Equality of Outcome

Growing up, my mother demanded that everything be equal for her children. Everything must cost the same for birthdays and Xmas for all four of us. If she spent $100 on spend the same amount on each of the other three. That was her version of equality. She was adamant on everything being equal for all four of us, but mostly because of me; I'm adopted and the other three were her biological children. None of them would have existed, as far as Mom saw it, if she had not adopted me since she had failed to deliver a living child before I was adopted. That was, as her doctor pointed out, the outcome of adopting when failure to bear and deliver a child is the case. Her doctor promised her that she needed to develop a mother's instinct before she could conceive and bear a living child. I was the way to develop her mother's instinct . . . or at least that is how she convinced my mother, her sister-in-law, to give up the child she carried in her womb when she arrived from Michigan after her divorce on the back of her older brother's motorcycle to live with her other older brother (my dad) and her sister-in-law (Mom who had not been successful in bearing the children she so desperately wanted . . . and needed).

My birth mother didn't renege on her promise even after she became engaged to Dewey because she was a woman of her word. She had promised her child (me) to her brother and his wife and, since she had already given birth twice, could have more children. It should be noted that she gave up her first child, a child conceived when her uncle raped her, to one of her husband's relatives before she conceived me after the divorce and before he obtained a Catholic divorce (annulment) in order to marry his second wife, a woman with whom he had nine children and who never knew about me . . . or so I have been told. I never asked him since I never knew him and was urged to let sleeping dogs lie.

The point is that Mom has decided when the other three children came along that we would all be treated equally, hence the way she gave gifts to us. What she couldn't control was how friends would give us all presents when they came to our birthday parties, but she had a way to fix that too. Oftentimes we (meaning I) got duplicate gifts. Mom decided that duplicate gifts would be given to my siblings while I kept one of the duplicates because it was my birthday gift after all. All of my duplicates went to my sister who was born a year and nine months after I was adopted, leaving me with one gift and my sister with all of the duplicates to be fair to her even though it was not her birthday. Her birthday was in November and I did not get any of her duplicate gifts because it wasn't my birthday. I didn't get any of my brother's duplicate gifts either (he kept them all because he was a boy) nor did I get any of my youngest sister's duplicates, but then neither did my brother or other sister either. They were too mature and would not be treated like the baby.

We all got clothes at the same time, the same number of items for each of us, but seldom (never) the same quality or style. We'd have been equal if we had all gone to the same school and wore uniforms, which would have happened if we had actually become Catholics and gone to Catholic school, but (thankfully) that didn't happen. The same amount of money was spent on birthdays and Xmas until we reached high school for my brother and older sister and me and we began to develop different talents and tastes. Jimmy kept getting Hot Wheels cars and accessories and my sister and I outgrew dolls, moving into clothes for my sister and art supplies for me.

As we grew up and moved into our adult lives, birthdays and Xmas gifts remained the same dollar amount spent for each of us, or at least that is what I was told since I spent many birthdays and Xmases far away from the others. Mom made a point to assure me that I was treated the same as the other three even though I was clear across the country and they all remained close to home. At least Mom and Dad came to visit me in Utah when they drove to California to see Jimmy off on his first long distance Navy cruise or to discuss his wedding plans when he decided to get married to his girlfriend's best friend when his girlfriend turned him down. He was on a deadline and had to follow through and get married on his 23rd birthday even though he wasn't marrying the girl of his choice. He was following in Dad's footsteps no matter what. It didn't matter that Bobbie accepted him after he broke up with Leslie who had refused to marry him as long as Bobbie would marry him on his 23rd birthday. Nothing else mattered. One girl was as good as another. They were equal because they had been best friends, a fact he lived to regret a couple of decades later. I guess the equality tree didn't fall far from the designer of equality of outcome.

Mom's quality of outcome was evident in many facets of our lives. When she fostered several children as we grew up and went our own ways, Mom made sure her foster children got the same number and cost of presents for Jimmy and the boys who were fostered because they were nearly the same age as Jimmy and Tracy, the youngest. Mom broke her own rules when it came to graduation gifts -- sort of. She gave me her high school graduation ring when I graduated high school and bought Carol, Jimmy, and Tracy diamond rings when they graduated. She explained that she attached a lot of sentiment to her graduation ring and only had the one to give me, her first born, and substituted diamonds for the other three because they only cost money and there was no sentimental attachment to diamond rings (hah! which is why she bought so many diamonds for herself over the years). I also didn't get a car when I graduated because I had already bought my own car my junior year in high school, a car I shared with my sister even though my previous car was used for a down payment my sister never had to match with money from her own earnings. I also had to give the car to my sister when I married and graduated high school because my sister would have to drive herself to school and use it to get to her job. My new husband would have to provide me with a car or I'd have to use public transportation to get to work. My problems were for my husband to deal with.

