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  A little in parenthesis now. Robin, this is so totally weird, isn’t it? I don’t know you yet I am laying myself absolutely bare in front of you. I can’t tell you how exposed I feel and how much I hope it’s okay to do this. To say I was vulnerable would be a major understatement. To tell you I am a little scared of how you will react is also one.

  But please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t wish any of this away nor deny it. I just want to understand it. I’ve spent most of my life saying, thinking, feeling I was complete, that I had this adoption thing covered but now, clearly, that’s not true – the reconnection with you has brought something to the surface that must have been buried very, very deep. And while I am so happy it has surfaced, it’s thrown me out to sea. Is it the same for you?

  Have I totally spooked you now? If I have, I’m so sorry but I don’t know any other way to work this than with complete honesty.

  Robin, I’m going to need your help. I think I need to be re-connected with you physically, concretely, before I hear about the disconnection. Does that make sense? I think I’d rather hear it – or read it – having come back into the safe harbour rather than still be on the open seas.

  But all of this is just about me and, obviously, this isn’t just about me, it’s about us. Us, past, present and most of all, I hope, future.

  Much love,

  Susannah

  Right, that’s putting it – and me – out there. I am about to send it to Robin when I stop and decide to send it to Maddy instead. Full points to Susannah the sensible: while the inner child sulks at not having the immediate gratification of sending it to Robin, I am relieved that at least there is some part of me that remains a clearish thinking adult.

  But then, that evening, Robin doesn’t email as she said she would. I have a total tantrum in my head – I rage and determine that I’m over this whole reunion thing, it was a mistake, we should call it quits now. I should have left sleeping dogs and birth mothers lie.

  But I can’t. I need to see if I can get her to respond.

  Email from Susannah, Saturday, 27 September, 11.37pm

  Hello again,

  I am going to go to bed hoping your silence tonight was a result of a day enjoyed not something I’ve said.

  X

  Email exhaustion

  Susannah

  Email from Robin, Sunday, 28 September, 10.29am

  Susannah, you naughty girl! Of course my silence was not a result of something you said! If I were concerned about anything, as if I’d just go silent! I’m sorry. I went to bed really early last night, exhausted, and have only just now got back to my computer.

  You must remember that old people like me are not constantly connected as you younger generation are. I sort of GO TO THE COMPUTER, GO ON THE INTERNET (have you seen IT Crowd?) as a distinct event. Weird, I know, but true. And I never use the Internet on my phone – too small and laborious.

  I am now going out for the day – my sister’s birthday. Will reconnect later tonight.

  I love you. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Email from Susannah, 11.49am

  No, I’m sorry. And I don’t want to be a cyber stalker – or any other kind of stalker.

  I need to pull myself together. I am a nearly-fifty-year-old, normally competent woman feeling like a lost child again, wanting approval, hunting for acceptance. It’s doing my head in.

  Am off to get a grip! Hope you have a lovely day with your sister X

  Email from Robin, 12.57pm

  It’s understandable, but know that you have all my approval and acceptance – and love x

  I like Robin’s reply but I have already decided I’m not going to email her again today. Not so much for her sake but mine. I need to stop being so needy. I make it through the afternoon but then think it would be rude to not reply in some way to her nice email. But not too much, Susannah; one email, just a short one.

  Email from Susannah, 8.00pm

  Thank you Robin x

  Robin

  I’m beginning to feel out of my depth again, that my supply of emotional reassurance is not equal to the demand; it is being drained dry. Maybe it’s just email burnout: this is not my accustomed mode of communication, especially at this rate. It reminds me of the one time I went on the treadmill at the gym – my legs went faster and faster out of my control till I was literally spun off the machine.

  I think we just need to change the medium of our relationship – get off the cyber-ride and walk on solid land. Actually meet in person. Yes, I think we should do that, I’ll suggest it.

