What's In a Name?

A short (OK, maybe not so short) follow-up to the previous post on my reunion with my birth-mother. . .

I am now the same age my birth-mother was when we first met (since she was, for all intents and purposes, 20 when I was born). It is hard for me to describe what it has meant for me to have had her in my life these past 20 years. Just knowing where I came from, and that I didn't fall out of the sky (or, as my friend Lime is wont to say, that I wasn't hatched from an alien egg) counts for a lot. But having the kind of 'intrinsic' connection that flows from shared DNA has been a unique delight, all its own. Besides which, I really like her; she's a neat lady, and I'm glad I can know her.

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One of the things that is on my mind as I ponder this anniversary is names. We all have one (heck, most of us these days have three of 'em, or more), and, in whatever odd and mysterious way, it identifies us uniquely. Parents give a lot of thought to naming their children, and the vast majority of those children accept the name their parents gave them as somehow intrinsic to their own identity. Having a name - being given a name - seems to signify our personhood (or somesuch hi-falutin' stuff).

In my life, I have had three names. Or maybe I should say, I've had three sets of names. The first was the name I was born with. A first name, a middle name, and a last name. Oddly enough, my first name has been one of the very few constants, that have inhered to my life over the full extent of it; there's a story connected with that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. My birth-mother says that she gave me that name because it seemed a strong name to her (the 'Names' section in the back of our dictionary makes associations with mountains and rocks; FWIW), but beyond that, it had no particular significance; it wasn't a family name, or anything like that. Just a strong-sounding one, at least to her young ears at the time. My middle-birth-name was the same as her brother's (my uncle's) middle name. And my birth-surname was the same as hers. Which fact would come in very handy when I undertook to search for her.

When I was a child, I came across a baby book that one of my foster mothers kept for me (quite an unusual thing for an adopted child to have). In it, I was identified by my first and middle birth names, which was a little confusing to me, since, at the time I was seeing it, that wasn't my name. The first name was familiar, but I didn't know what to make of the other one. For many years, I thought that it was my birth-surname (it was one of those names that could have been either a first/middle, or a surname).

My adoption wasn't final until sometime after my first birthday, as attested by the date on the adoption order. I think my birth-mother was a little reluctant to once-and-for-all sign the papers relinquishing her rights to me. My adoptive parents may have had me as their foster son for a short time before the adoption was final, but that was when it all became official. Since I was a year old, they reasoned that they should leave me with my original first name, since I was, by that time, well used to being called by it (and all the moreso, if, as I believe, they had already had me in their home for a while, and had called me by that name themselves).

They gave me a new middle name, after a famous Supreme Court Justice (why my parents were so enamored of that particular Supreme Court Justice, I have no idea). I never particularly liked my middle name (and, in the fullness of time, once I learned a little about him, I wasn't terribly happy to be named after that particular Supreme Court Justice, either). Although I did get some amusement from people trying to guess my middle name from knowing the initial (no one ever did). And of course, I got a new surname. A new family name, signifying the new family that I was being brought into.

And the family identity that was signified by that name has come to be precious to me. 'Jones' (of course, that's not really my name, but for our purposes here, pretend that it is, OK?) is associated, in my mind, and in my psyche more broadly, with a whole set of 'family' things - my dad, most especially; his dad, my grandfather; my grandpa's farm, where we went for all the holidays when I was a kid, and which had my grandpa's name prominently displayed on the front of the barn; my brothers and sisters, and my cousins from my dad's two brothers, and the fact that everyone knew we were connected to each other because we all shared the same last name; and so on, etc, etc. Even when I went away to college, I went (almost in spite of myself) to the same school my dad had gone to (and his brother, my uncle), and I was well aware that I was not the first person named 'Jones' to have walked those hallowed halls.

And such was my name, through all of my living memory, and I had no reason, nor desire, to think that it would ever be otherwise. . .

Until I met my birth-mother. When I was first starting to think about searching for her, I spoke with my parents, to try to get a 'read' on where they'd be at if I decided to do such a thing. And, in the course of the conversation, my mom (my 'stepmother', though I've never called her that) produced a torn scrap of paper with three names on it. The first two, I recognized from the baby book. The third, the last name, was completely new to me. She went on to tell me that, when she'd married my dad, she'd come across the papers pertaining to my brother's and my adoptions, and had written down our 'original names', just in case, and then hidden that scrap of paper behind a picture that hung on their wall for years. And, as it turned out, within the first year that she and dad were married, our basement flooded, and all of those records were destroyed. So, for more than 20 years, that scrap of paper, hidden behind that picture, was virtually my only connection to my origins.

Anyway, when I asked my dad how he'd be disposed to my searching for my birth-parents, he was fine with it. "If you think it's something you need to do, then by all means, go ahead." And then he added, "Just don't change your name." And I assured him that I had no intention of doing anything like that.

While I was searching for my birth-mother, I made some use of the fact that my dad had a great-grandmother with the same surname as I had been born with (he and my birth-mother turn out to be something like 8th-cousins); I could credibly (and truthfully, if not quite 'the-whole-truth-fully') say that I was researching the family whose name happened to be theirs. I also spoke with a few of her friends and relations (none of whom, by the way, figured out my true intentions), and they duly recounted their conversations with me, when next they spoke to her. And she was extremely intrigued, when she heard the name of this young man who was asking about her - the first name was the same one she'd given her son, years ago (and 'Desmond' - again, not my real name, but we can pretend - is not the most common name in the English-speaking world). Which was most curious, since she assumed that, whoever her son was, his adoptive parents would have given him a different name. Even so, she had inklings that something significant was afoot.

Once we were well and properly reunited, and I had gone to visit her at her house, and it was well-established that we were going to have a long and happy relationship, I came to lament the 'broken connection' between us, and all the years we'd spent apart, and I wanted to have some tangible expression of our connection to each other. My dad having admonished me not to change my name, planted a seed for a possible resolution to my difficulty. I was pretty sure that the 'name' my dad was referring to was our family name. And, since my first name was the same, no matter what, I thought, I could change my middle name to coincide with my birth-surname, which was also my birth-mother's maiden name. That would 'complete the circle', capturing in my name all of my birth and familial connections (and would also shed me of a middle name that I had never liked). (And besides, I've always thought those 'mother's-maiden-name' middle names sounded classy).

When I checked my hunch with my dad, he agreed that it was the family name he was concerned about, and he didn't attach all that much significance to the middle name he'd assigned me, either (beyond the fact that he had, in point of fact, assigned it to me; but he didn't regard that particular assignation as binding). And so, in 1990, just before my 34th birthday (and just before my birth-mother's first visit to our house), I went to court and legally changed my name, so that now, my birth-family-name is my middle name, to go between the only first name I've ever had, and the name of the family I was raised in, and nurtured, the family whose name I've borne for longer than I can remember.

