Today is my daughter's birthday

Jane and Lorraine, April 1982, about a week after her birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday.

Okay, I'm done trying to ignore it. Some years I do better than others but today, maybe because the forsythia bush outside is ready to burst into bloom, maybe because I'm packing to move and going through a lot of adoption papers, and finding letters from her from that first early part of our relationship, and letters from people who wrote me after Birthmark was published, maybe because moving upends your life and you keep making decisions about what to keep, what to pitch, maybe because the song on the radio coming back from the super market was that soulful She's Got You by Patsy Cline, maybe because I watched Long Lost Family two nights ago, maybe because...well, there it is.

Having my daughter and giving her up to be adopted is the single most traumatic event of my life. Relinquishing her was more than a life-altering event; it was an invisible barrier separating me from the rest of humanity. I would always be a woman who lost a child to adoption. I would find her, we would have a reunion, but nothing would ever be as if she had not been adopted. Our relationship would proceed, but it would always have that huge hole in it, and neither one of us would ever get over it.

Remembering my daughter on her birthday

Jane and Lorraine, 7/25/83  NYTimes photo

Today is my daughter's birthday, but of course the correct syntax is "would have been" her birthday if she had not died in 2007. What runs through my mind in crazy seemingly random fashion are images of the two of us together: the second time you came off the plane to visit Tony, my husband, and me in New York. You were planning to spend the summer with us. What a surprise to see that you had lightened your mousy blond hair (that was so like my mousy blond) to look a lot more like mine! Highlighted! Yes, I was thrilled to see that. You were my daughter, through and through. Was that the visit that we went to the Statue of Liberty and were the first off the boat from Manhattan and first up the stairs as we scrambled up to the crown? We both enjoyed that, and joked about it over the years.

I see us hanging out downtown in Sag Harbor, at the pier, with our first dog, Fred, a friendly female lab, and just, well, just enjoying the view with the water, the boats, the sunshine and reveling in being with each other, after so many years apart.