My life In 20 Memories: List Writing
My Life in 20 #Memories
“And as you walk your road, as you live your life, RELISH THE ROAD. And relish the fact that the road of your life will probably be a windy road”
My Life Told In 20 Memories Over 47 Years
My life told in 20 memories over 47 years. The truth about my mere existence as I see it and a conversation with my mother.
I remember/I was told....
I was born in 1962 in York County, S.C. to a teenage girl out of wedlock.
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A small town bares secrets. My name was once “Adams” turned to “Best” but could have been “McClure”. I hear they all lived on the same side of the railroad tracks, the McClures and the Adams. I use to see those tracks when me a mama walked to town to shop in Clover, S.C.
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My grandparents love and sustained me in my first 5 years of life. Back in Clover it was granddaddy, mama and me. Grandparents raised the children back then as some do today.
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Memories? I have very little recollection of my life prior to age 5. I remember black patent leather shoes; walking to town with mama; attending Sunday school and vacation bible school in the summertime where we played Ring Around the Rosie at the AME church.
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The cat licked my pacifier. What a very random first memory. Ah yes, Mama's neighbor and friend Miss Cora's cat licked my pacifier and I never ever sucked another again because, of course, I thought her cat licked every last pacifier in the world.
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I remember that my mother was in college. I went to visit her one time. I remember my kinky hair being combed in her dorm room. OUCH, that hurt. I don't recall why I was there. But know now it was for a visit.
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My mother met her future husband and my future dad or adopted dad or step dad in that college named Barber Scocia in Concord, N.C. I didn't know the difference back then. It was a secret anyway. That dad was supposed to be the only one. Or at least that was the plan.
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They got married after college. I know because I saw a picture of the happy couple. My mother in a blue dress was hugged up to the 6'3" slim man in a suit in mama and granddaddy's dining room. It was their reception I guess.
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After the marriage deals were sealed so were the adoption papers. That was when my name changed from “Adams” to “Best”. As I said before, It was all a secret anyway back then. All I know is that I left my lifeline and joined the newly married couple. Unhappily as I remember it.
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My brain was frozen in time. Lord I missed my grandma (mama). My brain never allowed me to address my new parents by that passionate name mama and daddy. I had always called them by their first names. I remember that since we were a family, they wanted me to call them what I called Mama and granddaddy. The brain can't switch on and off like a light so I called them nothing. I just started talking like I do today. It was a neurological disorder so the doc said in my adulthood. A blockage of the brain they call it. A wall never penetrated. My brain would only let my mouth say mama and granddaddy. Since I didn't have them any longer, the wall turned to brick. It was a dead end and so today I still just start talking.
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My new life in Atlanta began in the first grade. I attended St. Anthony's Catholic school where the nuns took the ruler to my hands on a regular basis (corporal punishment was okay in the 60s). My conduct grades were always a D (minus). Nothing more, nothing less. I'll never forget it. From there I became a military brat moving to Kentucky, Germany, Texas and back to Atlanta.
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I'm a pre-teen now. My uncle Bob almost told me that family secret. He said, "we need to talk one day". One day never came and one day down the road I asked him what that thing was he wanted to say. He responded, "I don't remember". Today looking back, I know it was the family secret. He didn't live long enough to see me find the truth. I also realized that he thought better of spilling the beans. Oh, that was a no-no among families back in the day.
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In my senior year in high school the divorce decree was sitting there in the closet. I happened upon it when my parents broke up. The words, "And the adopted daughter of Edward J. Best." confirmed everything in that very sentence. Everything I had thought but was never told. In that moment, my life changed forever.
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After graduation I left home like a thief in the night never to return. I convinced myself that living on the edge with no plans of survival was the lessor of evils that awaited me at home. I use to tell my daughter most times when she left the house, "don't do anything life threatening today". I realize now that I said those words to her because I did just that. Life threatening things.
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The secret had two parts of which I only had knowledge of one until much later in life. I found I was adopted at age 17 but would be 47 before I knew that my last name could have been McClure.
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I often searched for my biological father but that brick wall called sealed adoption surfaced every time.
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FINALLY, the truth came in my mid-forties thanks to my first cousin. Cousins are like the siblings you never had.
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The Hard Conversations followed. With big reveals such as mine means big conversations with those whose lives will forever change in the blink of eye because I know who exactly my biological father is. I know why I have those dark circles under my eyes and why I have high cholesterol.
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Confronting my mother was rather scary. After all, I feared her all of my life. My mother feels justified and has no regrets. She wanted a better life for me. She wanted a father for me. She wanted a happy family. "She"!
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A father's love is unconditional. My final conversation about this adoption matter was with my father on Martin Luther King day, 2009. The father that raised me; the one that never ever disowned me; the one that signed for me back then. He waited patiently as I met my biological father not knowing if he would lose a daughter. He's not my stepfather, he's my father signed, unsealed and delivered, EJB, JR.
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