  Email from Robin, 10.09pm

  Hello. You know I really want to meet soon. Waiting is beginning to feel wrong and a bit too intellectual. My fear is that when you read my story of that time you will think I didn’t have a good enough reason for giving you up and so you will not be able to forgive me. So, I am scared I won’t have your acceptance and approval – and you would have more justification than I for withholding it. I have none – and I don’t want any anyway. It is a pure undeserved gift for me if you can offer me love now. Remember, as I have said in an earlier letter, it is I, not you, Susannah, who caused hurt.

  Email from Susannah, 10.53pm

  Hello, can’t sleep, keep checking phone and then your email – I hope you read this tonight so you can sleep a little calmer.

  My ‘serious’ email is on a similar track and I agree about the meeting – I need you out of my head and back in my life.

  Robin, I’m scared too – this has opened up something that I think I must have buried very deep.

  But I’m not going to judge your/our story and I am going to love you. I am also scared, so we can both be scared together and start rebuilding.

  Love,

  Susannah x

  Email from Robin, 11.05pm

  Thanks for reply! Yes, I believe we can do this. Maddy tomorrow and then let’s see. Good night. Love. Xx

  Email from Susannah, 11.10pm

  Okay – poor Maddy!

  I should’ve said one more thing – I would like to meet before I read or am told about my birth. I would like to have begun to reconnect physically before learning about the disconnect – let me know what you think about that – after I hope a good night’s sleep for us both. X

  Susannah

  So much for the one short email rule! And ‘I am going to love you’ – where on earth did that come from? Why am I so confident? No idea but I do know now that I absolutely need to meet her.

  Out of our heads

  Susannah

  My family is blessed to have a small farm, which doesn’t actually farm anything, ninety minutes out of Melbourne. A house on a hill surrounded by bush, it’s a place we go to get away, to relax, to heal. We have celebrated there, mourned and made merry: it’s a special place. Oskar suggests we spend a few days there to see if it might help slow things – I suspect he means me – down a bit.

  But it doesn’t slow down the emails.

  Email from Susannah, Monday 29 September, 6.18am

  Morning,

  Worst night’s sleep ever – hope you fared better?

  But reading this in a book about adoption reunion made me feel a little better: ‘Approaching a reunion is like throwing your emotions into a blender at high speed. Elation, despair, panic, fear, all mix together, churning in the pit of your stomach.’

  So other people have pulled this off.

  X

  Email from Robin, 8.26am

  Good morning! I am happy to meet before you read about your birth – you know what is best for you. Do you want me to read your ‘serious’ email first? Maybe that would be good? If so, you could send it today – Aziza is going out for a short time.

  As to place of meeting, my two needs would be peacefulness and privacy. I’m not sure the Botanical Gardens could guarantee those things – weather, lots of people around. They could be lovely for a subsequent visit? Would my house – or yours – be out of the question? (No one else home of course!)

  Lov
e, Robin x

  Email from Susannah, 8.36am

  Hello,

  I know what’s best for me? Are you nuts?!

  Yes Botanical Gardens has its problems. Is it okay if I say no to either house? I think I need to get us sorted before bringing in the rest of our respective lives – does that make sense? It would be nice to have somewhere beautiful though.

  What time is Aziza out and about? Did wonder if I should discuss letter with Maddy – a bit scared of sending now, it’s very raw. X

  Email from Robin, 8.58am

  Hi! Yes, quite capable of demonstrating nuttiness. And you’re right – definitely run your letter by Maddy – she does have wisdom, I think. And there is absolutely no need for me to get it today. The place is a bit of a challenge (though of course relative to our other challenges it is sort of a luxurious one – if you get what I mean). x

  Email from Susannah, 9.08am

  Yes a much easier challenge – although at the moment I can over-think anything!

