(This feature first appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Last night I saw "Miss Saigon." Having served in Vietnam thirty years ago as a U.S. Marine and having been shot through my face with two AK-47 rounds, I was expecting to have quite a reaction to the performance. I did. As the actors were bowing to the applause of the audience, I just sat there weeping, but not for the Vietnam part. No, I wept for the ultimate sacrifice Kim made so that her boy might have a "better" life.

You see, my own Mom made the ultimate sacrifice too. While I was inside her she made the decision to relinquish me for adoption. Gloria was twenty-one, Italian-Catholic, and unmarried. Her womb was my universe. And during the first nine months of my life we shared each other's breath, each other's nutrition, as well as each other's feelings.

We were two, yet one. We were one, yet two. We were inseparable. And yet it was during this time that we did become separated. Gloria made the choice to relinquish me so that I could have a "better" life.

Regrettably and unknowingly, her choice led to me feeling that I had been abandoned. I couldn't put words to what I was feeling, but as an unborn baby I knew something had changed. Her decision had separated us. As an unborn infant I didn't distinguish between her feelings and mine. Her feelings were my feelings. I felt the regret, sadness, helplessness, shame, and rage. I knew something was terribly wrong. I concluded that I was what was wrong. For my entire life I've only known my own pain, and not Gloria's.

I've always known about her sacrifice. I knew that she selflessly relinquished me for adoption. But that was it. I knew it. And then last night I saw the play.

For those who might not be familiar with the story line, I'll give a brief overview. A GI, Chris, falls in love with a young Vietnamese girl, Kim. Then he has to leave Vietnam. He finds out, years later that she is raising their son. He and his wife, Ellen whom he had been engaged to before going to Vietnam, return to Bangkok to find her and to tell her that they will support her financially.

Kim and Ellen meet in Ellen's hotel room. Kim tells Ellen that she wants them to take her boy back to the United States. Ellen refuses. Kim goes back to her apartment. There, she kisses her boy good bye, puts a gun to her heart, and kills herself.

As soon as I heard the gunshot, I immediately began weeping, and silently saying, "Gloria, Gloria, Gloria, Gloria..."

For the first time, in my fifty-one years, I got it. I understood what a totally selfless sacrifice my birthmother made for me. She sacrificed her own dreams, her own happiness, her own needs, and ultimately her own life, for me. (When I searched for Gloria, I discovered that she had died of cervical cancer on June 12, 1959, the day after my twelfth birthday.)

I wanted to hold her, embrace her, and thank her. I wanted to tell her, "Oh Gloria, thank you Mom. I never knew. I never had any idea. My own narcissism has prevented me from understanding or appreciating what a completely selfless sacrifice you made. I'm sure you believed that you were giving me to a couple who could take better care of me than you could. And Gloria, maybe they did.

But Gloria, you never held me in your arms. You only held me in your womb. I still long to be, and will never be, held in your arms. I'll never be rocked by you. I'll never be sung to by you.

Gloria, my entire life, I have only experienced those losses as mine, and not yours. Oh Gloria, I never knew. I never thought about you wanting to rock me or sing to me. All these years, I never realized they weren't just my unmet needs and dreams. They had been yours too. Perhaps, they were yours more than they were mine.

Oh Gloria, thank you for doing what you thought was right. Last night because of "Miss Saigon," I realized that you not only suffered the same losses I suffered, but that the sacrifice you made was much more selfless, loving, and painful, than I had ever imagined. Last night I released the anger I have been holding in my heart for the last fifty-one years, for you, and for the choice you made. My anger was replaced with a deep understanding and respect for the sacrifice you made.

Thank you Mom.

For probably everyone else in that audience, "Miss Saigon" was a play about Vietnam. For me, a combat blinded Marine, it was a play about Gloria.

Jerry has an M.S.W. and recently completed an internship for an L.C.S.W. (Licensed Clinical Social Worker.) His clients were primarily Vietnam veterans with P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.) He has two daughters ages twenty-six and twenty-three. When he searched for his birth parents, he discovered they were both deceased.

(This feature first appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Copyright 1998 Jerry Stadtmiller
All Rights Reserved