In my life, and I presume in every life, there is the story behind the story, and one behind that one and the one before that and it all leads to one moment, or event or action. And my obsession with photographing birds in NY was the result of many stories.

There is, of course the big story, the backdrop of abuse and instability that is, in one way or another, the backdrop to twenty DeGolier siblings, though there are some who will swear that nothing ever happened in our idyllic childhoods.

There is then the story of my longing for family, my own children were distant in so many ways by then, and I had vowed never to return to the land of my birth and the family who had deserted me, though both circumstances were very much a two way street.

I will begin with the family website and my visit with Rozella in the spring of 2006. I literally fell into a world of family scanning old pictures and letters onto disks. There were so many relations I had never seen or even heard of. I poured over them like little pieces of treasure. This was my family, my history, my people and I kept searching for answers among the treasures, answers to who we were, who I was, where I fit in this menagerie. I found a stack of songs and poems my father wrote spanning from before my parents married, they were all dated, until after I was born. I found a notebook of Ma’s full of her favorite scriptures and I tried to put these pieces of information together with the Ma and Dad I remembered. I could not.

When I first went on the family website I heard the voices of my siblings echoing down the years with every message they wrote of welcoming and one in particular, stern with faux intimidation, Joan, the self-appointed everything of the family. I had originally planned not to see family when I went back to research for the book I had in mind (no, not a tell-all book to expose people or hurt them, I could have done that from the safety of a few hundred miles because 90% of what I know now I knew all my life.)

I could not resist the tugging at my heart strings and the beckoning voices. To seal the deal I had inadvertently booked a summer-long spot at what turned out to be a ritual family campground for part of the family. I learned that the day I arrived to find my brother Denis had been waiting for my arrival.

There was fear and anxiety over my return. People had been on the phone lines wondering what to do about me. Joan made an angry call to Rozzella and various others were up in arms over what to do about little Janeen. I get it. When I had returned in 1996 for a brief visit after Ma had a stroke I had a breakdown and spilled my guts all over the reunion.

Some people used the gaslighting approach. Even the most innocent of my memories were denied and ridiculed or heads shook over because, I suppose, it was dangerous to let me have even the tiniest win. Joan was direct like a Lord and King ought to be, “If she gets out of hand I will quiet her down.” Sharon was worried, but she took the kind approach. She invited me to come visit for a few days and we talked of many things and as communication often does, her fears were silenced.

The next huge event was the 2007 reunion. I had made a stupid mistake and invited my children. It was two worlds colliding in my mind and I felt like I had just lost my mind. To make matters worse, there is evidence that one story that went around was that I was upset that I did not get any mementos from Ma and Dad’s treasures when they died. People kept bringing me stuff, some in anger at my gall, and some in kindness. Valerie brought a broken NYC doll among other things, but my mind reeled at the sight of the doll. They were all alike, you see, the dolls we got on our trip, and the day my brother told me if I stopped crying we would play a secret game together was all I could see. Valerie asked me if I wanted a drink and I said yes.

I tried to tuck it all back in, the anger, the sadness, a whole lifetime of running from the truth and there it was, in my face, in my hands, a doll just like mine with it’s head in my hand. The flashback in time, mother’s smiling face, the smell of laundry hanging on the upstairs clothes line, my hand in my brothers and the pride of knowing my brother cared about me. What do I do now?

The week was a disaster, but I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say I did not play hostess to my visiting children well at all. It became another nail in the coffin of our relationship.

Due to all the pain and my need to be loved I wrote the wrong book. I just wanted everybody’s pain to stop, especially my children’s and mine.

I’d had a sort of loosely fitting plan before I went to NY. I had in mind me traveling in my fifth wheel camper, working at campground to help pay the way and writing the original book I had planned and making a little money from it hopefully. The book I wrote was aimed at the family, a plea for understanding and acceptance from my siblings and my children. Some people hated me for it, some people praised my courage and some thanked me for insight into the monstrosity that was the DeGolier family. In the end I was broken, broke, and life had once again become a non-reality reality.

The winter of 2008 came and I was stranded in NY. I had not only failed, I had fallen into the role of the baby of the family once again. I was depressed and desperate, but mostly I hated myself and did not know how to go on.

One morning I was washing dishes with Wanda and spied a bright red Cardinal sitting in the snow on her Blue Spruce tree in the front yard. I went to get my camera. Then I spotted more birds, some of them so tiny I thought they must freeze to death, and I took pictures. I thought, “If these little birds could make it through the winter then so could I” forgetting that these birds evolved to make it through the northern winters. I had no such protection and a huge family verbally and emotionally beating me up at every opportunity. But for the moment, reality was no place to be.

The birds had inadvertently saved me for the moment, they gave me a safe place to focus my attention and I began to form an idea of using the bird photos as the backdrop of a simpler kind of book. Not a book about birds, I knew so little. Just simple sayings of things I had learned in life. It was not a well thought out idea but it gave me some fragile hope of saving myself.

So that is my story of my bird photography. I was grasping for any lifeline to get me back. I was weak now, and the family got stronger and meaner by the day. They actually had meetings about what to do about me, but none of that group ever tried to sit down and talk to me. They had already formed their opinion into fact and I must go.

Their route was through Wanda’s children. They hounded them until one of them called the police and reported her mother was in danger from me. The police came, Wanda tried to stop it all happening but her daughter silenced her. That night I slept on an air mattress laid out in a cold, damp basement storeroom at my sister Sharon’s house. There is much more to the story, including how Wanda and I kept our friendship amidst all the hate and cruelty. We were both torn apart over this, but what the family could never take away from us was our memories of the time we shared. They could never take our fun times away. Even now my heart warms at the thought of berry picking, puzzles, endless flea markets, and movies and popcorn and a million miles of laughter along the way.

A side note, as I did cost my sister some money, when I got my disability we talked and agreed on an amount of money I would pay her and agreed never to mention it again. I paid her and that was that.

Communication is a wonderful thing. It solves all sorts of misunderstandings. It takes a bit of courage that I did not used to have. It is part of the reason I now have two real friends that are part of my life right here right now and why I have much hope of building a solid relationship with my son and his children. From there, who knows, I keep an open mind to hope and possibilities.