And it all just seems to fit. My whole life, and all of my circumstances, are accounted for in my name. And it seems very good.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. . .

Molly and I had taken the kids (at the time, we had three) to the photo studio for a sitting. My search for my birth-mother had just recently come to a close - I knew who she was, and how to contact her. All I was waiting for was for my intermediary to make the first contact with her, and I wanted to have a current family portrait to give her, once it happened.

We walked through the front door after the sitting, and the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone; it was Annette, my intermediary. "You have a very happy lady on your hands," she said. . .

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Earlier that Thursday afternoon, Annette had called my birth-mother. She was busy preparing her house to receive weekend guests at her home.

Annette identified herself, then said, "I'm calling concerning material of a very personal and confidential nature. Do you have time to talk?"

My birth-mother was beginning to get annoyed with Annette's slowness at coming to the point, but just said Yes, she could talk.

So Annette just plowed ahead. "I am involved in a search for the birth-mother of someone you might have known as [my birth-name], born on [my birthday]. Can you help me?"

She was stunned. She'd actually had some pretty solid inklings that I was on her trail - I'd been to visit her aunt a couple weeks previously, and her aunt had called her immediately, telling her about this 'nice young man' who'd been to visit her, asking questions about her family. Hearing my first name (which was the same one she'd given me when I was born), and my approximate age, she immediately suspected that her long-lost son was searching for her, and getting close. But even so, she hadn't allowed herself to really believe it could be true. Finally, she told Annette, "I'm the person you're looking for; you don't need to look any further." Sobbing, she assured Annette that she was OK, that these were tears of joy.

They talked at some length. Birth-mom was concerned that I was mad at her for giving me away, but Annette assured her that my motives were purely of gratitude. She also learned that she was three times a grandmother, which took her back quite a bit; she had only adopted her daughter Sarah three years previously, and the possibility of grandchildren had never even entered her mind. Finally, Annette declined to tell her any more about me, insisting rather that she should call me herself. Annette only asked for some time to call and let me know that she'd be calling. . .

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After Annette called me, I was pretty completely distracted, waiting for The Call. A couple friends called with small items of business, and I jumped on the phone each time, before quickly shooing them off. Finally, about 8:30, the phone rang again, and a woman on the other end gave her name (which I immediately recognized as my birth-mother's), saying "I'm your birth-mother."

"I know," I answered. "I'm so glad to hear from you."

Even though I'd never heard her voice, it was very comfortable to me. And she was listening just as intently to me; one of her first comments was how much my voice sounded like her father's and her brother's.

As soon as Molly figured out who I was talking to, she ran screaming to the neighbor's house, her close friend from our community. "It's HER!" she shrieked. "He's talking to HER!"

We ended up talking for an hour and a half, and neither of us could bear to end the conversation - just let me hear your voice a little while longer. . .

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That was my first contact with my birth-mother. In some ways, it was the beginning of a 'whirlwind romance' between my birth-mother and me. The following few weeks were a blizzard of letters and phone calls, every letter obsolete before it arrived, since we'd talk on the phone in the meantime. We dug through old photos to send to each other, and it was like we were trying to undo 33 years of separation in 33 days. A little over a month later, I flew out to meet her at her home, and the following spring, she came to our house to celebrate my 34th birthday with us. And just that fast, we became part of each other's lives and families.

But it all started September 28th, 1989, and for that, I give thanks to God. . .

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(*edit*) As long as we're on the topic of significant anniversaries, last Thursday, September 24th, was also the 10th anniversary of 7M's accident, which is, of course, a major miracle in the life of our family. You'll have to forgive me for letting it slide past before bringing it to your attention; the date hasn't quite gotten seared into my brain the way other 'anniversaries' have, and I had to go back and look it up; we were a little busy, and kinda distracted that day. . .

Connections

This past weekend, Molly and I, along with Molly's mom and 1F, drove down to visit our grandkids. We had a great time visiting with the family. AG, 1F's 'birth-daughter' (if that's the word for their relationship), is quite the little chatterbox these days, and quite the little charmer. She was also most anxious to demonstrate for all of her guests, most especially 'Auntie 1F', that she is well on her way to potty-trained. All together, it was a wonderful visit. Molly's mom came along so we could take a four-generation photo of her, Molly, 1F and AG all together (I love those four-generation pictures; they sorta remind me, in an odd way, of the big fish eating the middle-sized fish, who is eating the small fish, only in reverse). We took a bunch of those photos, including one in which AG laid on her side across the laps of the three grown-ups. Very, very cute.

And it got me to thinking about connections - the connections we have with other people. I actually think about that a fair bit, from time to time. I'm adopted, and I have connections to the family that raised me, and my birth-parents, and their families, and Molly's family. And, in the person of AG, we are connected to the family that adopted her. That connection would exist, whether they were willing to have any relationship with us or not; it is, of course, gratifying in the extreme that they are not only willing, but openly ,and warmly, and graciously so. And likewise, in my person, my birth- and adoptive parents have had a connection to each other for the past 53 years, even though they only met each other a few years ago.

A very heart-warming aspect of our connection to AG's family is the way that they've adopted us as grandparents for all of their kids, including the two boys they've had 'in the natural way' since AG came into their family. I have no idea how to explain the phenomenon, but they are not the first couple I've known (or even the second or the third), who have struggled with infertility for several years, finally deciding to adopt, and then the adoption seems to 'cure' the infertility, and the mother who couldn't conceive for so many years, suddenly starts popping out the babies like the fertile-est Myrtle you've ever known (AG's parents now have three kids, spanning less than two years in age). I don't know to what extent adopting AG 'brought about' the natural conception of their sons, but I am so happy for them that it happened the way it did, and that our family could possibly, by whatever convoluted stretch, have helped bring it about.

Connections. I think of some of the work that my dad and I have done, tracing our family tree. And the times we've found things like great-great-grandfather leaving his father and mother, as a young man, and moving three states away - and right across the street from the family whose daughter would become our great-great-grandmother. And then I look up and down our street; or, I look around the church at Sunday Mass; or I look around the room at one of our community's prayer meetings - and I wonder if any of the young people I see there might become my sons-in-law, or my daughters-in-law. Or if any of my friends might become co-grandparents of my grandchildren (I have a few friends whose kids have married each other, and the relationship of the two sets of grandparents, who were already good friends before their kids married, is just really, really cool).

My birth-parents, who hadn't seen each other, essentially since my birth, finally met each other a couple years back, when my birth-mother was visiting friends in birth-father's state, and called him up, and they got together, with their current spouses. That probably wouldn't have happened, if I'd never searched for and met them. And yet, that connection between the two of them has existed for as long as I have.

And of course, in the person of AG, 1F is forever, and unavoidably, connected to F-bomb. It is what it is; much as I might wish not to have that connection to that man, the fact that AG, and her family, and our connection to them, are the outcome of our connection to F-bomb, are more than sufficient 'compensation' for the aggravation.

