What thoughts keep you awake or greet you first on waking?
What thoughts can you not shake?
I will let you in on what’s on my mind if you are interested.
If you are not, I understand.
I often sigh and move on when I receive a parallel invitation.
In November 2023 had the joy of teaching young adults near Lome, Togo.
I noticed groups of children walking to and from school. The chatter (in French) caught my ears; the neat and proudly worn uniforms, my eyes. The shared joy and delight of the children touched and warmed my soul.
I asked questions here and there to find that the school is indeed on the same property where I was teaching and run by the same organization.
I requested a visit.
It’s a bamboo L shaped structure. In one corner of a sandy play area there is a single netball hoop with no net. The student body of about 250 children, Kindergarten to about Grade 6, under the tutelage of about 10 faculty, using merger supplies, are heads down and studying, reading, or writing notes off more-than-used chalkboards.
In one room there was beautiful singing.
As I walked through each bamboo room I saw joy and serious study occurring.
I found out that when the weather changes all are sent home to safety until bad weather passes.
Contact me if you’d like to assist – and build a classroom or two.
If you are a taxpayer in the USA and give a gift (large or small) your gift to OPENHAND INTERNATIONAL, INC will be tax deductible.
When engaging those of advanced age, approach with deep respect, kindness, openness.
Expect to be enthralled, to learn.
Besides, in a flash of time — yes, 30, 40, even 60 years, is a flash of time — and it’ll be you.
Listen rather than speak.
Learn, rather than try to teach.
Wait, hold onto yourself.
Offer time for a reflective exchange.
Imagine how you’ll want to be treated in a few years — and do that.
The life experience embodied in the person before you, if you’ll take the time to hear, will astound you. But, it requires necessary time to hear and the power to resist the urge to do all the talking.
Be aware of chasing away an elderly person’s desire to engage you because you talk too much. I’ve seen Elderly People resort to silence rather than compete with the know-it-all nature that often comes with youth.
Ask questions and be willing to listen. Ask about former careers and accomplishments. Ask about love and loss and grief and recovery and you may learn more about love and commitment than you imagined. Remind yourself, as you listen, that being elderly is not a liability but an invaluable asset to adult sons and daughters and grandchildren and great grandchildren and to society at large.
Engage exactly how you will hope to be engaged a few years from now.
Gut wrenching for the Smiths from a dozen angles while also displaying a vast array of flowers, tropical, indoor-outdoor whites, greens, shades of purple, yellows, sturdy, strong and luscious, endless developing beauty — reaching for sunlight, proclaiming life and charisma — even within our motherless home.
It’s the early 2000s and Mother’s Day: the boys wake, wander into my room, at least one son is aware of the day given the many things he had to draw, cut, glue and color at school for me, his dad-mom. He’s also performed in “Mother’s Day Bunny ” where I was the only dad in attendance. The school’s admirable efforts to include us, or rather efforts to never exclude us, get a little ridiculous but I play along lest some real mother get whiff that my children be faced with the truth that they don’t know their mothers, a reality from which we, in the privacy of our home, have always openly addressed. Blanket strewn over his shoulders and with an inspiring attempt at positivity, he says, “Happy Mama-Day, Dadda,” and I embrace him and then his brother trailing dutifully behind and I leave it at that.
We meander through the morning, sometimes sluggishly, but with momentary caffeine-stirred urges to “make it memorable for the boys.”
At lunch the restaurant tables are packed with girls-and-boys-with-mothers and flowers and gifts piled high with color and sweetness. Octogenarian mothers swoop in to hug multiple generations vying for hug-inclusion as raucous laughter buzzes through the air.
Friends see us and platitudes flow as they do when people don’t know how to talk about loss or abandonment or death while attempting kindness to quell their glaring uneasiness.
“You’re in a better place.”
“God knew your dad could be both.”
“You know it’s extra special to be ‘chosen,’” a mother says to my son as if she’s the first to offer adoption this spin.
I’m uncertain. Should I laugh, cry or lead the boys out the door and flee the overload of the boys don’t have?
