The TP&Adoption Story, by Samantha Kimmel Part 11

So. There I was, another pregnant teen in America. The following stories will/might give you an idea as to why I was pregnant, and very very skinny:

I can't remember if I've written about this next bit (probably have; mind like a rusty sieve some days) but I'll do it ayway: When I was 16 I discovered the joys of anorexia. I was 5'4", about 130 pounds, and one day I was swimming at our HOA (ooh, posh!) recreation area pool. I swam like an otter. I loved water. When I was 4, Dad took us to a fairly luxury hotel somewhere off San Diego. I immediately threw my suit and bathing cap on, and Dad and I went for a swim. Dad hauled out, long before I did, and was resting on a lounge while I cavorted and dived from the bouncy board, swimming like a fish... in the deep end. Suddenly, a Lifeguard was blowing his whistle and standing on the pavement next to the 12' deep end sign where I was currently having a  great time and he was screaming at me to "Get over here! Get over here right now!"  Holy moley you'da thought I'd stolen the secret plans for the Invasion of Hanoi. Dad came a'runnin', hollering in his 5'8" Jew from New York way, "What? What is this? Why are you yelling at my kid?!?" He was furious.

I had by now stopped, smack in the middle of the 12' deep end, treading water and looking confused.

The Lifeguard pointed at me, and nearly shrieked to my father, "She can't be in the deep end! She's too little for the deep end!" Dad dropped his mad face and motioned for me to come to the edge of the pool. I did. Dad said to the lifeguard, "If she swims the width of this pool and back here, where we're standing, she can stay in the deep end?" [I am not sure, to this day, actually why Dad made me prove my prowess; I suppose that he wanted the guard to think Dad had raised a tiny little Gertrude Ederle. Pride. One of the Big Seven. They'll bite if you let them.]

The guard, reluctantly, nodded. Off I went. Took about ten seconds. I smiled up at the guard, and Dad. The guard looked amazed. "Wow!" said the impressed guard. "You can really swim!" Dad, hubris and satisfaction making his face glow, was then pretty stunned when the guard finished, "Now get back to the shallow end. Now."

Now we come to the part where I'm 16, and swimming in the homeowners pool. As I climbed the steps to the diving board, two men I didn't know were sitting beside the pool, watching the older, nubile young ladies, but then one of the men said, about me, "Jesus, look at that kid. She's a seal!" The other man laughed, and agreed with his buddy.

A seal? I repeated that in my head, over and over, even as I bounced on the end of the board and did a perfect touch-toe dive. A SEAL?? Seals are fat! Big, blubbery, fat, waddling beasts! They're calling me a fat seal! I have to do something about this!

That's when anorexia came a'knockin' and I answered the door. I quit eating. I made it look like I was eating (anorectics are good at smooshing food around on a plate to make it look eaten) but I wasn't. I went from 125 pounds to 82 pounds in two months.

Which is when I fainted, was carted off to UCLA emergency room, and woke up in a private room. There were a bunch of IV's stuck in me (and still I thought, "Oh, crap, calories!") and a doctor telling me that if I didn't eat, I was gonna die.

I shouted, "Someone get me a boiled egg white!" The doctor was not only not amused, he said, while showing me MRI photos of what, I don't know, but he was frowning as he said, "You've done a great deal of damage to your uterus and ovaries by depriving yourself of nourishment, and I'm sorry to say I don't believe you will ever have a child because of it."

Boy, was he wrong.

Jinkies.

.More of This Grisly Tale

SAMANTHA KIMMEL, Writer:

As I was saying, in another post, I feel that it is time for me to vent (mentally puke) what has happened to me since I got pregnant in Israel, at aged 18, was misdiagnosed by TWO Jerusalem based doctors as having a "TUMOUR" (I was going to Hebrew U at the time, and for two years saw NO ONE but the love of my life, Tal ben Gal, the most gorgeous human male I'd ever known, 2 years my senior) and the ensuing heartbreak, of MINE, Tal and Amanda, you heartless parvenous.

There is SO much more pre-tale to this tale than I can't muster the strength to write that part now; suffice it to re-read the above paragraph, and I will begin when I got home from Israel in April of 1978, fully expecting my OB/GYN to make preparation to remove this "tumour". I was NOT expecting him to say, "Well, you're in great shape [I was an anorectic; had to be. A woman had to be skinny in America to be seen as a human being. Sickening then, sickening now] BUT you're 'tumour' is about 5 months along and I think it's a girl."

