Laughter and Forgetting

secrets

I was very moved and also had my thoughts quite provoked by Julia's (Hippogriffs) long post of last week. She has edited it to take out the part that I am going to talk about, so it's not worth going over there to take a look.

At the time she was feeling very dark. She was worried about another miscarriage and proceeded to talk why she and her husband have not investigated adoption. She talked about her husband's issues around his adoption, which was far from ideal.

I will not get too into what she said, because clearly she doesn't want everyone to read about it at this point. Everything looks much brighter this week for her and here's hoping that things will remain that way.

But what touched me about that post is that we all have secret dark thoughts that we bury inside of ourselves and protectively guard from the outside world. There are things that happened in all of our childhoods that become our Achilles Heels in adult life. Those sensitive spots in our personal history affect all kinds of decisions and become completely integrated into our grown-up personality. Consequently, there are decisions that we make and viewpoints that we have, that make sense to us but don't make sense to other people.

There is the adult woman who's father abandoned the family as a child, and she is now so fearful of being left that she sets substandard goals for the men in her life. She marries a man not because she knows he is the best partner for her but because she is convinced he will never, ever leave her. There is the man that was so smothered by his mother when he was young that he constantly pushes away the women in his life, which in the end is only detrimental to himself. Even the most emotionally healthy among us has something that has happened in our life that causes us to have odd opinions or behave irrationally later in life.

After all, we only have our own lives to live. We can't compare what it would feel like to have lived someone elses life. We are very myopic, and we think if something happened a certain way when we were six years old, it will always happen the same way.

One of my secrets, which I have touched on here, but never confessed outright, is that my brother, whom I am completely unrelated to biologically, does not feel like a brother. When we were young we played together a lot. We functioned as siblings, but I cannot say that we were ever particularly close. He was always an irritant to me. As an adult he has only become more frustrating. When my mom was off her rocker and my brother and I would go visit her, it was great that he was there with me. At least he was sane. When my mother started rambling about how the house was bugged with microphones, at least my brother and I could share that secret look that was half laughter and half fear. We were not alone. So I am thankful for that. But as an adult, my brother is a burden. He is a born again Christian that is not very bright or thoughtful. He is stubborn and overly literal. He drives me up the fucking wall. And I resent that I feel responsible for him. He is not unkind, he's just different. And I know a lot of the reason that he's different is genetics.

For a very long time I didn't want to adopt a child. I didn't want to replay my own life. I didn't want my son to have a sibling who he could never relate to, a sibling that he would never talk to in his adult life, if he could help it. I figured that with a biological sibling I could avoid that pitfall.

Ha.

Over a few years my perspective changed. I started to open my eyes up to a different possibility.

•I lost a baby with Down's Syndrome. If that baby had lived it never could have had a peer relationship with her brother. I'm not saying my son couldn't have benefited from having a sister with Down's, I'm just saying that it was not the relationship I was trying to engineer by having a second biological child.

•One of my best friends has two nephews, one Korean and one biological. There are 18 months apart and the best of friends.

•My husband said to me "Your brother is not just different from you, he is different from everyone."

I started to realize, when I truly listened, that there are plenty of biological siblings that can't stand each other. There are plent of siblings that are indifferent to one another. They love their sister "but only in small doses." I know of families where both siblings are adopted and they are extremely close or not close at all, and everything in the middle. I have an adopted friend that has two biological siblings and three adopted siblings and nobody would ever know which was which and they are all incredibly close. Within every family there is a large and nuanced spectrum of closeness and connectedness between each member of the family. Mothers may be close to sons, or vice versa, the oldest brother may be closest to the youngest brother - shutting out the middle sister. There are a million permutations, and you just can't predesign how someone is going to fit into your family.

I realized reading Julia's post that her husband worries about bonding with an adopted child because of his painful experience, and I worry about sibling relationships because of mine. I never did bond with my mother either, but I never took that personally because she was so mentally ill, I knew it was never about me. And I was so absolutely bonded with my father that I knew I could always love a child that came to me. I just wanted to have the best possible chance of a good family chemistry.

And I still worry about chemistry. If we were to adopt, would it be a huge mistake? Would it be divisive? Would it be lonely for the adopted chid? Would my son resent it? I don't know. Maybe. But I also know that a biological child carries the same risks. The negative possibilities are endless if you let your mind go there, autism, ADD, birth defects, or just a plain old super high maintenance child. It's always a huge gamble.