Instead, we’re three-strand strong, and face it as if nothing can touch the Smith-bulwark.
It’s Mother’s Day and about 2015: my first-born off-handedly reports he’s going to make a gift for his mom and, his car loaded with equipment, he leaves. Mid-afternoon he returns, buries himself in his room to emerge hours later with a 4-or-so minute movie that still blows my mind every time I watch it. I don’t know if his mother ever saw her gift on YouTube but within 24 hours he was interviewed on a local news station and his “letter” had traveled the world. I have a hunch his mother did see it but I know she did not respond. A few years later he reached out very directly to her to be firmly and gently rebuffed.
“Adoption is a very powerful tool,” I whispered into his ear as I tried to comfort my distraught son as he sobbed and sobbed.
“Thank you for the choice you made. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he wrote, time-stamped seconds after his biological mother expressed her wish not to hear from him again. The boy was ashen, disoriented, for days.
Yes. Adoption is a powerful tool.
Rest assured, my boys’ mothers, despite their physical absence, have been more than present in our lives. They are not sitting proud at our all-male out-of-the-way Mother’s Day table, but they are ever-present guests as we steel ourselves for life together.
Nate did not learn his gentleness from me. He did not get his unflappable nature from me. I’ve spent much of my life in a hurry, and, apart from when on sports fields or a basketball court, he’s never rushed a moment in his life, not even when chasing the dog. I didn’t teach him to anticipate when I’m not feeling well and to silently — late in the night — enter my bedroom and place ice water next to my bed in the event I may want it.
I like to think we as a family are generally kind people, but, I tell you, Thulani’s natural kindness cannot be taught, tutored or trained.
He was born kind.
Kindness tumbled down through generations of his kin despite the traumas and brutality they knew. Kindness flowed into my boy from unknown generations like the mother’s milk he never tasted.
My sons’ mothers may not be at the table with us on Mother’s Day but I meet them every day in the beauty with which each of the generous women stamped their claim on the lives of our shared, fabulous sons.
Had I an opportunity to reunite with my sons’ mothers I’d say a deep and welled up “thank you” for the gifts of two magnificent humans with whom I’ve shared the last 26 years. I’d say “thank you” for the bravery it took each woman to make her generous choice.
I salute you, your bravery, your untold story, your capacity to engage in enduring, long-distance and painful, love.
I shall reply more fully soon. I’m at a wedding in the midlands and quite busy with family.
I will be in a position for a better reply soon.
May I publish your letter on my website. If yes, do you want your name, or any other details withheld?
Rod Smith
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May 7, 2024
Dear Rod
I am pleased that my sharing with you of the changes in my destiny, have been a joy for you, Rod!
I can compare this message to a sermon – one is never sure whether the seed has fallen on rich soil or fallow ground/rocks.
You have my permission to publish my letter on your website – with no withholding of any of the content, nor any changes needed.
I notice that the family wedding in the Midlands, is followed by a busy programme being imminent!
Regards,
Gary
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May 3, 2024
Dear Rod
Earlier this week I read your response to the fund-raising decision on behalf of Dale College, by the new incoming Northwood headmaster, Dr Garth Shaw.
Your comment mirrored the many pearls of wisdom which I have read since your first contributions (2001) to the column in the Mercury.
After 38 years in the banking world, and aged 58 years, I was not happy to ride out another huge change with a Barclays, UK, takeover looming over Absa Bank.
It was amazing how a colleague anonymously dropped off your article dated 4/4/2001.
Question: I’m tired of the “rat race” yet too poor to retire. Any suggestions?
Answer: If all you have is money, indeed you are poor.
Your message was very clear to me!
As one of the leaders in the province, I was aware of the enormity of the early retirement, by 5 years, a decision which I needed to embrace.
That was a turning point in my life, and career – and I have you and your message to thank, as I approach my 80th birthday this weekend.
Early in 2002 I retired, and I was well looked after by my employer.
