Lady M was like a feral cat. She had lived her life by her own rules with no apology, and she fiercely protected what she wanted in life. I was a threat to that, as we sat across from each other at one of many tables in the local Olive Garden franchise.
It had been over 50 years since she had given birth to my father during World War II. His birth was the result of a fling with an “Italian hottie” that she met when she and her friends moved to the city to find work.
They had only been dating for 6 months, but she had no intentions of staying with him. Her fiancé was stationed on the other side of the world, and she awaited his return.
“The father never knew I was pregnant,” Lady M stared blankly, “I wasn’t going to have my choices taken away.” Refusing to tell me his name all these years later, she was still intent on maintaining her silence.
“I didn’t go home during the pregnancy so no one would find out, ” Lady M commented as the conversation shifted to how much she missed seeing her grandfather during those months and how he passed away at the end of her pregnancy. With fresh grief still spilling over in her eyes, she said in a low voice “I wasn’t able to go to his funeral.”
Lady M chose to meet with me mostly out of her own curiosity, and perhaps a bit of boredom that had set in with retired life. My grandmother, the woman who raised my father, had kept Lady M’s name in her wallet for years, written on a small piece of paper. As my grandmother aged, she gave that paper to my mother to hold until one of us decided to accept the task of finding her.
“Women back then faced a lot of challenges,” my Nana used to tell me. “It is important not to judge her.” Nana had her own experiences as a revolutionary woman. She too lived by her own compass and endured the suffering that comes with that choice.
Today was the day, the fruition of the time I had dedicated to the task. My father’s birth mother had been a piece of the larger identify puzzle for us but finding her seemed like a complicated task. With the internet as a cultural stronghold, there was now a tool that could make it happen.
As my luck would have it, Lady M’s cousin had posted a family tree on an online ancestry data base, and I was able to find her quickly using a two-week free trial. I called the cousin and carefully spoke about how I was looking for my father’s birth mother and that Lady M’s name had been given to me as someone who might know her.
The cousin laughed, “It may be her! I could see her doing something like that. She was wild in her youth, driving fast cars and partying.” Lying again to protect the mother’s identity, I insisted that Lady M may have only known the mother. The cousin agreed to reach out to Lady M for permission for me to contact her. Days later, I was given a phone number and address.
How do you reach out to someone who shares so much with you and yet nothing at all? I decided to write a letter, including pictures of my family and information about us, as that would be what I would want to know if I were in her shoes. It was also important for me to tell her that we were only looking for information so that we could have a better sense of ourselves and any health impacts. But that was a lie. While I truly wanted to know her, I also wanted her to know me for a reason I could not articulate. Lady M called me after receiving my letter and she agreed to meet.
The Olive Garden was busy on that Saturday afternoon as I noted the resemblance with Lady M and my father’s facial features and mannerisms. People at the other tables were busy stuffing their faces with white flour breadsticks and over processed salad while I contemplated nature vs nurture. While I had always bet on nurture, had nature really trumped nurture after all?
My father was also wild, as was I in my own way, and when Lady M spoke of her fascination with fast cars and the high life, I couldn’t help but laugh. She was speaking of my father. Even now, she still fed the birds in her skivvies each morning, and she named her dog after the first X-rated film she watched. Wildness must be in the DNA.
Lady M also shared stories of her heartbreak, at times in a way that felt removed from them. She gave birth to my father on a cold metal table at the hospital while the nurses spat on her and hurled insults. While she later worked in the medical field, she never stepped foot in an OB ward again. It was a different time back then, when a single woman giving birth faced a great deal of stigma. Lady M was ahead of her time. She wanted it all, and she knew what she would have to do to get it. She signed the adoption papers quietly and greeted her fiancé when he returned home one month later. She got on with the life she wanted.
“He never asked and I never told him,” Lady M said of her husband, proudly, and with her characteristically firm voice. Now in her 70s, I asked her if she had lived the life she wanted, if she was happy. Her eyes shifted down for a moment. “My husband died young, so it ended too early. He was such a good man.” He had been lost to cancer, and she shared one conversation that they had prior to his death. “He made sure we got a lawnmower that I could drive, as I’d need to cut the grass,” she said matter-of-factly. She was prepared to go through the world alone.