But here is another dark secret that I haven't talked about much here. As much as I believe in adoption, and as much as I find it entirely offensive when people dismiss it as something they could " never do" or say things like "blood is thicker than water," I also understand the power of a blood tie.
When I met my mother and my sister, I was blown away, really knocked down flat, by how much I looked like them, how much I talked like them, how much I was just like them. For a few weeks I wondered whether there was such thing as "nurture." We all three seem to have a similar rhythm in our brains. It was uncanny. And to this day, there is part of me that understands both of them innately.

But time passed, and I started to have some revelations. My bio sister can drive me nuts. She's over sensitive and lacks a sense of humor about herself. I understand her, but that doesn't make me like her all the time. My bio mother is cool and interesting but also emotionally repressed. My bio father, when I met him, was incredibly self absorbed and I really did not connect with him at all. No mind meld there. I haven't talked to my bio mom in four or five years. If I were to talk to her, I'm sure we would have a perfectly nice conversation. We don't have animosity, we just don't have history. I saw my sister for the first time in five years last December and haven't talked to her since. I really should send her an email one of these days. When I met my mother, I was a little angry, because my sister got a mom, and I just got this crazy woman who wore strange things strapped to her head to keep the voices out. There is a big fat loss there for me. And adoption is always partially about that loss. But in the end I can say with every bit of honesty I can muster that now I never wish that my life was different. I never wish that I grew up with that sister and that mother and father in Venice, CA.

I have absolute empathy of for where Julia's husband comes from. I am battling my protective reactions all the time. My childhood experience set up parameters and concepts for me that I keep trying to question. The more time passes, I realize they don't really help me that much as a grown-up person.

Giving up half the dream

I will never be pregnant again. I never will hope and wish and pray for the health of my unborn child. I will never have to face the measuring and dating of another lifeless fetal sac. I will never have to hear that the baby's heart stopped beating 5 days ago. But I will also never again know the joy of a watching a healthy baby doing somersaults in my belly at a 16 week ultrasound.

I realize that this is old news to anyone that has read my blog for any length of time. My husband told me 16 months ago that he would never, ever, not in a million years, attempt to conceive another child with me. It was too painful and anxiety ridden. He could not take one more miscarriage, one more lost dream.

After briefly contemplating divorce (seriously, I didn't know if I could forgive him.) I realized it was stupid to give up ten years of marriage for something that I could probably never attain anyways. So I said "Fine. Done. I will not ask you again. I will give up my dreams of another child, if that is what needs to be done to preserve what we have."

And it was a good decision. We needed to stop. We needed to rest. We needed to become unpolarized and remember that we were a team, not adversaries.

But the thing is, even though I agreed to stop trying, I really wasn't willing to give up my dream. I was agreeing to give in. An important difference.

A couple does not try halfway to get pregnant, especially after four plus miscarriages and having recently reached the ripe old age of 40. You either are trying to conceive or not. Black or white. So I landed on the side of not trying. I still wished, but at that point my husband would have rather given up sex (at least until I was in menopause) than risk the heartache of another miscarriage. It was so much harder on him than I realized at the time.

But I hoped that he would change his mind, I hoped that with time maybe he could try one more time or that he would embrace adoption. Earlier this year, right before I turned 42, I broke my promise to him and asked him if he would ever consider trying again. He told me that he "just. couldn't imagine. it. " Last month he told me that he didn't want any part of miscarriage, ever again. Nothing has changed since last year, there is no going back.

We take what we can bear each day, and at that time I couldn't bear more than just "not trying." I knew that eventually I probably would have to face this reality, but as I creep ever closer to acceptance, it is still hard. I have given away a lot of baby things, but there are more things that I have not given away. I can't quite do it.

And I think it is because I still have hopes for adoption. Lately my husband has mentioned adoption on his own, without my prompting. But don't misinterpret that fact. He brings it up not out of any burning desire he has to adopt, but because he hopes it will heal the hole that my pregnancy losses have indeliby left on my psyche. It's not that he dislikes the idea of adoption, quite the contrary. But it's expensive, it's a hassle, it's almost as scary has having a biological baby, and, in some ways, even scarier. There are the financial implications of paying for two kids educations, and piano lessons, and soccer, and dance, and blah, blah, blah. Life is easier with one child. If someone handed my husband and me a healthy child, he would be delighted. He would love the child deeply and not regret its arrival. But for him, seeking a child out seems like more trouble than it's worth.