I apologize for the 'rambly-ness' of this post. My thoughts on it all are pretty 'impressionistic', and not terribly well-formed, just yet. But I find myself thinking a lot, lately, about the many and various connections we have to other people. . .

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Edit, May 8 - It occurs to me that this post works very well in the context of the upcoming Mother's Day holiday - motherhood being the original and fundamental 'connection' in all of our lives. Having watched eight children grow in Molly's womb, I am sometimes envious of the deep physical connection that she has with them. Of course, they all have half my DNA, as well as hers, and I have done my best to be a sure and loving paternal presence in their lives, but they never had an umbilical cord connecting them to me, and they never kicked my spleen from the inside. . .

And that also touches on some of the wonder I've felt at meeting and knowing my birth-mother. Sometimes, as an adoptee, you can kinda feel like you fell out of the sky, into the waiting arms of your parents. But when I met my birth-mother, it was like, OK, this is where I came from - this is the woman in whose belly I grew, and between whose legs I entered this world. And it just made my life seem grounded to the earth in a way it hadn't been before. . .

So - rich blessings to all mothers - our culture doesn't value your rich contributions to its ongoing life, not nearly as much as it once did, and certainly not as much as it ought to. But, just speaking on my own behalf, I honor your role, and your service to your children (which we all are, in one form or another). Thank you all. . .

Down One

It has been an ongoing bit of light humor in my life that I have three mothers (and Molly has three mothers-in-law) - that, when someone asks me about my mother, I first have to clarify, "Which one?" There is the mother who bore me and gave me birth, the mother who adopted me, and formed the first nine years of my life, and the mother in whose family I lived and thrived from the age of ten to the present day.

But now, as of last night at 10:10 PM, that number is one smaller. At least in terms of those living in this world. My 'first mother' - my dad's first wife, who adopted me (and my brother, a year-and-a-half later), and raised me through the fourth grade - died last night. She had only recently moved back up to Michigan, having lived in Florida for the past 30+ years. Last Friday, she was hospitalized with a blood infection, with some related complications. It didn't seem like anything major at the time, but she just kept sliding downhill (there are no 'minor' illnesses when you're 88 years old), and the end came last night. I am so glad we got to visit her on Sunday.

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Her death provokes an odd, and somewhat conflicted, set of responses in me. First, and most fundamentally, I am sadddened. She was, obviously enough, a major player in my life, in forming me into the person I am today. She pushed me into my earliest musical training, and such joy as I am able to take today from playing various instruments, and singing, can be largely credited to her early influence on my life. In fact, I first pursued searching for her when our eldest daughter showed precocious musical aptitude, and we started her on piano lessons. And I remembered the woman who had given that to me. . .

I was glad to have her back in my life, and in the life of our family. It enriched the lives of our children to know her, and hear her stories of growing up in Germany (under the Nazis from the age of 12). We went to visit her and her (second) husband in Florida twice, and they visited us on several other occasions. Her husband died in 1998, and after that, she didn't travel much.

But there was always the background 'irritant' that she had left us. She spoke with me a couple times about my dad, and how stubborn he was, and how hard he was to live with. And I, by that time having lived with him longer than she had, could acknowledge the justice of everything she said.

But she never really acknowledged that, in leaving our dad, she was leaving my brother and me in the process. Or that, however justified she might have been in leaving dad, she might still have wronged my brother and me. I didn't hold a grudge over it - please be very clear, I was unambiguously happy to have her back in my life - but a simple apology would have been very healing, probably for both of us.

But, in the ensuing years since she left, I've come to understand that adoptive motherhood comes with a whole set of baggage relating to the mothers' own infertility, and she seems to have had it gilt-edged and embroidered. Some years ago, in the course of documenting something for my family history, I got hold of the paperwork from when we enrolled in our new school when we moved Up North. She had taken us to the school, and all the signatures on the papers were hers. And on the line labeled 'Relationship to Student', she put 'stepmother'. And, even 30 years later, that just floored me. Even having had me in her family for seven years, she didn't think of herself as my 'mother'; just someone filling in, in lieu of the 'real thing'.

She was a very sensitive person, sometimes spilling over into 'insecure'. And, combined with my dad's farm-boy bluntness, I can easily understand how they were a bit of a mismatch. But, even having long since 'moved on', I can't quite bring myself to 'accept' their divorce. It still seems to me to be a tragedy that, at bottom, didn't have to happen. It happened, and it is what it is, and my life has been what it's been, and I'm OK. But, if between the two of them, they could have mustered up a bit more love and determination, it didn't have to happen. In my mind, I have tended to lay more resonsibility on her for having been the one who left, but I am well aware that my dad could've pursued reconciliation with a bit more interest than what he did. . .

When she left, she effectively walked out of our lives completely. Dad remarried within a year (basically as soon as the divorce was final), and we immediately moved on to life with our new family. I remember getting a few phone calls from her, which always felt awkward, sort of like one of those 'what doesn't belong?' panels from the kids' magazines. She sent my brother and me birthday cards for a few years afterwards - I remember the last one I got was when I was 13.

And then nothing, until we got back in touch 20-some years later.

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When we got back together (fall of '88; we first visited them in spring '89), we had a warm - if somewhat nervous - reunion. Her new husband was a great guy, and welcomed us warmly himself. She was his second wife, his first having died after 17 years of marriage, with no children. They met each other, funnily enough, in the swirl of the celebration after the Tigers won the '68 World Series, and married within six months.

And we learned that, until I got in contact with her, she had never told her new husband that she'd had kids - when I showed up, she had some 'splainin' to do. And it occurred to me that they were married shortly after my 13th birthday, after which I didn't hear from her.

We discussed what to have our kids call her husband; we thought of having them call him 'uncle', after the fashion of those 'friend-of-the-family uncles' that many families have, who are 'uncle', even if they aren't really 'related'. But he nixed that - having had no children from either of his wives, he was very close to his brother's sons, and 'uncle' was, for him, far more than a mere 'term of endearment'. Not something he was prepared to hear from kids who'd only just showed up on his doorstep. So, we ended up at 'Mister', which seemed way too 'formal' and 'arms-length', especially in light of the warm relationship we eventually built with him. 3M, especially, seemed to have a special 'resonance' with him. He fell and broke his hip in '96, and his health steadily declined until his death in '98.

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As I said, she and her husband were very close with their nephews, and for their part, the nephews embraced her as their own. Especially after their own mother died, they looked after her as if she was their own mother. When she started having some difficulty last fall, it was her nephews who looked after getting her the care she needed, and oversaw bringing her back to Michigan, where they could be in immediate touch with her.

