Mom

by Dave Isay

  Madelyn, you were a total surprise. We were married twenty years—I was forty years old—and I found out that I was pregnant with you. We kept it to ourselves for a very long time, because we just assumed that I would miscarry as I had done previously, and lo and behold, there you were! By the time Madelyn came along, I was a fairly experienced mom, and one of the first questions a relative said was, “How does it feel now to have one of your own?” I was so taken aback by that—I was still in the hospital, Madelyn was all of six hours old, and my thought was: I already have two others of my own.What are you asking me? Maybe it was that post-birth fog or something, but I really couldn’t get what they were asking. In the middle of the night, I was holding Madelyn and it came to me. I said, Oh my gosh!What kind of dumb question was that?

  There were people who commented that Pete and Elizabeth and Madelyn weren’t really siblings because they had different biological parents, and we’d always say, “Of course they’re siblings. When one hugs the other, do they feel love for each other? Of course they do. If one has a fight with the other and pushes them around and they fall down, does it hurt? Yes, it does. Well, it’s the same no matter where they were born—they’re growing up in the same house, they’re being loved by the same parents, and they are as much brother and sisters as anybody else.” So I was always very protective.

  A lot of people asked if it felt different to parent an adopted child versus a biological child, but it was your personalities that made the relationship different, not the fact that you were adopted or biological. You’re just three very different people.

  Elizabeth Lisker: I remember when you sat Peter and I on the couch and you said that you had a surprise for us, you and Dad, and that you were going to have a baby. To be perfectly honest with you, I was quite upset, because I liked having the attention. Knowing that the baby was a girl, in my head—I mean, I was in the second grade—I thought I should be the only girl in the family.

  Susan: I remember when Dad and I told you, you cried for three hours the first night and a little bit for the next several nights afterwards. One of the things that you had said to me was that you thought there was no way we could love you as much as we would “a child that grew in my body”—those were the words that you used. Do you remember any of that?

  Elizabeth: I don’t remember, but when you’re growing up and you know that you’re adopted, and you go to school with kids that have biological parents, you just get in the mind-set that children that come from their biological parents are—they’re different, like in the way that their parents treat them, or that they love them more. I had the mind-set that you loved us the most because that’s all you knew, and that having a baby might change that. [laughs] It hasn’t changed. I’m still loved exactly the same if not more, I’d like to think.

  Susan: Well, there’s more to love about you as you grow. When you were five years old, you had your birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. That night, when we were tucking you into bed, you were telling me about what you liked about your day and what you didn’t like about your day. You asked me if I thought your birth mother was thinking about you on your birthday. I remember saying to you that I thought that she would always think about you on your birthday. And you asked me if I thought that she knew you had your birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I remember saying that I didn’t think they had Chuck E. Cheese in Korea, but I’m sure she knew that you had a really wonderful birthday.

  Do you still think about your birth family?

  Elizabeth: I would like to go visit Korea and see what it’s all about, but I have no interest in meeting my birth mother—I’m perfectly fine with the mother that I have.

  Susan: Madelyn, it’s your turn. You’re growing up in a family where both your brother and sister are adopted. When you were about four years old you were fighting with your brother, and you shouted at him, “I grew in Mommy’s stomach and you didn’t!” I had to stop the fight and say, “But all of you grew in my heart.” You didn’t like that at all, because you thought that you had a definite advantage by having been born of our flesh. So what’s it like to be the only biological child in the family?

  Madelyn Lisker: The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that Liz and Pete have their airplane day—that’s the day when they came to our family. The only day I came to the family was my birthday. I only have one day of the year, and they get two. Otherwise, I think it’s just like nothing anymore.

  If I could make a wish, it would be to make the age gap smaller, because I have a friend who’s two years apart from her two brothers and they’re a lot closer. When I was little, I felt like Liz and Pete were always talking and I wasn’t really included in that.

  Susan: At the dinner table, when you were very small, they would be talking about their day. You were about three years old and in preschool, and you’d sit at the edge of your high chair and you’d say, “Today at school . . .” And everybody would just keep talking and ignore you. You’d go a second time: “Today at school . . .” And we’d still keep talking and everybody would ignore you. Finally, you would lift up as far as the high chair would let you, and you’d shout out, “TODAY AT SCHOOL, GUYS!!!” Everybody would stop and look at you, and your brother would say to you, “All right, Madelyn, what is it?” And you’d sit there and say, “Now I can’t remember.” That would happen night after night after night.

  Elizabeth: We’re all different people in our own ways—and I’m not just saying that; we are actually very different people. Our personalities clash sometimes, but at the end of the day, we’re just a family that loves each other.

  Susan: That’s very true. Elizabeth, I loved you from the moment I saw your picture. And Madelyn, I loved you from the first moment also. I love you both and your brother very much today, too, but for different reasons than in the beginning. I really love who you’re turning out to be: really good people.

  Recorded in Buffalo, New York, on August 12, 2008.

  ROSELYN PAYNE EPPS, 78 talks with her daughter, ROSELYN ELIZABETH EPPS, 47 Both women practice medicine in Washington, D.C.

