Read The Year My Mother Came Back for Free Online Page B

Julia.”
    â€œThanks, Mom. That means a lot to me.”
    It’s something I’ve looked forward to since Julia was born. My memories of Zoe, and the family folklore we’ve shared with Julia about her, have been entirely positive. Julia wrote her college essay about her birth mother—about the gift Zoe gave her by choosing artists to be her adoptive parents, and what a huge influence the arts have had on her life. I want Julia to meet Zoe. Of course I do!
    But today I hear her say “my birth mother” as if it’s an entirely new concept.
Birth mother
is the thing I am not, was not, will never be for Julia. For the first time, the term
birth mother
makes me feel inadequate; a poor substitute, lacking in genetic credentials.
    â€œYour timing is perfect, sweetheart. When you turn eighteen on Saturday, you can put your name in the National Adoption Registry, which helps reunite adoptees and birth parents. They might help you with your search—that is, if Zoe also chooses to register; a big
if,
but worth a try.”
    â€œThanks, Mom. I’ll do that eventually, but no rush.”
    â€œUnderstood.” (That’s a relief.)
    â€œRight now I’m totally focused on college.”
    â€œSure, Honey, that makes sense.”
    CLINGING TO OUR fleeting time as an intact family of four, I hastily organize a four-day weekend trip to Martha’s Vineyard. I haven’t been back to the Vineyard since my blissful summer job there, as arts director of the Chilmark Community Center, before my senior year in college. I have great memories of family vacations on the Vineyard as a kid. I want to share the island with my family.
    Our minivacation is a total bust. Michael and I get stomach flu. We lie uselessly on our hotel bed and ask Julia to entertain her little sister. Julia is impatient to get home, see her friends, pack for college. Only Eliana is happy, hanging out with her awesome big sister, jumping in the waves, collecting shells, rescuing baby jellyfish that have washed ashore, making seaweed sculptures.
    â€œI love it here! Can we come back to exactly the same place next summer?”
    Michael groans. Julia rolls her eyes. I respond weakly from under the covers, “Sure, Sweetiepie, you and I will come back.”
    Monday morning, we catch the first ferry to the mainland. We’re back home in New York City by mid-afternoon, Michael and I still wobbly.
    I have surgery tomorrow.
    And the play I’ve been working on is due the day after tomorrow. Repatriated to my desk in the living room after my feeble attempt at a beach escape, I turn on the computer. An e-mail from the producer reminds me,
“Email script by Wednesday. I want to consider
Oklahoma Samovar
for our season.”
    I’m anxious about surgery. I’m anxious about Julia leaving for college. I’m anxious about the play. This never-ending play.
    Oklahoma Samovar
is a two-act, loosely based on the lives of my ancestors. My Latvian great-grandparents were the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. It’s a big play: two continents, a hundred years, three generations, commingling the past and present, the living and the dead; a cast of six actors playing two dozen roles.
    I wrote the first draft of
Oklahoma Samovar
twenty years ago. I flew to Tulsa to interview my ancient Great Aunt Sylvia about the family history. Sylvia’s big sister was Rose, my mother’s mother. I never met Rose and had never even heard of Sylvia. I didn’t know a thing about my Oklahoma roots, until my uncle filled me in, a few years after my mother’s death.
    My mother kept Oklahoma a secret.
    Diminutive Aunt Sylvia had a photo on her dresser, in a mother-of-pearl frame: a little girl in a white dress and a straw hat, standing by a peach tree.
    â€œEver seen this picture of your mama?” Sylvia asked in her high-pitched Oklahoma twang.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen it’s yours, honey. Louise never