So it speaks to his kindness and heart that he is willing to bring up the subject of adoption up on his own. If I was going to put a percentage chance on our moving ahead with adoption (and my husband knows I like to do this kind of thing, don't ask me why.) I would place it at about 25%, up from about .5% fifteen months ago. It's not going to happen now. While my Mother-in-law was ill my husband was, for the most part, unemployed. We feel lucky that he was able to spend the time with her. But now we have to build up the bank account again. We need to get back on solid ground, if there is such a thing.

But, as I give up my hope of giving birth to a live child, I will cling to this dream for a while longer. And in the event that it does happen I thought I could use this time to do some anecdotal research. I have read several adoption books, and for chrissakes, am adopted myself, so I have a few ideas about what it is like. But I would love some advice.

I'd like to hear from friends and/or readers that have adopted internationally. I would love to receive personal emails about what agencies they used, how they came to their decisions to adopt internationally, and how they decided on a country. I would like to hear about outcomes. At what age did their children come to them, and how was attachment? I love the idea of adopting a 8 month to 15 month old (I never did like the newborn phase), but I worry about problems with attaching. How long did it take to bond? If you are a multiracial family - how is that going? Do you have biological and adopted children? I would love to hear from you especially.

Personally, I am very drawn to adopting from Vietnam. My husband and I travelled there together, and were extremely touched by the children living on the streets there. We wanted to take them home well before we were trying to have a child. My brother-in-law is married to a Japanese woman, and they live in Japan, so an asian child makes some sense. I am just past the age deadline for Korea, and China seems a little stopped up right now. So anyone that has adopted from Vietnam, or is currently adopting I would love to hear from. What was your agency? How did things go? Any information on the orphanages fostering systems there? I am particularly drawn to northern Vietnam for sentimental reasons. Please email any personal experience that you think may be valuable. Guatemala is also of interest to me, being geographically closer and with a native language that I have some knowledge of, and could certainly could become more proficient at speaking. Thanks in advance for anything you have to share. I am hopeful that it will become useful to me.

adoption, again

I am somewhat surprised that I am compelled to talk about adoption...again. While I have always had opinions on the matter, it have spent a lot more time thinking and writing about it since I started this blog almost two years ago.

This weekend I read a book called Love in the Driest Season. At it's heart, this book is about adoption and parental love, but it is also about how Robert Mugabe has fucked up Zimbabwe, about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and about man's twisted cruelty towards other men. It's about how unfair life is. I couldn't put it down.

The author, a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, and his wife were volunteering at an orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe as the AIDS crisis created thousands upon thousands of orphans. The infant that eventually becomes the couple's daughter was left abandoned by her mother at birth in the high grass in a nearby small village. The tiny girl is not found for a day, and when she is, ants have crawled into every possible orifice. The baby weighed a little over four pounds. By the time she was discovered, the mother was long gone. We never find out whether the mother had AIDS, or had been left a widow by AIDS, or was beset by any number of other problems that are rampant all over Africa.

To summarize very briefly, The baby girl almost dies multiple times, and then finally starts to thrive under the care of the journalist and his wife. During the time that the couple is fostering the very sick baby, something like 18 infants die in the orphanage where she was originally taken. It is crystal clear that the girl would have died had she remained in the orphanage and not been moved to a fostering situation.

Adoptions by non-blood relatives are extremely rare on Zimbabwe, and it is only by luck and the advocacy of an ethical adoption coordinator amidst an otherwise bureaucratic morass, that the family is able to get out of the country before Mugabe made foreign journalists full-on enemies of the state. It is worth noting that if the political climate had not been going to hell in a handcart, the family would have stayed indefinitely in Zimbabwe.

You cannot read this book and feel grateful that this adoption was possible - that among a sea of dying, orphaned children, the love of the two parents triumphed over petty prejudices and lazy bureaucrats.

Before I read the book, I was surfing some anti-adoption blogs and websites last week. After a while I just asked myself why I was doing this to myself, I was getting so frustrated. So I just stopped reading them.