It was a little nervous for us to contact them. Their uncle, after all, had been a bit slow to 'bring us in', and who were we to insinuate ourselves into their family matters? But I needn't have worried - we could not have gotten a more gracious welcome. It's funny - we aren't really 'family' to each other, but we are most definitely 'connected' through the person of my mother, their aunt. And, between the five of them, and my brother and me, we are the sum total of her family left to mourn her passing. We'll have the funeral this weekend, and at some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll sit down and get to know each other better. Something that probably should have happened long ago, but sometimes the obvious things can elude our attention. . .

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So, my 'first mother' is dead. Not, I am given to hope, in the 'eternal' sense, but she's not here for me to speak to anymore. The phone calls that were never as frequent as they should have been, won't be happening any more. And the joys and conflicts that bubbled around inside me, relative to her, and our relationship, will be left to bubble around without any further input from her.

I was glad to know her. I am sorry that she's gone. I will miss her.

Requiescat In Pace, Mutter.

The Rest of my DNA

When I was reunited with my birth-mother, some 19+ years ago, she told me who my birth-father was, and gave me enough information to find him, over 1000 miles away from me, within a few more months. I called him on the phone, and by my dropping my birth-mother’s name, he knew immediately who I was, and my connection to him.

Our relationship has been friendly, although I wouldn’t characterize it as ‘close’. Certainly, I don’t view him as having paid the same kind of ‘price’ for my existence as my birth-mother did. He had his fun, and the rest was up to her. And in fact, when her father sued him, to cover her medical expenses, he treated her pretty shabbily; and I’ll leave it at that. So, yeah – his role in my coming-to-be was somewhat less than ‘heroic’.

And, on a more ‘existential’ level, I wasn’t in the market for someone to fill the role of ‘father’ in my life. ‘Mother’ is a very earthy, physical relationship – I lived for nine months in my birth-mother’s womb, and drew my sustenance from her body. And, in the current day and age (although not to the same degree when I was conceived and born), her own choice brought me to the day of my birth, and into my life ‘on the outside’. But ‘father’ is a much more ‘relational’ role in a child’s life, and that role had long since been filled in my life. My history with mothers had been somewhat checkered, but my dad had been the one, solid constant in my life. So, when my birth-father started to relate to me like his ‘long-lost son’, I recoiled from that, just a bit. I wasn’t looking for ‘another father’; I was only looking for insight into where, and who, I’d come from. I was happy to know and relate to him as my birth-father, and to enjoy the obvious genetic connection that we share (he’s a Jeopardy! freak, just like me), but the role of ‘father’ was already filled. Which, I think, hurt him, but it is what it is. I regret that he was hurt, but I don’t know how I could have done it differently.


Along with my birth-father, I also found two half-sisters, my birth-father’s daughters by his first wife (my birth-mother, you may recall, had an adopted daughter, but no other ‘children of her womb’, who would have been ‘genetically’ related to me). And my relationships with my half-sisters have been one of the most pleasant surprises of the entire search/reunion phenomenon.

My birth-father gave me the names of my sisters, and told me how to get in touch with them. I called the older one (call her Martha) first; we had a real nice conversation. I think it amused her a great deal to learn about her father’s ‘wild oats’. She told me that, in her teens, her dad had gotten drunk and told her and her sister that they had a brother, but he didn’t know where the brother was. Which she’d never known what to think of, but now, it seemed, her dad’s drunken ramblings had been true.

Martha was planning to be in Michigan, visiting relatives, within a couple months, and so we planned for her to visit us while she was here. The day came, and she called us as she was leaving her relatives’ house, saying, “We’ll be there in about an hour.” Something about how she said it struck me as odd, and as I hung up the phone, I turned to Molly and said, “I think Martha is a lesbian.” It was nothing specific, just an impression from what she’d said, and something about how she’d said it.

Not in the least that we wouldn’t have wanted to meet her; she was (and is) my sister, and I am happy for our connection, regardless of anything else. Still, we had an hour to wrap our minds around the possibility. Which was probably merciful, because it’s hard to know what our response would have been if we’d been blind-sided. Because when Martha arrived, with her partner, Laura, it was clear that my impressions had been accurate. It wasn’t so much the short hair – I’ve known lots of very heterosexual women who wore their hair short – but the studded black-leather outfit she wore fairly shouted her, uh, sexual preference. And I had to smile wryly to myself, realizing that she was intent on finding out, right up front, what our attitude to her ‘leanings’ was gonna be.

We had a really nice visit. She remarked, on seeing my face, that her dad could hardly deny me if he wanted to. We took a walk around our neighborhood, and at one point, Martha, walking behind me, remarked, “You’re definitely one of us – you got no ass at all.” I’d never particularly been accustomed to women talking about my ass, but it gave me a certain warm feeling that my half-sister was pointing out the marks of our genetic related-ness. At one point, 1F, who was about eight or nine at the time, noticed that Martha and Laura were wearing matching rings, and she asked them, “Are you married?” While I tried to clap my hand over her mouth, Martha and Laura just laughed, and said no, they weren’t married.

We got together with Martha a couple more times in the years following that, but after a certain point, she moved away from the town where her father lived, to another state, several hundred miles away, and stopped responding to our letters or phone calls. I don’t know if, or how, we offended her, but she also cut off contact with her father and split up with Laura around the same time, so it was evidently a time of some turmoil in her life.


I called my other sister (call her Janet) a few weeks after I called Martha. She was a single mother of a son, who was between 2F and 3M in age. Our relationship was slower to warm up, but over time, it has become a very warm relationship. In all sorts of ways, right down to our favorite books, and that we both like to ride bicycles, we just ‘clicked’ with each other, in ways similar to what I’d experienced with my birth-mother. And her son was, in a lot of ways, more like me than my own kids were. Which I found very ironically amusing.

Janet came to visit us at our house once, which was again, a very nice visit, although it came to a rather abrupt end when 3M and 4M got into a fight, resulting in me having to take 4M to the emergency room, after he punched a window in proxy for his brother.

Janet and I still talk on the phone a couple times a year, and whenever we do, neither of us wants to put the phone down. There is just something delicious about the connection with a genetic sibling that you just ‘get’ on some intrinsic level.

So, that completes the picture of my birth-family, from my birth-father’s side. His family – hard-drinking Southerners, originally from Mississippi – could hardly be more diametrically different from my birth-mother’s family of staid, German-Lutheran farmers. A marriage between the two of them would have been difficult on multiple levels. So, on the whole, it’s probably God’s mercy that I was adopted. But it has been very rich to get a glimpse at where my DNA has been, and what kinds of people came together, which resulted in me.

It's Personal

Yesterday was the 19th anniversary of my reunion with my birth-mother. . .

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Sometime when I was in college, the realization dawned on me that, as an adoptee, I had been somebody’s ‘unwanted pregnancy’ once upon a time. And in the fullness of time, that became one of my strongest motivations to search for my birth-mother – I wanted to thank the woman who had carried me in her womb for nine months, and seen me through to the beginnings of my life in this world.

