I tell Mum my plans for the next day and I feel her love and her blessing. Sitting there, I feel close to Mum, and this makes me both happy and sad. I cry a bit and the pain of missing her that is never far away stabs my heart. I kiss my finger and lay it on her photo.
I go to bed and sleep well. Peacefully.
Mother’s Day 2015
Susannah
Nine months (another crazy coincidence) after we meet and it seems, finally, Robin and I have found both some solid ground and a lighter place to be. Now a mock-orange plant – like the one outside Robin’s bedroom – grows by the day bed on the Longleaf verandah; and in Robin’s front garden, looking over the orchid I gave her for her birthday, grows a pot of mint for my herbal tea. I no longer need my navigation device to get to Robin’s house, nor she her Melways to get to mine – and she is coming over for Mother’s Day dinner and to stay the night.
On Mother’s Day morning I wake early and go to the living room. I light one of the small candles in front of Mum’s picture and next to her white roses, give her a kiss and wish her a happy Mother’s Day. I then go back to bed where I await my own Mother’s Day greetings from Emma. She makes me one of her beautiful heart cards.
Edvard arrives with flowers and a big hug and we all head off for a Mother’s Day lunch at one of my favourite restaurants. I love Mother’s Day – even often contrary teenage children know that, just for that day, they have to be nice to Mum, laugh at her jokes, take her advice and give her hugs and kisses. I float the idea that a maternal virtue might be extolled every thirty minutes during the lunch but this, apparently, is pushing my luck. Oh well, worth a try, and the lunch is brilliant anyway with my children, my family, happy and relaxed in each other’s company.
Robin
My Mother’s Day is quiet and peaceful. I live alone and my daughters have their own families, so I cannot get my prized morning cup of tea brought to me in bed. Instead, I get it myself and quickly scurry back to bed so that I can almost believe it was brought to me after all: ‘Thank you, darling (any darling), that’s lovely.’
All four daughters ring to wish me happy Mother’s Day and have chosen gifts that, each in their own way, express both them and me and reflect the uniqueness of our respective relationships. A precious variety; I am blessed.
I am going to Susannah’s later in the afternoon and will have dinner there. In her usual caring way she has taken pains to cater to my tastes and has cooked the meal of my choice: lamb chops, mashed potato and tinned peas. When it comes to the crunch, I abandon the more sophisticated tastes acquired later in life and revert unerringly to the culinary loves of my childhood.
Susannah has also planned a ceremony for us to officially mark and seal the fact of our reunion and her forgiveness of me for having given her away. I think it is a wonderful idea. My only reservation is the fact that she has chosen the beach as the site of the ceremony, which I get completely as far as symbolism goes, but where the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak and my flesh is already quailing in light of the weather forecast for thirteen degrees, wind and rain.
Susannah
I have decided the ceremony needs to be at the beach, the beach where I have spent so much time walking, running and thinking through the past year’s problems and joys. Robin has read the weather report and is less decided. I point out to her that it is my forgiveness ritual and she graciously concedes, saying she will bring wet-weather gear.
Robin arrives and we head off. The wind is ferocious and a storm threatens. It is remarkably like the weather that lashed Federation Square and us the day Robin and I met. And, once again, Robin is compliant about following me out into the storm.
We drive the short distance to the beach and head out on the jetty, the wind almost lifting us as we walk. But I press on. I stop at the end of the jetty. We are alone – obviously; who else would be here in this weather? – and I set up.
I take the last two scented candles and place them in a metal box. My original vision was for them to be burning free in the open air but, in these now nearly cyclonic conditions, this idea is clearly doomed. I tell Robin that one candle is for me and one is for her and I tell her I want to read her something.
‘Robin’, I start, voice already a bit shaky as I read, ‘I now fully recognise the pain you caused me when you left me and forgot about me. And each of these stones represents that.’
As I say each word I take a stone and throw it into the ocean. It sounds rather poetic but it’s actually clunky as I try to balance my bag, my stones and piece of paper in the howling wind. This is not how it played in my head when I planned it. There, it was more beautiful and less shambolic. Yet there is still a satisfying moment as each stone hits the water. I carry on.
‘The fear and panic of abandonment, the sadness and confusion of loss, the resentment and regret for what might have been, the feelings of insecurity, of unworthiness, of not being good enough.
‘I have held them in my heart for long enough.
‘I now release them all. They are no longer part of me.
‘I now let go of all hurt and anger that I have held against you in my mind, my body and my heart.
‘I am completely enough. I am worthy of being loved and I am free to love wholeheartedly.
‘And I’m free to love you for the beautiful, caring, wise and brave woman I see you are now, to accept the love you give me now and embrace the joy of our reunion.
‘So, I truly forgive you, Robin.
‘Completely.
‘The baby who screamed for you is quiet now.