Here is the wall that I run into; How can you be AGAINST adoption? I understand that you can be against your own adoption experience. I can understand that you felt unfairly coerced and manipulated into giving up a child, or that you had a negative adoptee experience because your parents did most things wrong. I can understand that you don't want to personally take on the complications of adoption. But how can you be against adoption philosophically? There are children that need homes, there are parents that will adore them. Not all of those parents will be good, and all will be flawed. But there are a lot of mediocre parents out there, most of them biological. Adoptive parents are no different than anybody else, except they are usually not hardened criminals due to the screening that they have to go through. And as we know, a lot of hardened criminals do have children biologically.

Being against adoption is kind of like saying that what is wrong for you is wrong for everyone else. Everyone is unique, every parent and every child. Every adoption will have it's own unique outcome, as does every parent-child relationship.

It's my biggest beef about the Christian Right. We must accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour, or else we are wrong. And the Christian Right believes that their views on abortion, or gay marriage, or prayer in schools is what should be the law of the land, whether we believe in it or not.

But I digress.

It's not that I am a Pollyanna about adoption. I do believe in adoptee rights and the rights of biological parents. I believe adoptees have the right to any available information that exists. I believe that totally closed adoptions are wrong, but I also believe that there is a huge area in the middle.

In my own case, I do not believe that I was adopted into the best possible family. My mother was flat-out crazy for God's sake. I know that my biological mom was not coerced into giving me up. She was being pragmatic. She was getting rid of a problem; She was a good girl and abortion was illegal. She once told me (in a very kindly way, mind you) that she would have had an abortion, had they been legal. I don't know that my bio-mom made the right decision. She did end up later marrying my birth father for eighteen years, and had another daughter with him. I do know that that my adoption has been intensely painful and complicated for her. But it is the decision that she made at the time, with the information that she had. And that decision made my life what it is. The burden of a nutso mother and the gift of a kind, caring and gentle father. It is my life, and I am who I am because of it. I suppose that it is because I am happy with who I am that I have no issues with my adoption, nor with adoption in general.

I believe that people can blame too much on their parents. I believe that adoptees can idealize what blood ties mean. I know I did. I will not deny that knowing my biological family was undeniably a watershed event in my life. But I am not my parents; not my biological parents, nor my adoptive parents. No matter how much we identify with family, we are our own miraculously unique collection of cells, and we will have different experiences and different beliefs and different relationships than they did.

I believe that blood ties can be strong. I believe that love ties are many times stronger. I believe it is better to focus on what can be done, rather than errors that have been made.(And I'm not talking about suppressing or ignoring the past, just putting it into perspective and context.) I believe that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness. I believe that adoption is imperfect, like all things in life.
But I also believe that adoption has it's own special mysteries and gifts. And fortunately for me, I know about some of them.

Adoption is not a yes or no issue. It's a reality that can be negative, positive, complicated, imperfect, intense and beautiful. Usually all of the above in equal measure, as "Love in the Driest Season" describes so well. So I will never understand how it can be distilled down to "anti-adoption", as though it is ONE WRONG THING. It just doesn't make sense.

What blows

You know what really blows? That when this horrific tragedy occurred last week, AP news felt it was relevant to put the word "adopted" in the headline. I will agree that that particular information is somewhat newsworthy, it is unusual that a family might adopt that many children, and the information does add interest to the story. But this should have been listed as an aside later in the story. By shouting it out in the headline it is demeaning to the family and to the children, as though they're worth is somehow different because of their adoption.

Many will argue that I am too sensitive. That the reporters didn't mean anything by it. And I'm sure they didn't. But subconsciously this headline enforces the values that so many in society put on adoption. That adopted children are different - it's not the same thing as losing "your own." If the headline was "Seven African American Children..." you can bet that there would be quite the uproar about them being singled out. Children are children, the critics would say, what does their race have to do with anything? I know most newspapers in the country try to avoid using racial descriptions unless it is relevant to the story. These children being adopted was not relevant to the fact that this whole family was wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Later I read this article, which explains that only four of the children were adopted (or about to be adopted) that the driver was a biological child, and two of the children were cousins. Nicky, the biological daughter, is depicted as a saintly caregiver who doted on her "adopted" siblings. Somehow it seems that she was that much more special because her siblings weren't biological.

In a totally different venue, it also blows that Us Weekly is reporting that an "expert" (I never said that I only read Harpers) has explained that Brad and Angelina may bond better with their own biological child than with their adoptive children; inferring that genes is the overriding force in parental love.