Along with that realization, I came to realize that, all things considered, I was probably fortunate to have been born before 1973 and Roe v. Wade. I had never particularly staked out a firmly-held position on abortion (My younger self was probably mostly ‘pro-choice’, without having given it much thought), but once I understood that, had I been conceived in another time, I would have been a pretty likely candidate for abortion (white college women abort roughly 98% of their ‘unwanted pregnancies’), the question took on an entirely different, and personal, aspect.


I recall a conversation I had with my birth-mother some time after our reunion. She was talking about her life as a pregnant-and-unmarried woman in the 1950s, and how difficult it had been for her, and she said something like, “I just wish I’d had the choices that women have today.”

Um, excuse me? You realize, don’t you Mom, that the ‘choice’ you’re talking about wishing you’d had, is whether or not to kill ME? I mean, we’ve had a really, REALLY happy reunion, and both of us are glad for the opportunity to know each other, and our respective families. If you had exercised the ‘choice’ you’re talking about, none of that would be even a remote possibility. You might still wonder who I’d been, but without any possibility of ever knowing. . .

She understood. Not that she was wishing that she’d aborted me; only that she’d felt so trapped when she was pregnant, and wished that she’d had anything at all she could have done about that.

Now, I could understand how trapped she felt. Frederica Mathewes-Green has written insightfully about women who “want an abortion the way an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg”. And I get that. I have the utmost compassion for women who are pregnant when they don’t want to be. My daughter was one of those women, just a couple years ago. And I wished there was something, anything, that I could do to make it easier for her. . .


But, back in 1955-56, that was ME in my birth-mother’s belly. Not a clump of cells, not a faceless ‘fetus’ – it was me. And if my birth-mother had had an abortion, it was me who would’ve died.

And the ripples go out from there. My adoptive parents might’ve adopted someone else; who can say? But they wouldn’t have adopted me. My classmates and friends and Little-League teammates could scarcely be said to have missed me – how do you miss someone you never even knew existed? – but something of the life we shared together would never have happened. Molly would most likely have married someone else (I mean, she’s an amazing woman; how could she not?); but she wouldn’t have married me. And our children would never have come to be – her children, if she had any, would be someone else entirely. . .

And so it goes. In fact, those of you who were born after 1973, have you ever wondered how many children who would have been your friends or classmates or Little-League teammates, were never allowed to be born? What music was never made, what literature was never written, what cures for which diseases never came about, for want of the men and women who would have done those things, but were never born?

My point here is not to guilt-trip any woman who has ever had an abortion; my heart absolutely goes out to those women, for they, too, have had violence done to them. I only hope to put a more ‘human’ face on the question, and encourage anyone to think of ‘unwanted pregnancy’ not so much as a ‘problem’ with an easy technological solution, but as something real, and human, and flesh-and-blood. And life-and-death.


I don’t think my birth-mother is terrible for wishing she’d had more choices available to her (honestly, on one level, it’s easy for her to say; she’ll never bear the cost of having chosen otherwise). No, I actually think she’s pretty cool; as birth-mothers go, she’s definitely one of the best, and I am as happy as I can be that we’ve known each other these 19 years. I understand how trapped she felt 52+ years ago, and I absolutely appreciate, and am utterly grateful for, the sacrifice it was for her, for me to be here today. It’s personal for her in an entirely different, but analogous, way to how it’s personal for me. And I understand that.

But I have to tell ya, it is a strange, strange thing, to be told by your mother that, as much as she loves you, she wished she’d had the choice of whether or not to kill you before you were born. . .

All My Grandchildren

I’ve posted before about 1F’s daughter, who she gave up for adoption (I called her AG – Adopted Girl, get it?). The adoption is an ‘open’ one, which means that the birth-mother and the adoptive family know who each other are, and at least the possibility of a relationship between the birth and adoptive families exists. This is a very different arrangement than my own adoption was, and it presents a few unique challenges.

1F essentially chose the adoptive family herself. If it were possible, she wanted her baby to be adopted by a family from one of the Christian communities related to the one our family belongs to (and in which 1F was raised). So, she asked our community’s leadership to ‘put the word out’, to find a family looking to adopt. They found a couple who had been married seven years, with no children up to that point; they lived in a town close enough to OurTown to be reasonably convenient, but far enough away that we weren’t going to be running into each other, both of which were desirable parameters. The couple was even a fairly close ‘ethnic’ match to 1F and the baby’s birth-father. We knew roughly who they were – both the husband and wife had spent some time in our community before they were married – but we didn’t really have a close relationship with either of them.

Anyway, in order for the adoption to go through, they had to pass an evaluation by the agency which was handling the adoption, which they did, with flying colors. They were in the hospital for AG’s birth, and the adoptive mother cut the umbilical cord. When she was two days old, AG went home with them, and has lived in their house ever since.

The adoptive parents (I’ve called them AM and AF – Adoptive Mother and Adoptive Father; other than Molly and myself, clever pseudonyms aren’t my strong suit) have been extremely gracious about extending a relationship to 1F, and also to Molly and me. Early on, 1F was going for almost monthly visits, although lately, they’ve been more like quarterly. Molly and I were invited for AG’s baptism, and they pointedly called us forward to stand with the family during the baptism. It was very heart-warming.

Interestingly, having not conceived a child for the first seven-plus years of their marriage, virtually as soon as AG came into their home, AM was pregnant, and their son was born before AG was ten months old. They had another boy before AG’s second birthday. Give ‘em a baby, it seems, and they don’t wanna shut off the faucet. . .

The first and most obvious challenge of an open adoption is the simple matter of names and identities. From the very beginning, 1F has been very clear that they – AM and AF – are AG’s parents, and she makes no ‘parental’ claim on her. Their family has taken to calling her ‘Auntie 1F’, like one of those close-friend-of-the-family ‘aunts’ that many of us have grown up with. I don’t know what plans they have for letting AG know that ‘Auntie 1F’ is her birth-mother. But that’s a decision that doesn’t need to be made for several years yet, anyway.

Molly and I have tried to be especially solicitous of the integrity of the adoptive family. We’ve had, I think, four visits with them (AG is two-and-a-half). Molly would just as soon have no contact with them, I think, out of a concern to stay utterly out of their parental way. But, adoptee that I am, and having met my own birth-family, I’m too keyed-in to my genetic connection with AG to just leave it alone, if her parents are willing to let me have some contact with her.

The only ‘restriction’ that AM/AF have placed on our family has to do with our other kids – they’ve asked that we not bring our kids to see AG. I understand their concern. Our kids have friends in their community, who they’ve met at Summer Camp and various other places, and they’d rather not advertise to the whole community who AG’s birth-family is (even though, by now, it’s something of an open secret). Moreso, they don’t want our kids coming by saying things that would be confusing to AG (“Hi, AG, I’m your Aunt 6F”; for one possible example).

