my father’s middle name. It was the name of my great-grandfather. He died in the Chieftain Mine in West Virginia on his first day of work. My great-grandmother was pregnant. She likely was thrown out of mine company owned housing. She went back to live with her parents and never remarried.

I didn’t know that birth certificates were two pages. I didn’t know that my mother was tested for syphilis while she was pregnant. I’ve no idea if that was something only done to single women or if all pregnant women had to be tested for syphilis.

This is the last page of my order of adoption. It was all but impossible to get records unsealed. What shocks me is that my mother and The Drunk would have had to agree to let me see my own records.

And to Judge Jacob A. Latona, here’s a single finger salute. I got my records and I didn’t need a judge’s permission.

Why is all this important? Have you ever filled out a medical history that included you, your parents and your siblings? I used to just write: Pursuant to NYS Domestic Relations Law sec. 100-140 inclusive, I am not allowed to know the answers to any of these questions. My knowledge of my medical history came from finding my father and requesting death records of his father, brother, and grandmother.

Have you ever tried to do a family history perhaps through Ancestry? If you’re an adoptee, there’s no history. No story about where your family came from. No finding out about family heroes and family embarrassments. Every family has both.

After I found my father, I discovered I’m Scott-Irish on his side. That explains all the times I have been asked if I’m Irish. All that searching showed me I’m Polish on my mother’s side. Further searching and a chance reading of a novel showed me my grandmother’s horrible German was Yiddish. We aren’t just Polish, we are Polish Jews.

I worship in a temple, I celebrate Jewish holidays, and I treasure Hibernian Heritage Day (March 17) when I can celebrate who I’ve always been….a Scott-Irish, Polish Jew.

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Pass the Antidepressants, Please

Posted on by debthumanblog

I wish it were that simple. Send a card, everyone is nice. No bad memories to haunt me. It’s not simple. It’s a complex collection of traumatic events. Being an over achiever, I didn’t get regular PTSD. I got the hard-to-treat complex PTSD. It won’t go away. The memories won’t go away. The pain won’t go away. Worst of all, the depression won’t go away.

I’d like to go someplace today to cheer myself up. But it’s Christmas and everything is closed. Except for the Asian Buffet – overpriced, underwhelming, greasy all-you-can eat before the heartburn sets in restaurant. For the past few years, the reform temple to which I belong has made reservations at the Asian Buffet and members can come and enjoy the heartburn, and everyone pays for their own meal. I’ll skip that. I don’t know anyone who shows up and even the rabbi doesn’t attend the greasy festivities.

Hanukkah starts tonight, but I’m too depressed to make latkes.

I’d like to soak in the tub, but I’m too depressed.

I’d like to take a shower, but it’s too late in the day.

And so I eat cookies and worry about my weight. Maybe I”ll skip the tub and the shower and just get dressed.

I’d get up and take my psych meds, which includes an antidepressant, but I’m too depressed.

I have aches and pains that would be cured with exercise, but I’m too depressed to do a fitness routine that would take 15 minutes. Besides, my foot is sprained and the plantar fasciitis is back. And that’s why I can’t go for a walk which in my case would be going for a hobble.

Christmas is a collection of horrible memories. One Christmas, sometime between the ages of 4 and 8, my mother and The Drunk brought a Christmas tree into the house. I saw white stuff on the tree and asked what it was. My mother looked at The Drunk and said, “She’s so stupid she doesn’t even know what snow mold is.” I remember being confused by that.

There was the Christmas when The Drunk didn’t like the way I threw an apple core into the fire. He kept digging the apple core out of the fire place and making me throw it back in telling me he hoped I’d learn before I got burnt. He never tortured my three siblings like that.

There was the Christmas Eve at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. My brother said the advice he got from The Drunk was to have fun but be careful. I said that was horrible and that my brother could get a knock on the door in 20 years and find an adult child he didn’t know about. The Drunk said that could happen to him. That’s when I knew The Drunk wasn’t my father. A non-returnable Christmas present.

Another year, I didn’t hear from my mother and called my brother on Christmas Day asking if Ma was going to do Christmas. Yes. And then Ma bitched at my brother because she expected me to just know enough to come over. Actually, that’s not what happened. She wanted me to skip Christmas so she could say how peaceful it was without me and have an excuse to bar me from all future festivities including First Communions and baptisms. Which is what happened after the Thanksgiving that I skipped. I got an “invitation” from my brother’s wife to come but only if I promised not to fight with my mother. I initially accepted. A few. days later, I called her and said I wasn’t coming because we couldn’t trust my mother to behave. That’s when I stopped getting invited to family celebrations.

The Drunk is dead. He died 22 years ago. A friend sent me an email which is how I found out he was dead. My mother is dead. She died 9 years ago on my birthday. I subscribed to Legacy.com and got a copy of her obit in my email. Otherwise, I would never have known she died. I haven’t talked to my brother or sister, The Fruitcake, since. Actually, I didn’t talk to The Fruitcake then. Just as well, we have another to say that the other one wants to hear.

I don’t have a family. I never will.

I fucking hate Christmas.