I know many people that have both adopted children and biological children, and I have read about dozens of others. Every single one of them has assured me that there is no difference in how they love their children. And it sucks that society at large chooses to believe that they are a. lying or b. saints who have abnormal capacities for love and generosity.

I have a coworker that is currently adopting a baby from Guatemala. Another well educated, intelligent and liberal coworker told me about it and said that "they are still planning on having their own children, but just want to do this now." I didn't say anything the first time, but by the third time I heard her explain to someone that the couple will also have "their own children," I interjected, "Mary, this child WILL be their own child. It may not be their genes, but it will be their child." Startled, she acknowledged that I was right, and apologized. I know people aren't malicious, that they don't realize the subtle prejudices that they reinforce, but when will they start to learn? When will "adopted" not have be a label that means "not real." When will it be okay to leave out the word "adopted in magazine and newspaper articles about families, whether they are celebrity families or families touched by tragedy?

I know a lot of people think I'm a whiney ass. "But you know what she meant," people say. Yes I know what she meant, but as an adoptee, if I am not my parents "own" child, then whose child am I? I am certainly not my biological parents child, and although I have met them, and like them, they are not my family. So when I hear people talk about "their own" children versus adopted children, I feel like they are dismissing who I am, that they are negating my personal history.

It sucks that during and after the miscarriages, I was slow to come to adoption for that very reason. I think it's the reason that more adoptive children don't embrace adoption. Yes, they want a biological connection that they missed as a child. I know I wanted that. But the main reason I resisted it is because I didn't want people to feel sorry for me, or my child. I didn't want my child to have to go through her life feeling that her family wasn't recognized by society. The turning point for me was when I realized that these children would be adopted by someone. By not adopting I was not going to save any child from going through the complicated emotions of adoption. I realized it might as well be me doing the adopting, that there are a lot worse parents than me for adoptees.

It blows that people criticize adoption as the buying of babies. I'm not saying black market adoptions haven't happened, I know they happen to this day. But the reality is that the alternative for most of these babies is a life in an orphanage or with multiple foster care providers. And the vast majority of mothers aren't selling the babies. They have made a decision that they cannot care for their child. It's a lovely thing that there exists a system where babies need good homes, and parents are more than eager to provide them. And another reality is that we buy our biological babies too. If I hadn't had health insurance I could have paid up to 20k for my c-section and extended hospital stay. People pay for their babies, it's just on the long term payment plan.

It blows that a year after putting the screeching brakes on our aspirations for a second child, that I still think about having a child, adopted or otherwise, almost every day. It's hard to imagine going back to babyhood when I have my independent six year old in the house. But I would do it. Because infancy and toddlerhood passes, and we're all just a few years older. What the hell would I be doing anyways?

I don't know if it blows that I'll never get the chance to find out. There are so many good things, lucky things, about where we are. But some days it makes me sad. Still.

Can I stick with my second choice?

Just when I was thinking I didn't have a darn thing to say I happened across the raging debate over at the Naked Ovary blog. Suddenly, you can't shut me up.

I believe Karen has deleted the negative comments, but from what I can recall, some moron decided to start name calling. He said Karen was pathetic, obsessed and petty, more or less, because she has been infertile and just can't get over it. I don't know why someone felt the need to make such a mean-spirited comment. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but he/she must have known how pointless such a comment would be. I call that kind of person a shit stirrer. But what really struck me was another part of the comment. Again, the remark has been deleted, so I will have to summarize from memory. The comment intimated that not only is adoption Karen's second choice (or she wouldn't have tried so long to have a child biologically), it is almost everybody's second choice. Not only that, if it was left up to adoptees, they would always choose to have biological parents. A blood connection is the ideal. Adoption is great for orphans and infertiles (who the commenter felt "very sorry" for), but it is still second choice.

Hmm. Choice. What a concept. Do we really know what we want? Would we always make the same choice later as we would make now? Do we really have a choice in anything?

As an adoptee, I feel that I can address the second part of the comment, that adoptees would prefer to have biological parents. As a child I never really thought about biology versus adoption as a preference. I was adopted, and while I did fantasize about what my biological parents were like, it never occurred to me that I would prefer to have them be my actual parents. Children tend to accept what is in front of them, and the idea of life being different than what it is, is incomprehensible.