But, all things considered, the ‘open’ adoption has worked really well. AG is growing up secure in her family, her parents are secure in their relationship to her, and 1F, Molly and I are gratified that we can know her, and see her grow up. A lot of that depends on us – the birth-family – being clear on what our relationship to her is, and what it isn’t, and being utterly respectful of the integrity of her family. If 1F thought of herself as AG’s ‘real mother’, it could cause serious problems, but that isn’t remotely the case, and it’s worked really well.

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The last time Molly and I were down to visit with AG’s family, we were sitting and talking with AM and AF, when AF said, “We’ve got to come up with something for AG to call you guys, besides ‘Auntie 1F’s Mommy and Daddy’. That’s just too awkward, and we need to come up with something better.”

We agreed, and I was about to suggest something like ‘Uncle Desmond and Aunt Molly’, when AM said, “We’ve been thinking of calling you ‘Grandpa Desmond and Grandma Molly’; would that be OK with you?”

Was she kidding? I would LOVE to have her call us ‘Grandma and Grandpa’, but ohmigosh, are you sure?

She was, with one proviso – we couldn’t just be AG’s Grandma and Grandpa, we had to be ‘Grandma and Grandpa’ to the two younger boys, also.

We were stunned. We had come for a visit, being just a bit shy about our relationship with our ‘grand-daughter-who-isn’t-really-our-grand-daughter’, and by the time we left, we had three grandchildren. Such an amazingly gracious, generous offer to us. Honestly, they don’t have to have a relationship with us at all, but they’re happy to have us be ‘grandparents’ to all three of their kids.

I’m thinking, when 1F chose an adoptive family for her baby girl, she did even better than she knew. . .

Heart-Breaking

My birth-mother was nearly 20 years old when I was born. Having surrendered me for adoption, she eventually got on with her life. She was professionally successful, but I was (and am) the only child of her womb. She didn’t marry until her late 40s. In fact, I have been married longer than she has, and I like to tease her husband that, without knowing it, when they were married, she was already a grandmother.

On an ‘existential’ level, though, she dearly wanted to be a mother, and they set about trying to adopt a child of their own. Sarah came into their lives when my birth-mother was 50 years old, and was immediately a tremendous joy for them.

When I first met Sarah, on my first visit to my birth-mother’s house after our reunion, she was three years old. By an odd coincidence, in the weeks/months before reunion, Sarah started telling her parents that she wanted a brother. Which left them in a bit of a quandary as to how to tell a three-year-old that, much as they’d like to give her a brother, it wasn’t going to happen. Then, suddenly, I burst onto the scene, and - voila! - Sarah had a brother. Just not a baby brother; in fact, she had a brother who had children of his own, who were older than she was. I vividly recall, from that first visit, while the three of us were in the car one day, Sarah singing a little song to herself – “I don’t like it / when Mommy likes Desmond / so much.”

As the years passed, Sarah became as much a part of our family as my birth-mother. Which isn’t terribly surprising; she came along virtually every time my mother came to visit us. She and 2F became especially close, being closest in age of any of our kids, but the two of them also shared a strong-willed temperament, and seemed to understand each other on some intrinsic level. Because of the large difference in our ages, and her closeness in age to our kids, Sarah never really ‘functioned’ in my life as a sister; more like a niece.

As our kids got older, and we became immersed in our troubles with 3M, and then 1F, my conversations with my birth-mother took on a darker tone, as Sarah started having troubles of her own. She went through a succession of schools, as her parents spared no effort (or expense) trying to find one that could get through to her, mostly without success. Her friends were of a nastier sort than her parents were comfortable with. And there were hints that she was doing more than dabbling in recreational pharmaceuticals.

Sarah was a talented musician (she played the violin) and actress, and through her teens, she landed several good roles, for which she had to compete with other talented kids drawn from a large metropolitan area. And she just loved to perform.

She did finally graduate from high school, and before long she had moved out of her parents’ house. Her behavior became increasingly wild and erratic (although she talked to her mother on the phone every day, without fail). Her boyfriend eventually broke up with her, because he simply wasn’t willing to go with her any further into the Wild Side that she seemed determined to explore.

Finally, a little over a year ago, a month shy of her 21st birthday, Sarah didn’t call home. She died of a fatal drug overdose.

My heart just breaks. It always seems like a tragic waste when anyone dies so young. I was looking forward to a mature, adult Sarah, who might someday come to seem more like a sister to me.

But even more, my heart breaks for her parents – my birth-mother and her husband. Parents should never have to bury their children, much less their not-yet-21-year-old children. I can’t help thinking, too, of the sacrifice they made in adopting Sarah in the first place. Her parents were both over 50 when they adopted Sarah; they signed on for raising a child during years when most of their peers were coping with their empty nests. When most of their peers were traveling, or volunteering, or otherwise enjoying their freedom-at-last from the rigors of parenthood, they were just getting started, signing on for a term to last into their 70s. All parents, I’m sure, see their children, at least in part, as their legacy – a part of them to live on after they’re gone. But there will be no legacy here. Without meaning to say it crassly, they’ve got nothing (except their own memories) left to show for 20+ years they invested in raising their daughter; an investment no one forced them to make – they did it freely, even generously. It just breaks my heart; I can’t think of another way to say it.

I've Looked at Adoption From Both Sides Now

Today I’m going to post a couple of shorter items that sort of coalesce around a theme of Adoption. . .

A couple weeks ago was the 17th anniversary of my reunion with my birth-mother. She called on the phone, just as she did 17 years ago, and we had a really warm conversation.

Once I decided to search for her, years ago, the actual search went surprisingly quickly. I had my birth name, from the adoption order my parents got from the court way back when (and which they were happy to give me). I contacted the agency that had handled my adoption, and they gave me a sheet of ‘non-identifying’ information (things like her parents’ and siblings ages at the time I was born, hair/eye color, what county the family had lived in, etc.). That basic information gave me enough to go on, and in two months’ time, I had found her.

I didn’t have the slightest idea if she would even want to hear from me, so I arranged for an intermediary to make the first contact – if she didn’t want to have contact with me, I wanted her to be able to say so without having contact with me in the process. But of course, she did want to have contact with me, and rather than wait for me to call her, she called me first. And the rest, as they say, is history.

About a month later, I flew off to meet her (she lives in a completely different part of the country from us, one that I would likely never visit if she weren't there), and since then, she has come for annual visits to our place.

I want to say something about ‘why’ – what motivated me to search? First, let me be as clear as I can possibly be that it was in no way related to any dissatisfaction with my adoptive family – our family wasn’t perfect, but it was ‘plenty good enough’. My parents did very well with some fairly challenging circumstances, and I feel nothing but love and gratitude toward them.

Mainly, I wanted something that they simply didn’t have to give me – my beginnings. I knew the history of our family, I knew I was adopted, but certain ‘big questions’ – where did I come from; who do I look like? – they simply couldn’t help me with. My knowledge of my life went back to the point at which I was adopted, but before that was a blank page. And on top of that, I was having children of my own – 1F was the first person I ever knew who was genetically related to me, and as I saw different characteristics of hers that had obviously ‘come from’ me, I wondered who I had gotten those things from.