  Roselyn Payne Epps: I always knew I’d have a career and children. It’s interesting, you hear a lot of people talk about “Which can I have—one or the other?” Why not both? Coming from a family of African-American people the women have traditionally worked—so it has never been a big mystery about “either-or,” just how you balance it.

  I never let my children think anything was more important than they were, but I never let anyone at work think that anything was more important than my job. I never talked about my kids at work . . .

  Roselyn Elizabeth Epps: . . . And you didn’t bring work home.

  Roselyn Payne: Nope, I left my work there.You make adjustments. I can recall when you all were starting school and I was working in a clinic. I was the only pediatrician there, so I had to be there every day. If anything happened at home that would keep me from being there, there may have been fifteen, twenty, forty parents bringing their children for examinations who would be disappointed. So I knew I had an obligation to be at work. But I also knew I had an obligation to my children.

  You all were very responsible. For instance, I would tell you, “Tell me in advance when you’re going to have a program. Ask the teacher: ‘When is the recital going to be?’ Don’t tell me on Monday to come to a program on Friday—you’ve been rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing for months!” So then I had the opportunity to get someone to substitute for me. It was a partnership between us.

  Roselyn Elizabeth: Well, as far as partnership was concerned, we all had our responsibilities. There were specific chores—there were days everybody was supposed to do dishes. If we were going to entertain, somebody was supposed to sweep, somebody else cleaned the walls, and somebody else pulled the weeds. I was the “A-One Sweeper.” You and Dad were very creative with your names: “Oh, you’re the best wall washer!” “Oh, boy, you really know how to pull weeds!” Only later we realized, Boy, we were bamboozled into our chores!
But we were sweeping, and we were so happy.

  Roselyn Payne: That was your name—the “A-One Sweeper.”

  Roselyn Elizabeth: We all knew what our jobs were and what our responsibilities were: you were the parents and we were the kids. It wasn’t a time where people were friends and buddies; that wasn’t our generation at all. You weren’t smothering—I guess the new term is “helicopter parents.” Sometimes you don’t want your parent there every second to experience it and video it. Although you never missed a school play, never missed a parents’ night, never missed anything . For four children!

  Roselyn Payne: I would get there sometimes, and I would be one of two parents. I used to say, “Where are the people? Where are the parents?”

  In the early days, your dad had evening office hours and he’d be late getting home. So we made a decision to sit down as a family and have dinner at six thirty—every night—no matter what. When you went off to college or medical school or wherever you were, you all knew if you called home at six thirty, you could talk to the rest of the family because that was our time. And if your dad had to go back to the hospital at night, didn’t matter. He came home and we had dinner together every night, and we had breakfast together every morning. We had two meals together every day.

  Roselyn Elizabeth: Did your experiences in medicine affect being a mother and vice versa?

  Roselyn Payne: One thing I learned is that all parents want their children to succeed, and all children want to succeed. I used to go to talk to sixth graders, and I’d say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never heard a child say, “I want to be a drug dealer.” I never heard a child say, “I want to stand on a corner.” But somewhere in between, something happened.

  I think being a mother helped parents respect me. I would give them advice, maybe about feeding an infant. I was young then—you know, I finished medical school in my early twenties, and I guess I looked younger than that. I would tell them, “You don’t have to think about feeding the baby every moment,” or whatever it was. And they would look at me like, Well, what do you know about that? She doesn’t know what’s going on! And I’d say, “I have four children.” Oh! That gave them new respect: Well, maybe she knows what she’s talking about!

  Looking back, people will say, “Oh, you were a pioneer—there were only five women in your class!” But I didn’t see it. I was following my dream to be a pediatrician and have a family.

  You all have done very well. But I take no credit and I take no blame. People say, “Aren’t you proud?” My mother always said, “Don’t be proud; just be thankful.” So when you were coming along, I said, “I won’t take credit because I’m not going to take blame either!”

  We never encouraged you particularly to go into medicine. When our oldest son was about twelve, he said that he thought he would go to law school. So we said, “Why are you going to go into law?” He said, “Doctors work too hard!” At the time, he had a very good friend named Bruce whose father was a lawyer, and Bruce said he was going to go into medicine. “Ask Bruce why he wants to go into medicine when his father’s a lawyer.” He did, and Bruce said, “Lawyers work too hard!” So I said, “The truth of the matter is, you work hard if you’re successful—no matter what you do. So you have to decide to do something you enjoy, because you’re going to work hard.” So he said, “In that case, I’ll go into medicine.” [laughs]

  Roselyn Elizabeth: Well, of course you’re my one and only mother, and it has evolved towards friendship also. A lot of people laugh and say, “You all act like sisters!”

  Roselyn Payne: True. We are very close, and we’re a lot alike. We’re buddies. We talk every day, all day long. Your dad sometimes says, “What are you all laughing about so much?”

  I love you very much, and I’m very pleased with who you are. As I’ve said, I’m not proud; I’m thankful.

  Recorded in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2009.

