Dragon

Life has teeth. Sometimes it nips and sometimes it digs in and draws blood. Sometimes it just grins at us and flashes its fangs. Like the dragon, it has a terrible beauty that draws us to it and causes a wanting that is primal...the drive to live is powerful.

I am involved in a fight for the life of my little best friend. I am watching others doing the same. I noticed, today, how many of us have gray to white hair, wear trifocals and wear sensible, supportive shoes. We are aware of something that our little pups and kitties aren't and that is the approach of our own demise. We are riding the dragon's tail, waiting for it to turn and devour us in one big, final gulp.

It's funny that I am not afraid of the fact that the end of life could sneak up on me at any moment now. I make jokes about my false choppers, artificial knees, high-fiber diet and arthritis and accept the fact that another generation is entering the winter of their lives.

I am a "pre-boomer/war baby." I was born after the defeat of Germany but before the end of the war in the Pacific brought about by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My husband is six years older and vividly remembers the last couple of years of World War II. I remember Harry Truman. I remember the first man, Chuck Yaeger, to break the sound barrier. I remember when travel by airplane was not jet-propelled, black and white TV with only 3 or 4 channels, listening to radio programs for entertainment, and wearing gloves and hats to church. I remember Jim Crow, Hobos and hand-cranked ice cream.

The dragon has grown and its blindingly brilliant scales are every color of the rainbow, now. Its ears are more finely tuned, its eyes larger and sharper and its fury is difficult to comprehend. There is no longer the comfort of childhood when were were taught sanitized versions of our national history and adults were wise and in charge and play called for the use of non-technology-assisted imagination. There is only the accumulated observations and new understandings of what life has dealt us and what we can and cannot do about it.

One thing about being at this end of the dragon is that we SMAAC moms don't give a gryphon's beak about whether or not anyone likes what we think about adoption specifically or in general. We're not a huge groups and I can say we all have the same opinion of it...we don't like it worth a dern.

But our aim is not to eradicate adoption (although that sounds great) or debate its merits or flaws with threatened proponents of the social experiment that brought us together for our cause. Our aim is to keep on speaking, loudly if we have to (because the squeaky wheel, yada, yada), about what happened to millions of girls who were sent away in shame and returned with admonitions to lie and be secretive.  We are trying to speak the truth above the sound of the dragon's roar. We are saying that our government sanctioned a horrible injustice against us and our children. We are saying that a society that saw itself as "advanced" was, in fact, puritanical, punitive and hypocritical.

We need to hear someone who represents authority in our present society acknowledge that a terrible thing was done, understand what was wrong about what was done, and maybe even say it shouldn't continue to happen, especially the way it is now. But people like the adoption industry, attorneys, agents, etc., who profit and those who covet live with others of the same ilk in the dragon's belly. They stoke the furnace by which the monster breathes fire and polish and sharpen those formidable fangs.

This is our bottom line, defined by us in our later years. It is not what anyone particularly wants to hear, especially anyone who stands to profit in any way from the continued devaluing of the natural mother. Now that we are older, we have no one to fight our battle for us. Our children fight their own battle which seems to exclude us and there is no St. George or even a Don Quixote to face the serpent in our names.

We aren't out to profit, financially from our quest. We are not expecting to make a drastic change in how the world operates. But, since we ride on the dragon's tail, we don't have anything to lose by yanking it, hard and saying, "We're back here and we have something to say. You bit us all and we bled."

To all my sisters sitting back here on this scaly tail of life with me, let me say it because we may never hear it any other way in our lifetime: 
Dear Sisters,
I am so deeply saddened and sorry that you were treated so badly and had your baby taken from you. It was wrong and you didn't deserve that kind of treatment. You were not sluts, whores or careless kids. You were just human and it wasn't the end of the world. They just tried to make it seem that way. Be gentle with yourselves and don't take any more crap from anyone. We've earned our self-respect and let's make the rest of this dragon ride a good one.

Now, what would it hurt if someone else, someone with authority said something like that?