Progress and Uncle Kenny

Since my foot went on the fritz back in Sept. of last year, I've had a heck of a time getting back on my feet, literally.

Some positive things of late:

I can again stand while riding public transportation (much to the delight of aggressive, older Chinese women who regarded me as bogarting their preferred seats by the door). No cane=no handicap

I can again cross the street within the alloted time thus not incurring the wrath of motorists who are in a GODDAMN hurry & would peel out in frustration around me. No crutches=no reason to be walking slowly

I can again perform housework for longer stretches of time & the joint is back to looking less like a dump and more like a home.

A road not yet taken would be the one concerning physical fitness:

I can't yet jog, rollerskate or bike ride. I'm semi-seriously considering taking up swimming. If that is to work, then I will need to learn more than the dog paddle.

In other news:

My super sleuthing bio cousin has somehow found pictures of the presumed half-sister of my mother. Her name is Margaret and, according to my cousin, was adopted at birth by a wealthy San Francisco family in 1947. Records indicate she's still alive.

On the left: Meryl, my biological grandmother, who, in 1946, gave my Mom to a family friend to be raised as her own.

On the right: The woman called Margaret whom my bio cousin believes to be the third daughter Meryl gave up for formal adoption in secret. Margaret and Meryl favor each other, I think.

 

Below is a comparison of Margaret (left) and of my Mother (right). Both photos are contemporary. I see less of a similarity between them in these current photos than in the earlier pictures.



I met Meryl when I was a brash 19-year-old in 1989. I knew the family story and it yielded very little information, so I wanted answers. Why I thought I was entitled to any was beyond me. I also regret now that I didn't have any tact when speaking with her. I only knew--what we all knew--that she had had two boys she kept and two girls she gave away. The fathers of the girls were not known. That story, 30 years later, has changed. We now know who my mother's biological father is. We also now know that Meryl gave up three daughters between the years of 1943 and 1947. I wish that I had had more sympathy for her when I met her. Instead I felt anger toward her for having put my Mother into fosterage. It matters not that Mom was ultimately adopted by her foster parents at the age of 8, I believe. And she was the only foster child to have been adopted, I might add. That fact does not and did not make her feel special. The woman who raised Mom was a foster parent for 30 years. She loved babies--the more, the merrier. During my mother's childhood she saw a lot of children come through the house. Her take-away was to not get too attached to the newcomers for they would ultimately leave. Well, all but my Uncle Kenny left grandma's home. He was kept, but never adopted.

I don't know why I'm feeling so confessional today. Maybe it's the (peri)menopause. Anyway, below is a picture of my Uncle Kenny. He was born nine years after Mom. Kenny came to live with Grandma and family when he was barely 1 year old. His Mother, a single parent hailing from Hawaii, had put Ken into fosterage while she was finding her financial footing here in San Francisco. She was to retrieve him when she could & visited the house often. As Mom tells it, a teenaged Kenny had his suitcase packed and was waiting for Nell to come and get him, but she neither came nor sent word. About a week later, a stranger claiming to be Ken's Uncle came to the house, bluntly told Ken that his Mother had stepped into the road and been struck by a Muni bus and killed. The Uncle was to take Ken to live with him in San Jose, a city some 50 miles south of San Francisco. Ken, having never met this man before, did not want to go. Grandma also did not want to Ken to leave. A deal was made. Ken could remain in my Grandparents' care, but he could not be adopted. So Ken stayed yet retained his surname of Nakamura. This fact would present a problem for Mom when Ken died five years ago in a motorcycle accident. She was 'next of kin', but not legally. Ken's remains were property of the state of California while Mom sorted out how to prove their relation in order to retrieve them. I was still in Zurich during this time, unfortunately, and could not be of any help to her. I can't imagine how hard that must have been for Mom. She and Ken were the only two foster kids that had been kept. That kind of bond is one that I can never understand. Mom's loss was tremendous.

Uncle Kenny, 1953-2014