As a teenager and adult, I could begin to imagine how my life might have been different had I not been adopted. Although, I can honestly say that I did not wish I had been raised by my biological parents, because then I wouldn't have my Dad, or my friends, or my house, or my dog - who slept with me every night. Everything good in my life would have been different, and the bad things would have been different too. I would not have traded the experiences that I had for something as ethereal as biology.

Later on, after I met my biological parents I did have a short period during which I was very jealous of my biological sister because she had this great relationship with her (our) Mom and I basically didn't have a mother. Later still, I realized that if I had the relationship with my biological Mom that she had, I might also have the same crap relationship with our biological father, who has proven time and time again that he is completely self-absorbed. My sister hardly ever sees him, but I find it interesting that she tends to date men that put her on a pedestal, something she never got from her father. Ultimately, her relationships go to hell in handbasket because her boyfriends get sick of treating her like the princess that she craves to be.

Alternately, my Dad, while flawed, is the kind, generous, loving father that many people wish for. He adores me, he is proud of me, he delights in spending time with me. Would I choose a biological relationship over the relationship with my father? Not in a million years. No. Even if I could look back as an unbiased third party, would I have chosen my biological family for myself at birth? My mother turned 19 three days after I was born. My father was 21. They did not feel like their relationship was going to last at the time. It hardly seemed to be the ideal situation for a newborn.

From my Dad's perspective, I know that at the outset, he and my mother chose to have children the "regular way." He has told me many times how thankful he is that they never had biological children. The main reason being that he wouldn't have known me, one of the greatest joys of his life. But there is the bonus reason that since my mother ultimately became mentally ill, he does not have the same fears of passing on that mental illness to another generation. So my Dad's second "choice" became his first choice for many reasons. We make choices on the information that we have at the time, not knowing what curves life will throw us just around the next bend.

A lot of people's "first" choice is to have biological children. There is a natural instinct to want to meld your biology with the person you love. There is some narcissism in it, which is also human nature. Giving birth to a baby is more romantic, it is more personal, and it's a fuck of a lot cheaper.

So sometimes it doesn't work, and most people mourn that loss when it occurs. It is difficult to realize you can't fulfill your biological urge the way most people seem to able to. It's difficult to know you will never see your husband's eyes in someone elses. Sometimes, when biology doesn't work, people decide they still want to be parents. And oddly, strangely, they usually become thankful that this is the way that their life has turned out. Choice no longer factors into the equation. Each life event affects the next one, and it is happenstance, in the end, that makes our choices.

My first choice was to have two children. I still would like to have a second child despite the fact that my husband doesn't anymore. So sometimes I think, "I should have started earlier." I wouldn't have had so many miscarriages, I would have the family that I imagined. Of course, I don't know what would have happened, but it is a reasonable idea that if I had started having children when I first married at 31, we could be a family of four. But then, I wouldn't have my son. My shining gift of a son. So, the theory of trying earlier flies out the window. My choice would not be to have two children over the one that I know and love.

Sometimes we think we know what we want, but then we get there and think "this is not what I thought it was." Look at lottery winners - half of them are miserable, because they've lost their friends, everyone hits them up for money, and they've lost touch with what it is like to live like everyone else. And who among us would say "I don't want to win the lottery"? I certainly don't have that much wisdom.

I don't think we know what our choices are until after everything is played out; When we can look back at things in retrospect and say "Actually I made the perfect choice in that situation," or, more realistically, "I didn't really have any choice in the matter. Yet, look at how things turned out. I wouldn't change a thing."

It is better to give than receive

When my Dad turned seventy several years ago, we had a big party. My Dad is the youngest of five boys (now old geezers), and his oldest brother had died the previous year, so the three remaining brothers and their wives came out to the pacific northwest from their respective corners around the country. Several cousins also travelled to honor my Dad, and even though there were only about 17 of us, it felt quite substantial due to the fact that people had come from 4 or 5 states.

I had this idea for the party, that to my own very great surprise, I actually followed through on. I sent a letter, several months before the party, to everyone in my Dad's address book. He hadn't seen many of these people in twenty years, but they remained on his "christmas card list." In the the letter I asked people to send photos, or write a letter, or relate some piece of personal information that we could share with him on the big day. I was delighted with the response I received. My Dad is an Irish storyteller and a minor league drunk, as well as an exceptionally kind-hearted person, so almost everyone had a good story to tell about him.

