Possible visit...

     

   This picture was taken the first time I ever had a visit with my birthfamily. I was not yet a teen when this photo was taken ( and apparently I had never cut my hair??).  I saw them many times after that ...but it has now been 5 years since I saw them last. I speak to my birthfather often, and it is very possible that I will see him this summer. Due to my impending move out of the country, he and his wife (not my birthmother ) have expressed interest in seeing me, always indirectly. The other day, he finally came right out and suggested it. A week or so would be perfect, he said.. in early June- just as the weather in his state is becoming intolerable- the relative cool of New York City would be a welcome retreat. He would come for a week or so, stay in a hotel near my house with his wife and daughter, my birthsister. I know that he has asked to come to me because I would not be welcome at their home. His mother, now old and frail after the death of her husband, lives near them- and I know that she doesn't not want to have to face me again before she leaves this earth. She prefers to leave me, along with the mistakes of her son, behind.

    I've been avoiding them for years, evading this moment as cleverly as I could- shoving them farther and farther behind me, eager to leave them behind. I understand my grandmother's dilemma- it can sometimes be so tempting to bury the ones who have hurt us, to distance ourselves from the loves that failed us.

   I wear my anger comfortably now-  the cast out child, the one who, for better or for worse, has to look in from the outside. How would it be to take off my anger for a while, to expose myself? I have reified them- conceptualized them to the point of mere entities. The members of my birthfamily are not real people to me anymore. Ghosts now, they roam outside the peripherals of my life. How would it be, now, to see them in the flesh? My flesh. To look again into the eyes of people whose faces mirror my own, to reunite with the clan to whom I can never fully belong?

  The idea terrifies me. They want to see me, they say. Just once more before I leave the country again, just once more before I become virtually in-findeable. I know that their intentions are good, I know that my birthfather wants to see me so badly. I don't understand his love for me, though I find it flattering. But this love that I have not earned, that I perhaps do not deserve, makes me uneasy. I feel guilty for having such a hold on him. How can he want to see me so badly? What is this connection between us? I feel guilty for this nonreciprocating devotion, the eagerness in his voice when we talk about a possible visit. My own hesitance.

  I could make up an excuse. I will be busy this summer. Between embassy visits, packing, organizing, studying and apartment browsing- my summer is fairly packed. It would not be a lie to say I cannot fit it in. I could politely decline, make half hearted promises about a visit in a year or two, when I return to the USA. I could escape- leave the country and return to my haven amongst the olive trees and the blood red oranges. I could bathe my feet in the warm waters of the sea, lie on the sand and walk on the stones of a country where I am free--untangled from the short life that I lived before the one I have now. I could escape without ever having to look my past in the face.

What should I do?