For the past few days, I’ve been reading other people’s work–manuscripts, books–which feels like the right thing to do after focusing so long on only one piece of writing, my own. Elaine Pinkerton reached out to me from New Mexico, asking if I’d read her memoir, The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, published in 2012. The answer of course was yes, the answer is always yes. I love reading other people’s memoirs or stories about adoption, infinitely more than I like writing my own.
What’s most fascinating about Elaine’s memoir is that it’s drawn from journals she kept for 52 years. (Yes. 52!) After her second husband and her adoptive parents died, she pulled down diaries started in 1956 and re-read them, hoping to find wisdom within, or insights into herself, revelations. Upon finishing The Goodbye Baby, I’d say she did. Elaine’s memoir caused me to think about my own journals which I’ve also kept since childhood. The forced quarantine of Covid seems a good time to burrow through the past to discover who I once was. I’ve resisted this task for years and I’m not sure why. But Elaine’s book inspired me.
Here’s the review for The Goodbye Baby I posted on Amazon. Click here to order. The memoir is a fascinating read. I recommend!
An Examined Life
I wasn’t prepared for the candor of Elaine Pinkerton’s The Goodbye Baby. The word that comes to mind is “scalding,” as in scorching, searing. Hers is the definition of the examined life, from the first entries in 1956 recounting Girl Scouts, chewing gum, and a polio shot to her final entries in 2009, where she at last accepts and feels compassion for herself, a compassion the reader has felt all along.
Pinkerton’s entries reveal the effects of being relinquished at age 5 by a mother who couldn’t take care of her and express the pressures to conform to society’s expectations to marry post-college and be the perfect wife and mother. Throughout her life, Pinkerton is a seeker, trying on different identities, relationships, lifestyles, and spiritual practices.
The Goodbye Baby is an intriguing collage penned by a complex, self-aware woman struggling to find inner peace and fulfill her destiny as the artist she was born to be. A compelling read.