I gathered all of the remembrances together and put them in a large scrapbook, and then I took some of the best letters and photos and mounted them on a big foam core board so party guests could browse through them at their leisure. We had rented a big party room at a fancy restaurant, and we were separate from the other diners. After the main courses and before dessert and coffee, I arose to do my little presentation. I explained what I had done, which was still a surprise to my father, and read aloud couple of the letters I received. One letter I remember in particular was from a guy who had been a young lawyer in my Dad's practice. He wrote that had learned from my Dad how to avoid giving free legal advice to drunk barflies seeking a free pointer. I can't remember exactly what he wrote, but it got a big laugh all around.

I thought my Dad would be extremely moved by my expression of love and affection. I thought that this would be a way of showing my Dad how dear he was to me. And I'm sure he was touched in that way. But you know what he mostly felt? Pride. Later that evening he said to me, with tears in his eyes and awe in his voice, "I had no idea you were such a great public speaker! I was so impressed."

I was amazed. By just being myself I could make my father so happy. While I'm sure he did deeply appreciate my show of affection, it was that I had "turned out so well" that brought him even more joy. It was not about him.

Years later, I realize even more clearly that all that my Dad has wanted is his child's happiness and success. And not success in any financial way, but good relationships, a happy family, health, a career that I enjoy. And this is as it should be.

When I think about it in the context of my adoption, I realize that adoption has always been a little simpler from the parent side of the equation. A good parent loves their child fiercely, wishes they could protect them from evil and knows that they cannot. Parents sacrifice for their chidlren.

From the child side I think it is more complicated. I hear many adoptive parents worry about getting called adoptive mom, as opposed to just "mom". They worry about their child referring to their birth mother as their other mother, or their real mother. They worry they will feel illegitimate. And most of those things will happen, sooner or later. But I think it needs to put in context.

When children are younger, things are black and white. Their concept of real, vs. birth, vs. adoptive is very literal, not emotional. The idea that they are the child of someone's heart is very comforting, but it is abstract. Everything is immediate gratification and their love is so simple and pure at that point that it is beyond their imagination that the term "real mom" could be hurtful. Any child, bio or adopted, may say they "hate" their parent, but usually all that means is that their immediate need is not being met.

Later, in the adolescent and teen years, adoptees understand that they may have lost something, and indeed they have. But there is no getting around the fact that teens are a bit...well, melodramatic may be an understatement. When a fourteen year old says they hate you, now they mean it. They know how to hold a grudge.

At that age I, myself, was looking for a badge to give me wisdom and make me seem cool. Being adopted made me a little mysterious. The part of me that was still in the land of childhood could fantasize that my mother was a kind-hearted Grace Kelly that had the capability to rescue me from my 8th grade travails. The part of me that strived to be a grown-up could imagine I was the result of a dank romance between a trailer park drug dealer and a young girl going seriously down the wrong path. I really did imagine both of those scenarios.

I mean, what self respecting, self absorbed junior high schooler, wouldn't choose to make adoption a centerpiece for their angst? It's just too ripe. Kids use divorce, traumatic school changes, and severe discipline as tools against their parents. It's not to say that these things are not stressful and hurtful, but subconsciously and instinctively, teens are looking for any chinks in their parents' armors. Nobody knows the trouble a fourteen year old has seen, right?

Later on, I did therapy. I analyzed family patterns. I wondered why I was the way I was. How had my parents fucked me up? Had adoption fucked me up?

And later still, I realized that I am nobody's fault, nor can my successes be credited to any one individual. No one person has ordained who I am. I happen to have pretty sane genes, so that helps. Growing up, I had a loving father and lots of opportunities to expand my world. But in the end, I just am who I am, just like everyone else. Like most people I didn't truly appreciate my family on a deep level until I was in my late twenties/early thirties. And like a lot of people I grew to have a much better understanding of my father's love for me after I had a child of my own. While being adopted has had a big impact on my life, there are other events and emotions that have had a larger impact. Really. The primal wound people may not want to believe it, but my therapist does.

