Rusty Fleming

 

Mother's Day, Simple, Yet Complex for Yours Truly

The modern holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. St Andrew's Methodist Church now holds the International Mother's Day Shrine. Her campaign to make Mother's Day a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died.

Ann Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, and created Mother's Day Work Clubs to address public hralth issues. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother by continuing the work she started and to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world".

As Paul Harvey would have proclaimed, “Now for the rest of the story!” I always knew I was an adopted child, along with my two siblings, but never thought much about having the privilege of two Mothers and boy do I owe them big time. My adopted Mother was a mother for the ages and raised me and nurtured me to the max, while serving as my defense attorney in matters of importance with my dad. But, without the sacrifices of my birth mother, there would have been no life to celebrate or life-long Grand Style party.

My adopted Mother passed away in 1999, but by 1996 she had been converted to a Grand Laker and resided on Chigger Street in Langley, Oklahoma. We shared a lot of great conversations in those last three years and no doubt when she was promoted to the here-after she knew I loved her to the moon and back. She never stopped encouraging me to seek out my birth mother.

It was never held back from those Fleming kids that all three were adopted. In my adolescent years it wasn’t something I wanted to be known. It kind of fell right up there with those homemade shirts my Mom would make. She sewed labels in those shirts so none of my teammates at Northwest Classen High School would discover I was wearing homemade clothing as we dressed and undressed in the locker room. In retrospect, I should have been wearing those garments like a badge and asking those very teammates if their mothers could do the same.

 For several years before her death, my mom offered to share my adoption records so if I wanted to I could seek out my birth parents. In those days, my attitude was fairly jaded as I thought to myself, “The Hell with em’. They didn’t want me so why should I care about them?”

 But as the years passed by, I have to admit my curiosity started to grow. My older sister had tracked down her birth family and discovered she had a family history and siblings she had never known existed. She was all over my backside to get with the program.

As my curiosity grew, I convinced myself I needed to explore my background to discover any hereditary health issues. After conducting brief online research, I delegated the project to my sister's daughter, who has a keen interest in genealogy. She identified my birth mother, complete with address and phone number, in less than a couple of days….and that was in her spare time away from her teaching job…….but what was I going to do with the information.

After much prodding from my family, the tough guy finally wrote a letter of introduction. It was primarily asking for confirmation that she was the mother of a child born at Deaconess Hospital on March 21, 1944 in Oklahoma City. I also told her I was interested in the family health history, wasn’t looking for a mother, because I already had one, and that if she wanted no contact I fully understood and would respect her wishes. When a week passed by after mailing that fateful letter, I concluded she had no interest in hearing from a child out of the distant past or wasn’t the mother. But I was dead wrong.

I heard from her on an Easter Sunday evening and all of a sudden the tough guy wasn’t so tough. She apologized for taking so long to respond to my letter by saying, “I had some business to attend to, I have four other living children, who have never known of your existence, and I had to tell them first.” She then added, “My birthday is March the 18^th and not a year goes by that I didn’t think about you on yours because it’s so close to mine.”

The rest is history as they say. We went to McAlester for that first meeting not really knowing what to expect, but a more genuine person I’ve never met. My siblings were receptive and made me wonder how I might have felt in similar circumstances. And our relationship continued to grow year after year.

As we prepared to leave after that first visit, we embraced and she said, “It’s like a ton of weight has been lifted off my shoulders. All these years, people would ask how many children I had and I always knew there was one more than the number I answered with.”

The mystery had finally been unraveled. She passed away at 93, but had enjoyed a happy life in McAlester, Oklahoma. I was just really grateful for the prodding and divine intervention which finally enabled me to make the connection. If I was honest, I would admit it was always all about me. What kind of dark secrets would be revealed, and did I really want to know them….The secrets were revealed and they turned out to be really good ones.

It's kind of like the old cliché about if they return it was meant to be…if not, it never was. My birth mother turned me loose for a better life….my parents certainly provided that and much, much more. I returned full circle from where I started, to find out the world, indeed, is a special place and just as I always thought, I am special, but so are many others. A salute to all you Mothers out there and have a Grand Day as it was earned in oh so many ways.

See Ya Around the Pond