The words of others again changing what I knew to be true about the reality of me. She would go on to say December 22 was likely my true birthday. Dec. 22 had been just another day, no different from any other, except maybe for all the hubbub about Christmas being only three days away. But my natural mother’s words, spoken in the first few minutes of our first phone call, changed all that and cast me back to my “adoptive” mother saying, “Well, the attorney’s secretary called on January 6 saying, “Your baby was born last night,’ so, since we never got your birth certificate, we don’t really know if your birthday is the 5th or the 6th of January.” At 13 years old, what little identity I’d manage to form, shattered under the weight of those words “don’t really know” as they slid out of my adoptive mother’s mouth that day.

A paperless “adoptee,” a true oxymoron, the weight of not knowing my actual birthday felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back; a log actually, teetering atop the pile of Not Knowing I’d accumulated in my short life. The Not Knowing of the woman who created me, the Not Knowing of how I came to be, of my place of birth, of my ancestry, of my DNA, of who I even freaking looked like. The Not Knowing had driven me to ask strangers in the street if they’d ever relinquished a child, to ask my mother if I looked like this girl or that, to weave a magical fantasy that my older female cousin was actually my mother, to take a 23 and Me test to make sure I didn’t have the BRACA breast cancer gene lurking in my DNA.

The Not Knowing had driven me to the depths of many things.

And within minutes of meeting my birth mother, a moment supposed to undo all that Not Knowing delivered these words, “I don’t recall the exact day. Maybe it was the 22 of December, but I know you weren’t born in January. I came home before Christmas without my baby.”

She had calculated the 22nd as the exact gestational due date from the date of my known conception, an event she was not yet ready to divulge details about, other than to say the doctor likely induced exactly 280 days later. Rather than undo the Not Knowing, she also delivered me the memory of a rape that maybe created me. I would never really know if it was a confused memory or a convenient story about the night I was conceived. But December 22nd sat exactly 280 days from her 20th birthday, the night I’d later learn that she willingly entered coitus with the man I’d eventually come to know and love as my natural father.

December 22 was the probable date she stated in her first few minutes on the phone with me, months before she would remember there was another possible man. “A good man who was not a rapist,” as she later described him.

I met her on January 23, 2010, and by December 22nd of that year, I’d announced to the world I had a new birthday. But the lack of certainty made Dec 22 feel just as empty as January 5th felt in 1983. And though I’ve reverted to celebrating January 5th, every birthday the Not Knowing still haunts me. So it is no surprise that the two mysterious weeks between December 22 and January 11, the day I was placed in the life I know today, carry an extra blanket of the bah humbugs for me.

The Not Knowing where I was or who I was with, the Not Knowing if I was warm in the womb or crying parentless in a crib on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve? The Not Knowing why the attorney never filed adoption papers? Why my parents never received a birth certificate, takes hold every year. Today I am 53, this December 22 I’ll turn 54. Maybe not. The one thing for certain is that, unless science figures out how to carbon date a human down to the hour, the Not Knowing is never going away. 

This year, facing another unknown anniversary of my birth, and after six years of choosing no contact with my birth mother, she has reappeared in my life and attempted to reconnect, seemingly to plant more Not Knowing in my psyche. 

I had gone dark after receiving several difficult letters I knew we could not repair from, so, ironically, I walked away “for the good of all parties.” Note this was not the “you abandoned me, so I am going to abandon you” dynamic at play, it was an unwillingness on my part to abandon myself in order to maintain a relationship to another mother that consistently wounded me. 

Jealous of my close ties with my natural father and frustrated that I did not want more from the relationship than occasional contact, my first mother had written me such things as, “You fucked up my life,” and “I wish I’d had an abortion.” She’d added that my husband was right to divorce me. My current boyfriend repulsed her. My natural father was “a sperm donor.” I was “a gold digger.” And I better never come looking for her once the sperm donor was dead. 

Half a decade later, and with many natural mothers as friends, I comprehend as best I can (without standing in her shoes) the forces that wounded her and the regret that drives her despair. I imagine the ache of it. The abandoned child in me wants to let her back in, but the adult me reads the words she chose to use to reconnect, I note those she did not, and I know better.  

A month ago, flipping through Instagram, I saw she had followed me. Yet, rather than block her, I allowed her a small window into my world and the opportunity to do better. Days ago, I saw she’s still unable to. There on a post about the place of my conception, she wrote, “Hi – Just to tell you that the trailer wasn’t there in 1969. Dash, you said that’s where you was conceived, but it was that little building – I remember exactly. You said it’s been there 50 years. You are 54 – right? I’m so happy that your life has been a good one and you were able to spend precious time with Jerry. I would like to communicate once in a while –“

My first thought was “I’m not 54, I am 53.” My second was, “Why no apology?”