I couldn’t help but think of my Nana, and how she too lost her husband young. Within one year after they had adopted my father, they were in a terrible car accident. “When I was in the hospital, for a long time they didn’t tell me that he had died,” she would tell me with tears in her eyes, holding the last check that my grandfather had written at the gas station that day. She kept it in a box under her bed. Nana too was faced with walking through the world alone, a now single woman with an adopted child in a time where neither were welcome.
Lady M had learned to be a strong woman. She had learned to pick herself up and continue taking care of business. Yet her eyes had a depth and pain to them that she only reserved for the rare moments when she would allow herself to feel. Today at The Olive Garden was not one of those days. She and her husband had enough money for her to continue to live a good life. She was an independent woman.
At the end of what I thought was going to be a single meeting, Lady M said that she would be open to meeting my father and staying in touch. This turned into many years of a push and pull relationship that was sometimes in person, then largely over the phone.
There were times when we spoke weekly, usually one-way conversations about her day and things that were on her mind. While I always wanted more of a relationship with her, I knew better than to have those expectations of people, particularly her. “You know, this was a closed adoption.” Lady M said to me once on a call. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” I’d respond by pulling back and leaving her alone.
As Lady M continued to age, she seemed to appreciate our calls more. She frequently focused on light-hearted topics such as what was going on in People magazine or on her favorite soap opera, but sometimes she would allow me glimpses of what was under the surface. Once, after getting an adapted phone so that she could hear again during phone calls, she spoke of how she wasn’t enjoying her shows anymore because she couldn’t really hear them, but the worst part was no longer being able to hear music.
“What is your favorite song?” I asked. Lady M quickly replied “Desperado! I would love to hear Desperado again!”
In her mid-nineties, Lady M proclaimed that she had decided to stop driving. “I’m not going to be one of those old people who drive long after they shouldn’t. I’ll have my groceries delivered,” she said confidently. I was glad as I worried about her being out and about during the pandemic.
“Are you still drinking a martini at the end of every day along with a piece of chocolate?” I asked with a laugh. “Heavens, no. I’d fall over at my age. I’ve switched to a glass of red wine.” She spoke of her single woman’s safety agreement with her neighbors. “They know what time I open the curtains each morning. They have a key to my place if they don’t see the curtain open at the usual time.” I wondered if I should have a similar safety plan, but I did not have neighbors who cared about me.
Absorbed in the heaviness of my own life transitions, time slipped by like the illusion of an endless river. I couldn’t fake a happy glow in conversations, so I chose to avoid them altogether. Now in her late nineties and no longer able to hear well, my calls with Lady M were few. A fall landed her in an assisted living facility. I only found out because I had sent birthday flowers to her old address, and one of her friends called me; one of two friends who knew her secret. “Can we visit?” I asked.
Lady M was now greeting us with hugs. She never asked me much about my life, but these days she repeatedly asked, “Do you have a male friend?” My response was simply “That hasn’t worked out well for me.” While I could have taken the opportunity to have a real conversation, I had grown accustomed to what we had. And I had become all too familiar with being a wallflower in life, adapting to people and situations rather than leading them.
Each time I would visit, eventually with a boyfriend, she would go through the same box of pictures and letters. “I’ve kept all these letters from my husband during the war. When I die, I don’t know what will happen to them.” Lady M now spoke with an emptiness hovering around her. “I don’t know why I’m still here. I think that I am not a good person. My husband was a good person and he died young.”
Lady M quickly switched the conversation to her curiosity about my boyfriend and his life, or she would show us the small number of her most important beautiful things that she was able to stuff into the now small room of her existence. “These wood carving pieces are my favorite,” she pointed to her collection.
“Which is your favorite?” I asked. Lady M pointed to a large wood carving of Jesus, with his arms outstretched, and many wild animals held under his wings. “It even lights up!” she beamed.
Lady M lived to be 100 years old. She died in late September of 2025. One of her two friends who knew the secret of us called to tell me that Lady M had passed away. “She didn’t want a service, but some of us will get together to spread her ashes, if you are interested.”
How do you celebrate the life of a strong woman who let you get close, but not too close, to what was locked away inside of her? You play Desperado on repeat, you contemplate the complexities of life and how some of them leave us closed off to others, sometimes permanently. And you honor the gifts that you were given, as you also hold space for the sorrow in knowing that you wished for more.
©Cardinal Speaks