Anyway, it’s been 17 years now. At first, our relationship was very emotional, very intense, but it’s long since settled down to a pretty ‘normal’ family relationship – kind of like an extra set of in-laws. But I’ve been surprised at the sense of solidity that it’s given me – what someone called ‘a sense of being rooted to the earth’. There’s a richness that I didn’t quite anticipate – and which I’m sure most people don’t even think about – in just being able to know where I came from.

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Also a couple weeks ago, 1F and Molly and I went for a visit with 1F’s daughter (I’ll call her AG) and her adoptive parents (call them AM and AF). 1F has gone for several visits by herself, but this was the first time that Molly and I had seen her since the day she was born.

It was a nice visit. It was good to get a look at our grand-baby, now 9 months old, crawling and pulling herself up, and assure ourselves that our gene-pool is doing OK. I was actually more fascinated than I had expected to be, just watching her move around and play.

Her parents are great people, and it was good to spend some time getting to know them a little bit. It would be very understandable for them to have some anxiety about AG’s relationship with her birth-family, but if they had it, they didn’t show it to us. And for our part, we are absolutely clear that they are AG’s parents; we know that we don’t have any claim on her, and we’re grateful to them for letting us have such relationship with her as we can.

It’s a new kind of thing for us – I never had a relationship with my birth-family until I was 33 years old, and my adoptive family never had to have anything to do with it, so we’re breaking some new ground here. But we’re committed to making it work, and so far, we’re as happy as we can be with how it’s going.

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*edit October 13*

O272 and Emily had questions from the above post, and I want to answer them here, since they're really good questions and require more comprehensive answers than I wanted to leave in comment-space.

O asked: How did [1F] deal with putting her child up for adoption? It had to be a very difficult decision.

In a related vein, Emily asked: Was there a specific reason that [1F] didn't want to raise the baby herself?

From what I know of her decision process, her decision was both easy and wrenchingly difficult. Easy in the sense that, looking at her own life and circumstances, she simply didn't have the wherewithal to raise a baby, and she was clear on that virtually from the moment she knew she was pregnant. She didn't have a job, let alone one that would provide support for herself and a baby, and she hated the idea of making herself and the baby 'wards of the state' on welfare. She wanted to go back to college, but she needed time and money to do that, both of which would militate against her raising a baby. Her psychological state was (and really, still is) more fragile than a single mother's would need to be. But most fundamentally, she wanted her baby to have a family, and that would never be the case if she raised the baby herself.

The baby's father . . . how shall I say it . . . was a shithead and a loser of the first order. He essentially dropped her as soon as he found out she was pregnant, and after that, his entire role was to try to obstruct the adoption, so as to maintain some form of lasting 'control' in her life (it was not terribly unlike a dog pissing on a tree to 'mark' it as 'his turf'). He showed up at the adoption hearings with his new girlfriend in tow, herself now several months pregnant. Wonderful fellow, this guy. . .

In the context of giving a child up for adoption, nine months gestation can seem terribly cruel. She made her decision for all the right reasons, and really, pretty early on. But all the little signposts that are usually markers of impending joy - the first time she felt the baby kick, the first ultrasound picture, etc - were, for her, markers of impending sadness. She could have the greatest confidence in the decision she had made, and the firmest resolve to see it through, but the day-to-day reality of being pregnant ran smack against what her rational mind was telling her. On a very basic level, which for all intents and purposes she had no control over, she was bonding with her baby, whether she would end up raising her or not. And that was the wrenchingly hard part.

Childbirth was poignant, as you might expect. There was great joy at the arrival of a healthy baby girl, at finally being able to see and hold this little person who came from her. The adoptive parents were present for the birth (AM cut the cord), and their joy was very gratifying. If this was a difficult time for 1F, the pain was mitigated by the knowledge that something wonderfully good - a family was getting a daughter, and her baby was getting a family - was coming of it.

Emily asked about 1F's, and Molly's and my, relationships with the adoptive parents, and how they were 'chosen'.

1F chose the adoptive parents, although, for the adoption to be finalized, they had to be evaluated and approved by the agency which handled the adoption, and ultimately, by the court. She wanted her baby to be raised in a Christian community like the one she had been raised in, but she didn't really want her baby to be the same town as she lived in. So we made some inquiries among several other communities in the US, related to ours, and found a young couple in a community near ours (but not too near) who were childless after seven years of marriage. They were loose acquaintances of ours; although I couldn't say that we really knew them, we knew who they were.

The 'open' adoption arrangement that 1F has with AG's parents is purely informal - there are no legally binding 'agreements' in force. If the parents decided tomorrow that the arrangement wasn't working out and they wanted no further contact with 1F or with us, they would be within their rights, and we would have no legal recourse. That's just the rules of the game, and we all knew it going in.

But, as I said, they are good and gracious people, and, at least so far, they are happy to include us in the life of their daughter. And, as I said previously, we are completely clear that, in every meaningful way, they are her parents, and we are grateful to be included.

As an interesting aside, within a month of AG coming to live with them, AM was pregnant, and that baby is now due any day. . .

Emily was also impressed that Molly and I, as the 'birth-grandparents' are included in the 'open' arrangement. I actually hadn't thought of it as all that unusual, but I suppose it might be. I can say that, of all that has come into my own life as a result of being reunited with my birth-mother, the relationships we've formed with my extended 'birth-family' have been the most surprising. My own grandmother was sick and scant months from death when I appeared on the scene, but her reception of me was incredibly heart-warming; it hadn't occurred to me that other members of my 'birth-family' would have been all that strongly affected.

There is a kind of 'kinship' that is almost 'built-into' us genetically. I've been amazed, as I've met my own biological aunts and uncles and cousins for the first time, at the way that we're 'like each other' in some innate, undefinable way. With my adoptive family, there were differences that would crop up from time to time, and we mainly dealt with them with good humor. But with my 'birth-family' it was almost the opposite - we would discover unanticipated ways in which we were like each other, or just understood each other in some intuitive way.

So, ladies, I hope that this gives a helpful answer to your questions, or at least helps you understand the situation a little better. . .

(7/4 comments)

Gratitude

Sometime around the year 1420, a monk named Thomas a Kempis wrote a book, The Imitation of Christ, which in the fulness of time would become the most widely-read Christian book besides the Bible. And, in its turn, it also became one of the all-time favorite books of one Mr. Desmond Jones.

The Imitation reads sort of like a medieval Christian Book of Proverbs - wisdom for living the Christian life from a wise old monk. It is simply dense with rich and challenging quotes, several of which have made their way into 'Desmond's Book of Quotes' (not available in stores). One of my favorites, which I commend to the attention of all my blog-friends is this, from chapter 6 of Book 3:

"A wise lover does not so much consider the gift of his lover as he does the love of the giver."