My wife and I spent the next 10 months converting our family home at 71 Old Mill Way, Durban North, into what was ultimately a large 4-star bed and breakfast – Cornerstone! It was biblically named, and over the next 13 years we hosted 13 Heartbeat Healing ministry weekends, on behalf of St Martin’s church, in Chelsea Drive.
It was time to move on, and late in 2016 we sold the house and business, and moved to Doone Retirement Village in Manors, Pinetown.
Suffice to say we are very active in numerous activities and ministries – “Here I am, send me” is our witness.
Both of our grandsons are at Northwood, They will enjoy and benefit from the quality leadership of Dr Shaw, from the beginning of the 3rd term.
Thank you for your words of truth and wisdom, which changed my life path for the better!
Behold — look closely, observe, see, acknowledge, identify — your Mother.
We all have or had one.
No matter what your memory, treasured for its overwhelming sense of love and acceptance and unconditional positive regard, or the sad antithesis of all that is good and associated with good mothers and mothering: behold your mother.
Consider your mother as you would fine and treasured art, a masterpiece and, then, give thanks.
Remember the good times.
Recall the hard times, recall the challenges you gave to your mother and the challenges your mother brought to you.
The woman you called mother brought to the unique relationship with you, experiences and heartbreaks and history of which you, as a child would know nothing.
Yet, you’d know and experience and benefit, and even suffer the impact of it all, all she is, or was.
Behold, living or dead, known or unknown, behold, appreciate your mother.
There is something wildly healthy about doing so be your mother saint or villain, victor or victim, well or unwell.
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Emotional Wellness and Living An Authentic Life will be my topics at The Westville Bowling Club on May 9, 2024. Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za for details in the event you’d like to attend.
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Sunday, May 12, 2024 I shall have the privilege of delivering the Mothers Day sermon at the two morning services (7:30 and 9:15am) at Musgrave Methodist Church on the Berea.
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Saturday 11th from 9-12 with Terry Angelos at ST. Michael’s in Umhlanga…..
Instantly, he replied, with a link to nine varieties of venomous snakes inhabiting Namibia. The communication left me with the distinct impression I’d be tripping over nesting pythons, wrestling extended families of puff-adders, fending off multiple varieties of mambas at every turn.
Ours was the only flight coming into Hosea Kutako International Airport, Windhoek, for a few hours. The immigration officials appeared rather pleased to stamp the Boeing 737-load of us in. I was more than pleased to be admitted after the 20 minute walk from the parked Airlink aircraft to the airport buildings. The African sun blazes, I tell you.
Airlink, I understand is a rather new South African carrier, an airline I have found to be friendly and efficient. It’s interesting that even on the quick domestic hauls — at least the flights I’ve enjoyed— Airlink finds it possible and profitable to serve all passengers delightfully boxed meals in recently sealed time-stamped containers each with fresh fruit and an “African dessert.” The part I most enjoy is washing it down with a traditionally served hot cup of tea – while there remains a selection of wines freely available.
Namibia, formerly South West Africa until 1990, is large, mostly desert, and Windhoek, one of the major cities is a two hour flight almost directly north South Africa’s “Mother City,” Cape Town. My immediate impression: Windhoek is as vibrant and modern as any large metropolitan city anywhere in the west, while rural Namibia is as rural as I have known on this fabulous continent.
The “Foundations of Counseling Ministries” students and facilitating staff whom I am teaching for the week make a full classroom of 20 hailing from 7 nations: Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, and Tanzania. Each student is in a different part of his or her journey towards a degree from The University of The Nations.
Next week I will be back in South Africa and in my home town. I will attend the wedding of my great niece and speak at a few public gatherings, one of which will be a live, three hour discussion with Terry Angelos, the best selling author of “White Trash” subtitled “My Year As a High Class Call Girl.” The memoir is as graphic and tough to read as it is redemptive and full of hope and joy.
If you follow my “On The Road” series of columns, you may have noticed that this time I have not written about the long flight from Newark to Cape Town or the inconveniences that come with international travel.