The equality of outcome also included homework. Since I'd already had the classes that Jimmy and Carol were dealing with, I was ordered to do their homework so Jimmy and Carol would pass as well as I had. I refused. I would be glad to help them with their homework, but they would have to do the work for themselves. I was punished for refusing. After all, I couldn't take their exams for them and only they could earn their own grades with knowledge they had learned for themselves. Their grades were far below mine, but, like the parents who bought presents for my birthdays for their children, Mom couldn't force teachers to allow me to take their exams or give my siblings the grades Mom thought they should have to equal my own. The grades they got were their own just as Jimmy having to repeat a year when he was left back the year he flunked. Mom could only control so much and punish me when she lost control or the world and people refused to follow her rules. So much for equality when she couldn't control the outcome.

She could and did control equality of outcome when it came to discipline. Whatever my siblings did wrong, she punished me because I was the oldest and was responsible for what the siblings did -- or failed to do. When Jimmy and Carol were banned from the neighbors' yards, Mom refused to allow me to go into the neighbors' homes or play with their children. The neighbors' children finally allowed Carol and Jimmy to visit so that I would be allowed to visit. The neighbors knew the score and were willing to suffer the mayhem and damage my siblings would wreak so that I wouldn't be punished for their errors.

The neighbors took great pains to run interference whenever feasible, taking the blame or allowing my siblings to get off without punishment just so I wouldn't be punished when Mom spread the discipline around to include me, the oldest and the most responsible for not keeping the others from mischief and error.

I alone took the blame for my mistakes and the other three got no discipline or punishment when I was caught doing wrong -- or when Mom decided I was the one at fault even when I wasn't there. Knowing about a mistake was sufficient cause for the belt or the switch and for the grounding that followed.

When I showed my parents the many scholarships from colleges I received and the offers from three of the USA's military branches, I learned that not a penny would they spend to pay for college for me because Jimmy, six years behind me in school, had to come first because he would eventually get married and have a family to support. I could wait until I got married and go to college and let my husband support me. Jimmy was the most important because he was a male. I could expect nothing unless I earned it myself or married someone who could afford to pay for college. Equality of outcome ended where Jimmy was born as a male. Jimmy would never -- and did never -- go to college with his below C level grades. After Jimmy got out of the Navy, he managed to use his GI bill to pay for technical college to cover a degree on robotics and IT. I raised children and earned my way on my own. My husband couldn't afford college either and I was too old to use the scholarships I had been offered in high school.

The problem with equality of outcome was never just with my mom, but also with the idea that four siblings, one of which was adopted, would ever end up with the same quality of life and opportunity. It might have been better for me if my cousin, Jimmy, had been adopted before I was born, but his mother, my adopted father's other sister, reneged on her promise to give him up to Mom for adoption because she did not like and did not trust her brother's wife's snobby treatment of her or her brother. Since my birth mother was low on the family totem pole (a fact not discovered until I unearthed the fact that my birth mother was the result of an extra marital affair -- oops!), my fate was in someone else's hands and not hers, although she rectified that mistake when I was 16 and she became my confidante and champion. Mom's version of equality didn't sit well with her brother or her parents who treated me with love and care in spite of Mom's unequal treatment of me when compared to her birth children. My grandparents and my uncle did their best to stand up to Mom and treat me as though I were one of their own, a feeling not shared by their offspring who had their own views of equality and outcome that were not far different from Mom's.

When you pin your life and your views on equality of outcome, you should also be mindful of equity in that outcome. We are all born with our own gifts, drives, and abilities. We are not clones and not robots. Our experiences and what we bring to the global table are different, sometimes complementary, but always worthwhile when we pool our resources in a common outcome. Some will push us ahead faster and farther and some will be of no use -- often counterproductive. What we end up with will be determined by who helped and who were little more than hurdles to overcome or ignore.

My sisters and brother and I have arrived at different outcomes in this time and place. That is as it should be. Only when the bottom line is tallied will our input be measured and stored in the mind of the Cosmic Creator. We are the bits and bytes of data are part of the Universal All.

That is all. Disperse.