  I wonder if you might be ON THE INTERNET for a little while A is out … X

  Email from Robin, 9.26am

  Yes, I can be. It will be somewhere around 11.00. x

  Email from Robin, 10.03am

  Aziza outing cancelled! I can speak briefly – and we will probably want to confer post Maddy. A. goes home tomorrow morning and then I am free to focus fully. Although I do have a long-standing commitment on Wednesday; and a doctor’s appt. 12 noon, Thursday. X

  I sit on top of a hill – it’s a good place to have a crisis – and I talk to Maddy on the phone. I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m not sure I have breathed all weekend.

  I send Maddy my ‘serious’ email; in what may be the understatement of the year, she agrees it may be ‘a bit much’ to send to Robin at this stage, and I tell her I really, really want to meet Robin as soon as possible – to get all this out of my head and somewhere that looks a lot more like reality.

  Robin

  Just had a phone call from Maddy to arrange the time and place of our meeting. I had been gearing up for a meeting in about a week’s time, or the coming Friday possibly, at the earliest.

  Maddy: Susannah can’t do Friday. What about Thursday? Me: Oh, dear, I have something on then that I can’t change.

  Maddy: I’m not available Wednesday, so the only other day possible this week is Tuesday. After that it would have to be next week. Probably better sooner than later.

  Me: Tomorrow?! No, that’s too soon. I’m planning to get my hair cut … do other things … I definitely can’t do Tuesday …

  Hi Robin, I’m Susannah

  Robin

  It’s Tuesday – and I’m getting ready to meet Susannah.

  I have to say, I am quite good at sudden about-turns and back-downs. Many a time I have said ‘I can’t, I won’t’ – only to find myself doing the thing a very short time later. At least I am adaptable.

  We are to meet at the National Gallery, a good compromise between Susannah’s need for open space (diffuse the pressure, the ability to escape if necessary?) and my preference for contained privacy (consistent with my need to fully concentrate, sharpen the focus, pin down reality as it were).

  So, somewhere between a cell and a paddock.

  Susannah

  Tuesday, 6 am. I run along the beach hoping I can run even some of the adrenalin out of my body, loosen even one nerve or quieten and exhaust one racing thought. The mission is not completely successful, but it fills in an hour. Seven and a half to go.

  The morning passes, glacially. I take Emma to school, complete robotic email processing and pretend to work, appointments pass and then here we are. Time to get ready. Nearly fifty years on, it’s time to meet my birth mother. And the obvious question hangs: what do I wear?

  It’s like dressing for a date – how am I supposed to look? Not too smart, not too try-hard, not like a work thing but not too casual either, and not too I-just-came-from-the-gym-and-this-doesn’t-really-mean-anything. Somewhere in the middle, something I feel comfortable in, that’s just me. But what is that?

  I churn through options in my head with an increasingly dry mouth and an ever more frantic dancing in the tummy, and resist the recurring impulse to call in sick and give the whole thing up, to leave it in the realm of a nice romantic idea rather than confront what might be a messier reality.

  I send a selfie of proposed clothes to Em. ‘Yes, wear that, it’s you, Mum,’ comes the confident reply from the wise woman stuck in the teenage body.

  I buy flowers – it’s a weird kind of Mother’s Day after all – and pack some of the photos Maddy has suggested, then take my heart out of my stomach and head down St Kilda Road towards the gallery.

  The plan is simple: meet Maddy first outside the National Gallery of Victoria, and then meet Robin in the beautiful and spacious hall. The need for openness and somewhere of beauty loomed large. Openness or escape? I wasn’t sure, but it was definitely not going to be in a confined, ugly public-service office.

  Robin

  I get dressed: black trousers (Roro, I hear my six-year-old granddaughter say in my mind, why do you always wear black trousers?), a shirt and a cardigan – the same one I was wearing in the photo I sent to Susannah. I have misgivings, now, that that photo was too flattering. I liked it and chose it for that reason, of course, but wasn’t it a deception? And now the reveal! In reality I look older: lined face, saggy neck. How absurdly superficial of me, at seventy-two to be thinking of my physical appearance! I don’t really care, but a tiny part of me does, it seems.