Here’s why: the teacher for the week in a parallel class offered on this Namibian rural campus, which is 840 acres of sprawling bush with a settlement of houses and classrooms sitting somewhere in the middle, arrived between 2 and 3am on Monday after a 9 hour public bus ride — think Greyhound — from a town in northern Namibia.
Bishop Leonard was up and teaching within a few hours.
I am over complaining about the inconveniences of Boeing and Airbus travel, thank you, Bishop Leonard.
It’s doing what’s good and right to the best of your awareness, as limited as your awareness may be, for the greatest number of people possible in your immediate circle of influence, including those whom you don’t know and even those who may have rejected you or may even hate you.
It’s gathering your strength and harvesting your latent patience and shopping at your store of inner kindness when others test you your many daily contexts, and then being strong and patient and kind even if it feels like you’re surrounded by people who don’t appear to think very much, and, if they do, their thinking appears limited to considering only what pertains to themselves alone.
It’s paying for someone’s groceries or petrol (gas) or electricity, but it’s also stopping to consider why it is that you are able to and trying to understand what circumstances have placed the recipients of your generosity in such vulnerable, often humiliating situations, that they need your help and thinking these things through without resorting to low-hanging stereotypes like “I’ve worked hard and ‘they’ have not.”
It’s seeing people’s faces, acknowledging their unique stories, accepting that all people want to be seen, heard and included, even if their day-to-day behavior suggests volumes of evidence to the contrary.
I have the writer’s permission – for which I am most grateful – to print this letter, one which touched me deeply for the deep losses the woman faced. I am grateful the “adoption process” has undergone many necessary modifications making this scenario extreme and unique. Thank you, dear writer, your letter may assist others to also speak up.
Dear Rod:
I have just read your article about Mothers who gave up their babies for adoption. My heart bleeds for such mothers.
I’m so sorry.
But what about me?
I was adopted. I am also so sad and heartsore that I never was given the opportunity to meet my Mother.
Let me tell you my story…..
I was given away as a two-week-old baby to an old Afrikaans couple. I am 77 years now and have never forgotten the hardships I endured, day after day. She was a disturbed, neurotic woman. Religion was her obsession and he was an alcoholic.
I was beaten relentlessly with a stick, plank or by physical force. Slaps in the face was a common occurrence for any minor misdemeanor or suggestion. Never was I ever told that I was loved. Never was I loved, sympathized with if I was injured as all kids suffer minor accidents. I instead was sworn and cursed at and threatened that I would be given back to the orphanage if I didn’t behave. I was blamed for anything that went wrong even if a light bulb fused. I was not a bad child. I studied hard at school and was well behaved.
Nobody told me that I was adopted whilst I was young and I only got confirmation of that in my late teens, but believe you me, I just knew that I was adopted and always wondered why did my Mother give me away?
I knew there had to be a valid reason.
My adopted Father in a drunken stupor tried to kill me when I was 5 years old. I got a big hiding for that, as if it was my fault.
When I was 16 years old he tried to rape me several times. But I fought back each time. Why I never told any of my teachers I never knew. I thought at that time it was my fault.
I missed my Mother so much and always thought how wonderful it would be to meet her and always dreamt about her coming to fetch me from this hell hole.
But sadly, it never happened.
In my early thirties I could then afford to hire an agency to look for her. The Department of Adoption (or Welfare, I think it was called) gave me her name but was advised that she had passed away in her early forties.
I was devastated and heartsore that I had never looked for her earlier in my life.
I investigated her family and met her brother who told me that she was 16 years old when she was pregnant. Her Mother from a staunch Afrikaans background, forced her to give me up for adoption as it was a skande (SCANDAL) on the family name.
He told me that once a year on my birthday, she would lock herself in her room and just sob and sob.
How sad is that?
I was also given the details of the man who was supposed to be my father. I met him and he clearly remembered my Mother very well and was shocked to hear that she had a baby. We had a blood test done and it was told to us that out of a very low percentage of men in Kwa Zulu Natal who could be my father, he fell within that category.
