Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

the days of Winterson—world we had a set of Victorian watercolours hung on the walls. Mrs W had inherited them from her mother and she wanted to display them in a family way. But she was dead against ‘graven images’ (See Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc.), so she squared this circle by hanging them back to front. All we could see was brown paper, tape, steel tacks, water—staining and string. That was a Mrs Winterson version of life.
    ‘I ordered your book from the library’ said Ann, ‘before you sent me anything, and I said to the librarian, “This is my daughter.” “What?” she said. “It's for your daughter?” “No! Jeanette Winterson is my daughter.” I felt so proud.’
    Phone box 1985. Mrs Winterson in her headscarf in a rage.
    The pips . . . more money in the slot . . . and I'm thinking, ‘Why aren't you proud of me?‘

    The pips . . . more money in the slot . . . ‘It's the first time I've had to order a book in a false name.‘
    Happy endings are only a pause. There are three kinds of big endings: Reveng ragedy. Forgiveness. Revenge and Tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness redeems the past. Forgiveness unblocks the future.
    My mother tried to throw me clear of her own wreckage and I landed in a place as unlikely as any she could have imagined for me.
    There I am, leaving her body, leaving the only thing I know, and repeating the leaving again and again until it is my own body I am trying to leave, the last escape I can make. But there was forgiveness.
    Here I am.
    Not leaving any more.
    Home.

Coda

    W
HEN I BEGAN THIS BOOK I had no idea how it would turn out. I was writing in real time. I was writing the past and discovering the future.
    I did not know how I would feel about finding my mother. I still don't. I do know that the TV—style reunions and pink mists of happiness are wrong. We need better stories for the stories around adoption.
    Many people who find their birth families are disappointed. Many regret it. Many others do not search because they feel afraid of what they might find. They are afraid of what they might feel — or worse, what they might not feel.
    I met Ann again, in Manchester, just the two of us for lunch. I was glad to see her. She has my quick walk and she looks about her the way a dog does, bright, alert, and also watchful. That's me too.
    She told me a bit more about my father. He wanted to keep me. She said, ‘I wouldn't let him keep you. We were poor but we had floorboards.’
    I love that and it makes me laugh.
    Then she tells me that she used to work in a factory nearby. It was called Raffles, run by Jews, and it made the overcoats and gaberdines for Marks and Spencer. ‘In those days it was all British—made, and the quality was something.’

    She tells me everyone, poor or not, floorboards or not, had made—to—measure clothes, because there were so many sewing shops, and cloth was cheap. Manchester was still King of Cloth.
    Her boss, Old Man Raffles, found her the mother and baby home and promised her a job when she came out.
    I find that story very curious because I have always felt at home among the Jews and have a lot of Jewish friends.
    ‘I brought you into Manchester to show you round and have your photo taken when you were three weeks old. That's the photo I sent you.’
    Yes, the baby with the ‘oh no don't do it’ face.
    I don't remember but in truth we remember everything.
    There is a lot Ann can't remember. Memory loss is one way of coping with damage. Me, I go to sleep. If I am upset I can be asleep in seconds. I must have learned that myself as a Mrs Winterson survival strategy. I know I slept on the doorstep and in the coal—hole. Ann says she has never been a good sleeper.
    At the end of lunch I am ready to leave or I will fall asleep right there and then at the table. Not from boredom. On the train I fall asleep at once. So there is a lot going on that I don't understand yet.
    I think Ann finds me hard to read.
    I think she would like me to let her be my mother. I think she would like me to be in touch regularly. But whatever adoption is, it isn't an instant family — not with the adoptive parents, and not with the rediscovered parents.

    And I grew up like in all those Dickens novels, where the real families are the pretend ones; the people who become your family through deep bonds of affection and the continuity of time.
    She looks at me so closely when we part.
    I am warm but I am wary.
    What is making me wary?