  ARLENE FREIMAN, 58 talks to her daughter, LESLEY FREIMAN, 26

  Arlene Freiman: I wanted children from the time I can remember. It just wasn’t as easy to have children as I expected.

  Dad and I got married when we were really young: I was twenty, and he was twenty-two. If it had been up to me, I would have had a baby right away, but we were still in school and we had a lot of school to go. So we waited to have a baby. When I made the decision to go to law school, one of the considerations was whether I wanted to wait another three years for children. After I did wait three more years, it wasn’t so easy to have children.

  Your older brother, Michael, was my sixth pregnancy: there were five miscarriages before him. I was despondent. I just felt that this was the most important thing to me, and it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t look at babies, because it just reminded me that I didn’t have one. I avoided people who were friends when they started to have children. It wasn’t a good strategy, but it was the only way that I knew to handle it at the time, and they were such wonderful friends that they let me do that.

  After law school I worked for an attorney named Jim Beasley for ten years, and I was having this series of miscarriages, and he knew it. When my sister Wendy had Richard, Jim came into my office, and he sat me down on the couch. He said, “This is your nephew—you can’t avoid this baby. This is really important, Arlene.” Through it all, Jim always said, “This will happen for you. You’ll have children.”

  When I was pregnant with Michael, I did what I did for all of the others—I didn’t tell anybody, and I didn’t really want to admit to myself that I was pregnant. There was this feeling that maybe I could protect myself, that if it didn’t work then maybe I wouldn’t be as unhappy. But it doesn’t work like that. When you deny yourself joy, it doesn’t make the pain any less if it doesn’t work out.

  But when I got past the first three months, I began to believe that I might really have a baby. Well, I say that I believed it, but really I didn’t. When they were taking me from the labor room to the delivery room, they said to me, “We see the baby’s head.” I looked at Dad; he would never tell me something that wasn’t true. I said to him, “Is there really a baby there?” And he said, “Yes.” So I thought, Maybe there is really a baby there! I know that when I was in the delivery room, I was stunned.

  Giving birth to a baby is a tumultuous experience, and I think that there’s a lot of excitement and a lot of fear that surrounds it. But I don’t think I felt any of the fear. I was so thrilled to be there—I was just so thrilled to be there. Without a doubt, it was the high point of my life. It wasn’t just with Michael—it was all three times. When I delivered you it was equally the high point of my life, and also with Dan.

  Lesley Freiman: It’s funny, ’cause hearing about it from other people, I just get such a different experience about what it’s like giving birth to a child.

  Arlene: I look back on these almost fifty-nine years, and there’s one sentence that was the best thing that anyone’s ever said to me: I was in the delivery room with Michael, and there was a resident on call who looked at me and said, “Within an hour, you’re going to be a mommy.” Every time I think of it, I just think, What a gift! It just rings in my head all the time.

  Lesley: Do you think it’s affected your being a mom that it took so long?

  Arlene: I know for sure that it made me much more patient as a mother. Because there are times that really do try your patience. But I don’t think that I would have raised you another way if it hadn’t been so difficult. Maybe it helps to remind me that every day of my life I am so grateful to be the mother of wonderful children. The one thing that I wished for in my life happened to me. I’m just forever grateful. . . .

  My old boss Jim Beasley died a few years ago, and they named the law school at Temple University after him. Last spring Dan invited me to go with him to the Admitted Students Day, and we walked up the steps to the law school, and I saw the name: the James E. Beasley School of Law. I looked at Dan as we walked up—Dan didn’t know that Jim had always said to me, “This
will happen for you”—and I couldn’t believe that there I was, walking up the steps of the Beasley School of Law with my youngest son. It was remarkable to me.

  Lesley: So why did you want to talk to me about these things?

  Arlene: It’s like your bat mitzvah: there’s a time when it becomes really important to express the feelings that I have for you. It was important for me to do that today, when I thought that I had the opportunity.

  Lesley: I hope you know that you express this much better than you think you do.We all really know that.You tell us every day in one way or another.

  Recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 2007.

  JOHNELLA LAROSE, 50 speaks with her daughter, KASIMA KINLICHIINII, 22

  Johnella LaRose: I had two children and I was three months pregnant with you, Kasima, when your dad left. And I remember thinking, Now what am I going to do? We were living in the Los Padres National Forest [California] with other Indian people, taking care of horses and cows. We got $436 a month on welfare, and I did beadwork, I sewed, I did laundry, I ironed—I did everything.

  Kasima Kinlichiinii:You would pick up cans, too, and I was like, Oh my God, here she goes again, picking up cans! The other day, my cousin was drinking ginger ale, and I said, “Don’t you throw that can away!” And I was like, Oh, God, I sound like my mother! [laughs]

  Johnella:When you were four and the boys were ten and twelve, I just couldn’t make it anymore. I was in the Native American Health Center in Oakland, and one of the gals gave me a flyer about a pre-apprenticeship program in the trades. I had no idea what that was, but I thought, I’ve got to do something. So I went through the apprenticeship, and I became a union cabinetmaker.