an old writer and his words

  • A VISIT

    I’ve always imagined that one of these nightsI’d see my mother’s ghost. I would welcome the sightwelcome she that bore me, not she that stepped inin a way,absolving my birth mother of her sin,while assuming adopting me would make her complete. She hasn’t visited yet, neither has done so,but I hold out hope, it is…

    Lou Faber

  • NEXT IN LINE

    It was the moment they said, we picked you, that I knew they had not. They thought they had to say it. They knew they shouldn’t. I was the next gumball down the chute. You put in your nickel, move the lever and wait. Actually it wasn’t quite like that. If you don’t like the…

    Lou Faber

  • FORMAL PROOF

    First Proposition: You were put upfor adoption because your birthparents couldn’t or didn’t want to raise you. Second Proposition: We or I adopted youbecause I wanted you and not anotherand to give you the good life you deserved. Argument: Given all of the possiblealternatives, you ought to be thankfulthat we saved you from that other…

    Lou Faber

  • PARENTHOOD

    Two headstonesName, rank, branchof service, dates. One New Jersey, oneVirginia, both Bittleneither certain. An email fromanother Bittle, neverknew my father but his wasWilliam, and inthat moment, James Owen becamea father yet againand I complete. And later stilla single picturehe in the back row and the mirroragrees that weare truly family.

    Lou Faber

  • PARENT AGE

    I have two mothers, now both dead,I have three fathers, one unknown, one buriedoutside Washington and one lostin a corner of his shrinking mind.I am growing older, I have achesand clicks and pops and groans,which each remind me that Iam aware and alive and thatisn’t a bad way to start a new day.

    Lou Faber

  • THE VILLAGE

    I’d like you to tell meabout the village in whichyou grew up, and how oddit must have been for youto have met my grandfatherso far from any villagein the heart of Lithuania.I suspect you leftwith your parents, exhaustedby pogroms, exhaustedby the Jewishnessthat to them defined you.I’d love to knowabout my mother whoI never got to…

    Lou Faber

  • MITOCHONDRIAL

    I always imagined it would somehowbe romantic, not in the Hollywood sort of way,but in an idyllic, picturesque manner,even if that denied basic reality.Reality, when it comes to origins discoveredis overrated, for the normal percolation timeis denied, and the impact is suddenwith no restraints to temper the blow.Way back when, you learned by storiestold by…

    Lou Faber

  • STATELESS

    I suppose it is oddly fitting that I was born in the continental U.S. but can claim no state as home. I was a Federal child, and that meant nothing at all to me, a child who left town at two after a father’s death, a sister reclaimed by the government, which was no State,…

    Lou Faber

  • FINDING

    Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father. the father I had never seen, never known. Was the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took…

    Lou Faber

  • A MESSAGE HOME

    What I want to tell her is this: it’s fitting, perfectly, that you who so assiduously hid the past from me, your past and mine, now bars your entry, refusing you even the briefest glimpse. You want so to grab onto it to have it carry you to a place removed from here by time…

    Lou Faber