It's hard for me to be away from home for long these days. My little boys are now three and barely six years old: spritely, scampering little fellows who still need their Mommy. Or maybe that's my deluded maternal imagination. In pre-parental days I loved to travel, study abroad, embark on all sorts of intriguing adventures with nary a thought of homesickness. Ever since my maternal hormones kicked in, even a night away from my children gives me pangs. Ok, so maybe I'm a sentimentalist in this regard. An old-fashioned, stay-at-home Mommy. Except, of course, that I'm an avid Bastard National.

Last year I made the bastardly sacrifice of missing Halloween with my family so as to spend a week in Oregon helping to spread the word about Measure 58 and adoptee rights. Helen Hill and the great Oregonian adoption activists had brought Measure 58 to the ballot and into the forefront of political discussion within the state. Despite continued pummelling by pro-secrecy advocates in most of Oregon's mainstream media, poll results remained in our favor. In the 2 weeks before the November 3rd election, a handful of Bastard Nationals arrived in Oregon to share in the historic experience of getting an adoptee-rights initiative to a vote of the people.

The first to arrive were BN Executive Committee member Ron Morgan and Technology Chair Denise Castellucci who spent their first week travelling around the state meeting with local activists and assisting with local outreach. In the final week Shea Grimm, Donna Martz and I arrived and on the day before the election about five other Bastard Nationals arrived from out of state. (This is much fewer than the hundreds NCFA President Bill Pierce claimed were "flown in" from out of state in that organization's newsletter!) Among those who showed up for election night festivities at the lovely, historic Mallory Hotel in Portland were Julie Dennis and Judy Kennett, who drove down from Washington. In their possession was a large, cuddly sacred cow of the adoption reform movement: The Birthmother Quilt. It was their duty to transport the birthmother quilt from Terri Leber in Washington, down to Portland, where it was to adorn the walls of the Mallory's Measure 58 banquet party room on election night. From there it was to be passed into the hands of Bastard Nationals Denise, Ron and myself to be driven down to San Francisco for another appearance.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Birthmother Quilt, here's a short history. The Sunflower Birthmoms, a group of birthmothers on the Internet, got together and decided to solicit adoption search and reunion quilt squares for a 1998 march on Washington DC for Open Records. They amassed probably over a thousand squares from searching birthfamily all over the U.S. and Canada and stitched them together into about 50 queen-sized sheets. Hanging on the walls of the Mallory banquet room on election night, it was quite a sight.

Most of the 'quiltlets' were very sentimental in nature. Teddy bears, hearts and flowers figured prominently. Teardrops, angels and little poems were not uncommon either. Strolling through the room and experiencing the quilt for the first time, I alternately cringed and tried to control the welling of tears. Some offerings were meticulous, ornate, passionate. Others were guilty or desperate scrawls on old pillowcases with black magic marker. Hung proudly together in the glaring light, and in such honestly naive juxtoposition, the quilt earned a role as Reunionist Icon.

It did surprise me just a little that we, known irreverent Bastard Nationals, not dedicated to a reunionist agenda, were being trusted with this heirloom of the reunionist movement. Surprised, but also touched. I've found that my best coping strategy for dealing with adoption-related angst (ok, well most any angst) is to crack jokes. Surely Terri Leber and Sunflower Alana Miller had seen the Bastard Fun Pages? Perhaps there was no one else willing to transport this hefty emotional load down the Pacific Coast? Quite possibly no one suspected what we'd get up to with The Birthmother Quilt in one of the suites of the Mallory Hotel on election night?

It was nothing too scandalous, actually, especially considering some of the "healing ritual" workshops I've seen described in various adoption conference brochures. If anything we annointed the quilt with our Bastardly blessings. It turned out that not all of the quilt could fit on the walls of the banquet room (it's a whole lotta birthmother quilt!) Laying it out on the floor was certainly not an option. So we had to keep several sleeping-bags-full in the suite we had rented for the night.

Upon arriving in the hotel room late that evening after the first positive returns had come in, the mood was giddy and infectious. "We won! We won! Can you believe we won?!" was heard over and over and over. People took turns in the bathroom changing from their glittery party garb into the T-shirts, pajamas and sweatpants they'd sleep in. (Contrary to Bill Pierce's notions about Bastards, we're a fairly decorous lot.) Laughing joyfully in the feather masks Shea and I had bought for the BN bunch, we dove into the birthmother quilts, wrapped ourselves in them, wove them like flags, made little tents of them, and generally involved them in giddy, giggling parodies of "healing rituals" Bastard-style. One memorable sound-byte (since much of this revelling was expressed in nonsense syllables, phony tribal chants and guttural noises), was the following ditty, debonairely performed in a full dress "Birthmother Kilt" by one of the deliriously happy Bastards in attendance:

It's weepy, it's creepy
It's coming to your town.
It's mopey, it's hoping
with a birthson to get down...
It's dripping with guilt,
It's the birthmother quilt.

Hehehe. Excuse me. I really do love the birthmother quilt. Not only is it the perfect aid for all sorts of adoption reform rituals, it's also extremely cozy. Driving the twelve plus hours from Portland to San Francisco, Ron, Deni and I took turns driving and sleeping. And with all those soft, cuddly, ever-luvvin' mounds of birthmother quilt piled up all over Deni's SUV, what could be a more perfect mattress for the weary adoptee rights activist? I can still see Deni's face peacefully snoring into a velvet heart that read "Finally Home." It was a very pleasant ride home indeed. Thank you, birthmothers, for allowing us to partake in the wonder that is the Birthmother Quilt, Bastard-style.

Photo: Damsel flanked with flowers, feathered friends and the birthmother quilt in an election night eve hoping ritual. Mallory Hotel, Portland Oregon, November 3, 1998.

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Damsel Plum is Co-founder and Publications Chair of Bastard Nation. She lives in Northern California with her husband, sons, extremely large dog, rabbit and fish.

(This feature first appeared in the Fall 1999 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

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