  I’m not really nervous, just incredibly excited. I tell Matilda: ‘Guess where I’m going today? Into the city to meet Susannah.’ ‘No!’ she says in disbelief.

  I feel the same: how can this be? Is it actually happening? This, too, is like a dream, but in the sense of it being too good to be true. A miracle.

  I catch the train to Flinders Street.

  Susannah

  At 1.45pm, I park the car in St Kilda Road – how much money do I put in the meter? Two hours? Three? I put in coins to take me up to 9pm – go figure – and I walk, feeling increasingly sick, towards the gallery.

  The water flowing down the front of the gallery is one of life’s simple joys. Child or adult, I love the slight wrongness of sticking your hand in the cascading water. I have to do it every time we go past; it’s a thing.

  So, I do it again, looking towards the gallery entrance as I do. The closed gallery entrance. The closed-on-Tuesdays gallery entrance. My perfect plan is in tatters. I contemplate running back to the car.

  Except here comes Maddy, who arrives bang on 2pm – the only part of the plan that works. A cunning Plan B is hastily built between us: I will find an equally beautiful place across the road at Federation Square, not quite the same vision but … and Maddy will intercept Robin and I will call her and tell her where I am. Excellent, we are back on track. Ish. We set off across the bridge.

  And then.

  Birth mother at twelve o’clock. I see Robin, wearing the same cardigan as in her photo, walking towards us. This is so not the plan. Before she spots me, we move to Plan C. I reel off to the right to Fed Square while Maddy moves to meet Robin. I look for any place that might vaguely fit the criteria of ‘lovely’ along the riverside walk: perhaps flowing water, a wooden bench under a tree and away from the crowds, the odd swan gliding by. Calm beauty.

  Robin

  I set off across Princes Bridge towards the gallery. A young woman comes up to me: ‘Robin?’ Of course, it must be Maddy – but she’s so young! Not the mature woman I envisaged behind the gentle, wise voice on the telephone. What a good job she does. (It’s also a good job that I am wearing my identifying cardigan, because, for some crazy reason, I have my mobile phone turned off and she needs to inform me that the gallery is closed and we are relocating to Federation Square.)

  Crossing St Kilda Road, Maddy, remembering my flusterings the day before, kindly reassures me: ‘Your hair looks nice.’ Despite the fact t
hat she is young enough to be my daughter, I am definitely the child right now, and Maddy is my security object.

  Susannah

  It’s hopeless. Abort Plan C, bin it along with Plans A and B. My intention of finding a lovely calm meeting point is obliterated by the rubbish floating past in the river, noisy school kids and the cleaning truck blowing dust in my face. I look up the riverside walk and see Maddy and Robin walking towards me.

  I could just run now and ring later.

  Or not.

  Not. Bugger it, forget the plans. Maybe the vision is overrated.

  I stand in the middle of the crowded path, people milling either side, and awkwardly holding my bags in both hands. With my heart in my mouth, I walk up to them.

  ‘Hello, Robin, I’m Susannah.’

  We hug.

  Now what?

  Robin

  We both rise to the occasion, countering awkwardness with humour, and the three of us proceed to find somewhere to have a coffee.

  Our default venue, a rather bleak, nondescript little cafe, is unideal, but unimportant at this point; Maddy, on the other hand, is very important in her role as reassuring buffer.

  Drinks are procured, photos are shown and we chat – quite comfortably, I feel.

  Susannah

  The cafe is a long way from my vision of beauty but what can you do? We sit down and both look at Maddy, like two schoolkids waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do.

  Luckily she does. She suggests we show each other the photos we have brought. We obey, and conversation slowly starts then keeps going, with the odd nudge from Maddy when too long a pause arises. It’s not that there’s nothing to say, it’s more that there’s everything to say and I am struggling to stop staring at Robin, and taking in that I came from her. To say it is weird is an understatement, yet the slowly building momentum of the conversation pulls us along.