I first came across this many years ago, but it has become one of the favorite 'bywords' that Molly and I will quote to each other. It bespeaks a kind of humble gratitude, which has served us really well in building our marriage over the years.

On the face of it, it's pretty simple, really - sort of like etiquette advice for opening presents on Christmas morning - be grateful for the gifts you get, even if they're not exactly the ones you were hoping for. But you know, Thomas doesn't present it as etiquette advice; he just says, "A wise lover. . ." More like, "this is wisdom beyond what meets the eye. . ." And it works on multiple levels. . .

I'm adopted. At some point when I was in college, I connected the dots, and the realization dawned on me that I had been somebody's 'unwanted pregnancy'. It occurred to me that my very existence was due to somebody I'd never met taking the trouble to see me through nine months of pregnancy. Molly and I got married and began having our own children - 1F was actually the first person I ever knew who was genetically related to me. And all the while, the realization of what it had cost my birth-mother for me to be alive was growing stronger. Until finally, the sense of gratitude for my own existence became my strongest motivation to find and meet my birth-mother.

My birth-mother and I have always had a great relationship. Not so much because either of us are such wonderful people, but because at the bottom of it all, our relationship is one of mutual gratitude - I'm grateful to her for giving me life (and putting up with everything that went into that, including relinquishing me to be adopted by a family that could raise me), and she's grateful, even after all the years, to have a relationship with the son of her womb (and a fine son he is, if I may say so myself). We're both fairly quirky individuals, and there would be a lot to be annoyed with in each other, if we were so inclined, but from the beginning, our relationship has been founded on gratitude, so the quirks just seem really minor.

And all the moreso in marriage. I'm so grateful to Molly for throwing her life in with mine, for the love she gives me every day, and for the richness of the life we share together, that her quirks just aren't a very big deal by comparison. And I know that it works the same way from her end.

It's not just a matter of 'seeing the glass half-full' or 'looking on the bright side', although both of those are good advice. Temperamentally, I'm not a 'glass-half-full' person. But being able to receive with joy 'the gift my lover brings', just because I know how it's expressive of her love for me (quite a separate question from how good a gift it is), brings deep joy to my whole life. Does that make sense?

So I'm not really meaning to hold myself up as a shining example of superior virtue, or anything like that. But I do believe that we've learned something really good and valuable, and I'd commend it to any of my friends who can receive it.

(9 comments)

Being Adopted

I don't remember not knowing I was adopted. Sometime when I was very small, my parents told me I was adopted, that someone else had been my 'real mommy', but she couldn't take care of me, so she gave me to a family that could take care of me. As I was growing up, it was no big deal, an odd fact about myself on the order of 'I have a mole on my left shoulder'.

When I was two years old, my parents adopted another baby boy, who became my brother. Same song, second verse.

When my adoptive mother left my Dad, and Dad remarried, we were suddenly transformed into a blended family, with people having come from multiple different directions, so I almost lost track of the fact that I was adopted - we were busy making one family out of two, and who cared what path had brought you here?

Every once in a while, something would 'come up' that would remind me I was adopted - I'm pretty musical, whereas my Dad can't carry a tune in a basket - but it was mainly no big deal. By the time we were all grown, I was the only male in the family shorter than 6-2, let alone 6 feet, but since I was practically the oldest, it took a while for that to become obvious.

Looking back on my childhood, it seems clear now that my parents' (most particularly my adoptive mother's) infertility was something of a '900-pound gorilla' - the huge fact that you can't really ignore, but you don't want to talk about it. Some time back, I got a copy of my school record (I forget what I was looking for), and I was struck by the fact that, on the line for 'Relationship to Student', my adoptive mother had written "Step Mother". When it came down to it, she didn't really think of herself as my mother.

When Molly and I were engaged, and I told her I was adopted, it didn't faze her a bit. When she told her mother, though, her Mom said, "Don't ever tell your Grandma; he might be something she doesn't like." (*sigh*)

The next time I gave any thought to being adopted was when my first child was born. It hit me like a ton of bricks - this baby girl was the first person I'd ever known who was genetically related to me. She had a peculiar pattern in her hair that I also have, and that was just incredibly poignant to me.

When my second daughter was born, it began to bug me that being adopted meant that I didn't know any of my genetic health history - what if I had some pre-disposition for some disease that meant I should take special precautions for my kids? I made a few efforts to find out what I could actually know in that regard, but I didn't really know what I was doing, and I didn't get anything helpful out of it.

Some years later, I took up genealogy as a hobby, and got fairly adept at searching through public records to learn about the history of my family. Over the next few years, a whole series of circumstances came together, to the point that I decided I really did want to know who my birth-parents were.

I want to be very clear that searching for my birth-parents had nothing whatsoever to do with any perceived deficiencies in my relationship with my parents. I loved my parents as much as I ever had (still do); I was simply looking for something that they didn't have to give me. Where did I come from? Who do I look like? Etc., etc. Those are questions which, for most people, are plain and straightforward; for the adoptee, though, they refer to a blank page. It was almost as if I'd fallen out of the sky; at some point - Ploop! - there I was! That's all I knew, and I wanted the whole story. That's all. Before I started searching in earnest, I talked to my Dad about what I wanted to do. I wasn't really asking his permission, but I suppose he could have stopped me, if he'd wanted to. He didn't, though; he knew it wasn't about him, or our relationship. And for that, I'm grateful.

I won't bore you with the details of the search itself. It took about two-and-a-half months (pretty fast as such things go), and a lot of that time was just waiting for letters or phone calls to be returned.

Ever since our first contact, my birth-mother and I have had a very warm relationship. Knowing her has been pretty much all that I'd hoped it would be, and more besides. It has been wonderfully solidifying just knowing where I came from and how I got here. I now have a sense of being 'rooted to this earth', that I didn't have before. I hadn't anticipated what it would be like to come in touch with people who, 'in their bones' were 'like me' in some intrinsic way - the genetic components of personality took me by surprise, and it was a wonderful surprise, for sure.

I was also unprepared for the emotional impact of the search and reunion - for several weeks afterward, I was an emotional wreck. They were, in the main, happy emotions, but the experience of them was orders of magnitude more intense than anything I'd ever experienced. Poor Molly must have wondered, on occasion, if I was losing my mind.

By now, that is 16+ years ago, and knowing my various parents, 'birth-' and otherwise, has become pretty much normal, daily life (except that Molly now has three mothers-in-law; for which she has now mostly forgiven me).

The story took on a new chapter this past winter when 1F, my oldest daughter, gave birth to a baby girl. She's giving our grand-daughter up for adoption, so now I get to experience adoption from the side of the family 'saying goodbye'. It's very poignant, but ultimately, I'm happy that my grand-daughter will be able to have a family. I only hope that her experience can be nearly as good, and as rich, as mine has been.