Shock? No, shock is when the winning football team pours freezing cold Gatorade on their coach. This? This was mind-numbing paralysis. I could hardly move, and speaking was an impossibility.

So, my mother spoke for me. She said, "You're having an abortion." Now, at this point I must tell  you that there was a gigantic foofara in America about supposed "late term abortions" and MD's left and right were being sued, or jailed, or having their malpractice premiums skyrocket, or all 3. (Thanks, Anita Bryant.) Ergo, my MD babbled "No way, uh uh, ain't gonna, can't make me" or babbling to that effect. 

Mom then said, "Then you're giving it up for adoption". (I am an adopted person, so I wasn't wary of that option, just really pissed that my mother, as usual, called that particular shot. She could be a bulldozer when she wanted, and for a 4'11", 100 pound woman she was damned good at it.)

When we got home (and the feeling returned to my fingers) I quickly wrote to my friends, especially Sheila (my roommate at Hebrew U, and who remains to this day my one of two rocks forme to cling to in stormy emotional weather [the other being my husband, Kimit Muston; knock on wood, chas v'chalilah) and told them what was the what.

The next letter, that same day, went par avion to Tal, at the kibbutz where we'd met, as that was his home and where his family was. I got no reply.

However, when my Hebrew U friends got these letters, they fired off a letter to me, saying they would hire a monit  (Hebrew for "taxi", and dirt cheap) and, led by Sheila, go to Tal's small house in a suburb of Tel Aviv, and beat him senseless. He wasn't there. His roommates told my friends several reasons for his absence:  he was back in the merchant marine, or he was back at his home kibbutz, or he was scuba diving looking for lost gold off the coast of Israel. (Hey, it could have happened; archeologists found Cleopatra's temple decades later.)

My friends were not pleased by this.Alas,t there was nothing they could do but return to Jerusalem and write to fill me in on the sitch from 9,000 miles away.

So, as I got larger in the belly (but I could still do a full backbend, hands flat on the floor; I was very limber)
the more letters I wrote to him. 25 or so in all, until I gave birth.

Not one letter was answered. Meanwhile, I was working with a private attorney on the adoption end. My criteria were simple: The couple MUST MUST MUST be 1) Jewish, 2) have the child raised to be aware of her Jewish heritage, 3) be Bat Mitzvah and 4) BE A NICE PERSON. Compassionate, friendly, helpful, all those boy scout things. (They didn't, but that's another post.)

The attorney (forever known to me as "Assface") pulled me in to meet couples looking to adopt. Remember my criteria now: Jewish Jewish Jewish, and nice. The first 4 couples? Two sets of Catholics, an Asian couple who were Buddhists and one who were both atheists.

I was 18. Pregnant. Getting no answers to my from the baby's father (who I loved with a fiery passion so fierce it threatened to burn out my soul). Trying to pick a good home for my (turns out, one and only) kid, and this Assface is crapping all over my criteria. So, after the atheists left, I suddenly became Insane Wonder Woman, and gave Assface a dressing down that Queen Victoria would have admired. 

Even my mother kept her trap shut. She was stunned. She'd never seen me act this way. Hell, my nickname (until that very moment) was 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm'. I hated confrontations. I cringed at anger. I let my mother set the actions in place so that Assface was even in my life.

That all changed, on that day when the atheists left. I told Assface (my speech not hysterical and loud, as you'd expect, but was a very low, clear, slow tone which I had used only once before that day [and that incident is in my book, "Jewish Bananas" to be on-line soon, and tells the pre-story to this one. It's $5.99, fer Christ's sake, go buy it] and to this day, the people who know me know I am very serious [possibly dangerous] when I speak in a low, controlled, barely-whispered tone of voice),  "Bring me Jews, you incompetent moron. Do NOT send me Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or Gozer worshipers. No one else but Jews. Got me?" He looked as if I'd hit him with a fish. But, he got me.

He nodded, and made an odd squeaky noise. I turned and sailed from his office, beckoning my mother to follow. She did.

We got to the elevator, I was hyperventilating at this point (but I never let Assface or my mother know, at any time, that I was teetering on a razor's edge of sanity). The doors opened, and I pitched, in a faint, headfirst, into the arms of the man trying get out of the elevator.

That man was Ryan O'Neal, and to this day I thank him for catching me. Mom thought I'd just tripped. On linoleum. 

Another post to come, soon. (This is extremely cathartic, but I suppose all writing is.)
Sam Kimmel