That was a small bonus for me.
Adoption is a very sad part of life.
Sometimes you are given to wonderful parents and sometimes to terrible parents.
I do believe that for at least 5 years Social workers should stay connected with the adoptee.
To the Mothers who gave up their babies, I feel for you with my whole heart and soul.
I cry for you.
I too would like to attend the lunch and would gladly be a guest speaker to all the Mom’s who gave up their babies.
This is a wonderful service you are offering to the Mothers who gave their babies away. I applaud you.
A few years back my sons and I attended a Birth Mother’s Day Dinner with about 19 brave birth moms, women who’d chosen to place their babies for adoption.
They lit candles.
Some held treasured ear-marked photographs.
There was talk about their love and support of all moms everywhere who have made the powerful choice of adoption.
All were deeply contemplative – for a few, memories from hard choices made 50-plus years ago were revisited.
A few women remained silent, holding tightly to affirmed, supported anonymity.
Mothers who have chosen adoption for their babies are often ignored on Mothers Day.
And, how their hearts must surely ache.
May 12, 2024, several nations, including South Africa, will celebrate Mothers Day and an unseen army of brave women will quietly witness other families rightfully celebrating Mothers Day and find no place at the tables with the children whom they generously offered to families eager to love their babies.
I admit, my awareness of birth mothers is acute.
These women, often shamed, labeled as irresponsible, hard, or uncaring, have radically shifted my life. Each of my boys’ mothers fought untold difficulties – unknown to me – while carrying her child to full term, in full knowledge other options existed.
Despite abandonment, derision from family members, financial difficulties, and who knows what other pressures, each delivered a beautiful baby and made the hard choice to forever enrich my life by allowing me, a single man, to adopt her infant son.
I know you are not forgotten – not on Mothers Day weekend or any other day.
You are so deeply etched into their individual psyches and into our family experience that you are regularly part of our awareness and conversation.
So deep is their desire for you, so deep is the urge for a mother that my boys sometimes called me “mom”.
I have never stopped them. I let it go because I think I know what it’s about.
It’s a primal urge.
It expresses a heartfelt longing.
To stop them, when each was learning to talk, seemed unwise, as if I were stopping something deep, powerful within each.
“Mama” or “mom” and even “mother” seemed to come as easily as rolling over, as cooing, as first steps, and as all those things that come with early development – and so I let it go.
It was as if “mother” and all forms of Her names were buried within each boy to emerge and be attached to the nearest, warmest person no matter what his or her gender.
Yes, the woman waiting your table at your Mothers Day lunch, the teacher whom your child adores, the woman co-worker who goes silent for no identifiable reason or who appears to be sometimes lost in another world when the conversation turns to babies or showers or Mother’s Day, just may be a member of that unseen army of birth-mothers. She may be one of the gracious, brave women who have made Mother’s Day complete for countless women around the world and given a man like me the unique pleasure of sometimes being called “mom.”
I ache for the millions of women whose Mothers Day is tainted with shame, loneliness, disconnection, for having made the tough choice for adoption.
If that’s you or almost you, and are in KZN, and your adoption was recent or decades ago, I have an invitation for you.
Please join me for lunch or an early dinner on May 11, 2024 – yes, the day before Mothers Day is referred to as Birth Mothers Day.
Come alone or bring a friend. I shall speak briefly, simply to thank you and honor your bravery.
Expenses for your lunch will be fully covered – I have already received several financial gifts to cover costs.
The venue will be beautiful and private and safe —- details are unfolding.
Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za so we can get you — and a friend — onto the list and get details to you as they unfold.
Generous readers, restaurateurs, sponsors, gift bag creators, please email Shirley you’d like to pay for a meal or sponsor a table or assist in any manner.
Closing note.
I know this is a tough invitation, Birth Mom.
But, you have already demonstrated your strength.
Join me, please.
[if you’re in the USA and want to give, all gifts are tax deductible— contact me and I’ll guide you through the easy process of giving to OpenHand International, a 501C3 corporation]
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