‘The toddler who asked about you has been answered.
‘The child who wondered about you knows.
‘The young woman who denied you sees you.
‘And I now come to you in forgiveness and love.
‘We all forgive you completely and unconditionally.
‘Please forgive me for any pain my anger and hurt has caused you.
‘I love you.’
I set the letter and the paper bag alight with the candle and throw them up in to the air and out to sea. Again the poetic gesture is slightly compromised by the elements, as my flying bonfire threatens to fly back in our faces, but then it too heads out to sea.
Robin
Ducking slightly to avoid the airborne cinders, I suppose it would be easy to mock this rather chaotic little ceremony: to see only its amusing weaknesses and miss its strength. The movies would do it so fabulously: the candles lit and glowing in the warm stillness of the perfect evening, the burning fire on the water carried out to sea. Such beauty! Such a feeling of significance!
I appreciate and enjoy aesthetic beauty but have come to realise that externals mean very little and can be deceiving: all that glitters is not gold. Don’t judge a book by its cover. It’s what’s in the human heart that really counts.
So, in a way I relish the apparent ‘epic fail’ of our forgiveness ceremony, because we aren’t here for the success of the ritual, for the aesthetics, or for the perfection of performance – we are here as two imperfect people, sincerely desiring and choosing to forgive and to love each other. Every one of Susannah’s lovely words comes from her heart and hits the mark. I receive them and they make me cry.
‘Thank you for your forgiveness, Susannah,’ I say, holding both her hands. ‘I am sorry for all the pain I caused you. I love you.’
Susannah
We hug. I blow out the candles and give one to Robin, and then I suggest we go quickly back to the car. She needs no further encouragement.
Driving back, I look at my poor windswept other mother and wonder if all this was a good idea. It certainly hasn’t gone the way I planned. But then again, on this journey with Robin that I didn’t even know I was going on, what has? What ever does?
And I suspect that there will be more tattered visions, more moments that don’t quite work as Robin and I muddle on, but the forgiveness ‘thing’ has done its work and we are at once cut loose from the past and anchored for the
future.
When we come home, Robin stands in front of the beautiful open fire my lovely and long-suffering Oskar has prepared for us and I give her a bunch of mixed roses.
‘Happy Mother’s Day, Robin!’
My mother-heart is filled and my daughter-heart is truly blessed. Some people don’t even get one mother who loves them completely. I get two.
Finally, all heartlines are open and I am home.
Acknowledgements
No one ever does anything by themselves. We are very grateful to all the lovely people who helped us do this book.
Obviously, it would have been impossible without our family. We thank them for allowing us to include little bits of their story in our story and for their kindness and care in reading various drafts. So, thank you all, with love: Ada, Anna, Aziza, Ben, Billie, Brian, Charmayne, Claudia, Declan, Dominique, Dougall, Duncan, Dylan, Edvard, Emma, Felix, Finn, Florence, Henrietta, Hjalmar, Jake, Jason, Joel, Levi, Maja, Marian, Matilda, Matthieu, Naomi, Oliver, Oskar, Pam, Sam, Sophie, Stina, Sten, Susan, Theo, Tim R and Tim S.
With special thanks, but no royalties, to Brian and Tim, for their cameos.
Bethany, for all her support and mind-mapping.
Ali, Andrea, Anita, Maddy, Rebecca and Tom, for reading various drafts and for their honest feedback.
Rebecca, for her beautiful photos.
Krissy Fry, for her calm wisdom and care, with much gratitude.
Meredith, for wanting to publish the book, and Brandon and Claire for their editorial cleverness in helping make it a better one.
We also thank the copyright holders for their permission to reproduce material.
All emails and correspondence from the Department of Health and Human Services are © State of Victoria, Australia and reproduced with permission of the Secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services. Reproduction and other uses comprised in the copyright are prohibited without permission.
Thanks to Gwinganna Lifestyle Retreat for permission to recount the content of their seminar.
Extracts from Four Quartets and The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot reproduced with the permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Heartlines
ePub ISBN – 9780143780250
First published by Vintage in 2016
Copyright © Susannah McFarlane and Robin Leuba, 2016
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
McFarlane, Susannah, author
Heartlines: the year I met my other mother/Susannah McFarlane, Robin Leuba
ISBN 978 0 14378 025 0 (ebook: epub)
Adoptees – Australia – Biography
Birthmothers – Australia – Biography
Mothers and daughters – Australia – Biography
Adoptees – Australia – Family relationships
Interpersonal relations – Australia
Other Creators/Contributors: Leuba, Robin, author
362.734092
Front cover photo courtesy Susannah McFarlane; heart © Shutterstock
Cover design by Nada Backovic
Ebook by Firstsource
Some of the names of people in this book have been changed to protect their privacy, and the chronology of some of the events has been altered.
Heartlines Page 23
