The Old Gray Filing Cabinet

I remember as a child and teen the ominous hold the gray filing cabinet in my parent's bedroom held over me.  I knew what was in it for the most part, the yearly "happenings" folders that my mother collected cards, news clippings, school programs, and letters in for safe keeping.  There was folders for appliance manuals, bills, and maps.  And somewhere in the old 2 drawer filing cabinet was a folder that held information my parents had received about my birth parents. 

It was never a secret that I was adopted.  I can't remember a time that I didn't know that I was adopted; but, my birth parents were definitely a mystery.  They were a mystery I couldn't help toss over an over in my mind.  It was a mystery that would pull me down the long 80 foot hall in our family home and leave me, heart pounding, kneeling in front of that gray filing cabinet, working up the nerve to open it, and search for those little known facts about my origins.

I think this long trek started when I was about 12 years old.  I don't think I worked up the nerve to open the drawer and look until I was about 15 or 16 years old.    Sometimes, I would panic that I would get caught red handed, so I'd leave the room with a cover story in place - just in case someone met me in the hall.  Secrets end in lies.  Sometimes, I would open the drawer and start to look, then feel guilty for searching for the sacred document without permission, close it, and run.  The guilt would linger, still lingers. I suppose some part of me feels that loving both sets of parents will always be betrayal of one or the other.  Most of the time I would chicken out, not knowing what I would find made knowing and not knowing equally scary.  The end result of all my forays down to the long hall to the gray filing cabinet was running in some form or another.

Eventually, I worked up the nerve, heart pounding, barely breathing, I opened the cabinet, and found the folder.  It was almost nothing.  Certainly not earth shattering enough to have held me captive all those years.  It was pretty much everything my parents had already told me.  It was everything they knew.  Non-identifying information:  my birth parents were both 20, he had dark hair and dark eyes and was Russian Jew.  She was blond with blue eyes, German, English, Irish.  I was born in Los Angeles.  Typed out on a thin piece of typing paper, in its entirety, it maybe covered an eighth of the page.  I slipped it back in the folder, back into the gray filing cabinet, and closed the drawer.  


After that, the gray filing cabinet became more of a personal metaphor for all the mysteries in my life surrounding adoption.  I had to travel down a scarier hall, the one in my mind and heart, the one that held all the things I didn't know, all the excuses I gave for the necessity of my adoption, all the bad memories of people's ignorance, all the real world road blocks that would pop up every time I tried to find out anything real about my past.  It held everything I would safeguard with think walls of personal space to keep the very vulnerable me safe.  Just like that old gray filing cabinet down the hall it would take a lot of nerve to peak inside and see what was hidden in there, more nerve than I had until recently.

I suppose I was hoping that it would be like that anticlimactic old piece of typing paper, not nearly as scary or revealing as I though it would be.  So far, that hasn't been the case.  I have found that this filing cabinet holds much more than I thought.  It seems to be filled with experiences, thoughts, and feelings that were carefully crammed away waiting for a day when I could gather the nerve to open them up and deal with them.  They run deeper than I expected.  The kind of deep where emotion a creates physical reaction in your gut, where tears are an involuntary response.  It is okay though, because it is better to feel it and deal with it than let it sit, building a thicker and thicker wall of protection.  It is a necessary pain.

I believe I am a secret that my birth parents have barricaded behind thick walls of their own to keep them and the ones they love safe.  Pretty soon the walls end up in charge and the secret has too much control.  I was headed that way,  my secret pain, my walls were starting to block everything out to keep me safe.  This is hard, it is not what I want; but' I won't have the secrets make my heart pound in fear, make me paralyzed into inaction anymore.  I will take the long walk, open the cabinet, and face it.

No more secret folders, in dark filing cabinets, behind thick walls.