Being a (good) parent is so clean cut. You adore your child and will do anything to provide for him and make him happy, even to the point of giving up your own life. My love for my son is unconditional. His love for me...not so much, at least not for another twenty years or so. And being an adopted parent is no different in this regard. It can break your heart to see your child struggle with her identity, to long for connections she has lost. But in some ways it is all a part of the process. If it wasn't one thing, it would be another. Perhaps a disabled sibling, perhaps a death, perhaps being dyslexic in a family of geniouses. I am not minimizing the side effects of adoption because they are very real. I just think that there are parents and there are children, and the specific issues may be different, but it's the same shit all over.

smoke and mirrors

There was an article in the local newspaper last weekend about teenage sweethearts who had given up a baby boy for adoption when they were 17 years old, only to reunite 26 years later and search for their son together. Through a strange series of coincidences they were able to find him fairly easily and there was a photo in the paper of the glowing family of three, embracing each other as if they had always been together. The adult son had an uncanny resemblance to his "father."

It's stories like these that perpetuate ideas like international adoption being the "fourth best" option for children. The image of this family that was separated and finally reunited and therefore "made whole" is the message that gets disbursed to the community. The adoptive family was just a placeholder until the joyful reunion could finally make everything as it should be, and should have been.

The article talks about how the couple, Brenda and Bart, held their child for the "first time in 26 years." And when the high school sweethearts decided to get married soon afterward, the son agreed to walk his mom down the aisle.

Then, last November, Brenda and Bart had a baby daughter and their son was there to videotape and participate in the joy.

"Brenda and Bart beamed at their daughter, at their son, at each other — their family, finally together."

"And it was so beautiful."

The whole thing makes me want to gag.

I do not mean to diminish the biological parents joy at finding the son that they were not allowed to raise. They were 17 at the time of his birth and were basically forced to sign the adoption papers by their parents. I cannot imagine their heartbreak, or their relief at finding their beautiful son.

I also do not want to take anything away from the son's joy at finding his biological roots, and on top of it having a biological sister join him in the world. A sibling that he will have the gift of knowing from birth. As an adoptee who has met her bio parents and has a biological sister, I know what a great gift it can be.

I agree that it makes a good story.

But it does not negate everything that went before. I was 27 when I met my biological family. I had done a lot of living before I knew anything about them.

And there were some parts of the story that were conveniently glossed over. Bart had married someone else and had another son, but later divorced. And then he had a second son with another woman, who it appears that he was never married to. Brenda also married someone else and had three boys. She moved to California and later divorced.

In summary, the couple has 5 other kids with three different partners. The article doesn't mention how old they are or where they live, or whether any of THEM were around for the birth of Brenda and Bart's brand new baby daughter. I wonder how that makes THEM feel.

Not once are the words "biological parents" used. And the adoptive family barely gets mentioned. Twenty six years of raising and loving their son, and they only get mentioned in passing? They are essentially completely dismissed as a temporary stop on the way to this fairytale ending.

With the media perpetuating the idea that there is only one "true" family, is it any wonder that the public at large thinks that children staying with their biological families is always the best option?

So much of it is based on appearance. People see this photo of a father and son who look like they could be brothers, and they think that they must live happily ever after, because, how can they not?They look just like each other. My bio sister and I look like twins. It's a little eerie. Because it was a new experience for me, I enjoyed the feeling of people looking at us and knowing we were related. But we are far from being actual twins. As similar as we are in looks, mannerisms and personality, we are also very different. The biggest difference is that we do not have the experience of a shared childhood. And there is no getting that back.

I do not know what the son's relationship is with his adopted family. The article did mention that he has known he was adopted since he was sixteen. Sixteen?! In my humble a opinion, waiting until your child is sixteen to explain to him something what everyone else has known since he was born, is just a mind fuck. And it also communicates a lot of shame about adoption. If you had to wait that long there must be something forbidden and dirty about it. So maybe's he's not close to them. But if he's not, it's not because they weren't biologically related, it's because they were shitty parents.

It just drives me mad that people look at this story and think it's all so beautiful. They don't see all the flaws.

The final insult to injury was this: Brenda and Bart were 17 in 1977. They had a baby in November of 2004. It took me a few minutes to get the math together but let's see here. That makes them 37 in 1977. They reunited in January of 2004. That would make them 43 (or close to it) at that time. Bart proposes in February of 2004, a month after their reunion. They have a baby in November of 2004. Hmm. That means they conceived in... February or March of 2004. Yes, less than two months after they reunited for the first time in 25 years. Now there's a well thought out plan. And that means they were 43 or 44 at the time of their daughter's birth.

Aaaargh.

Help me out here

No, really. I want your opinion. Am I missing something?

Here's the situation. I was having a conversation last week with a good male friend about a myriad of things, and adoption came up. My friend, I'll call him Bob, is a kind, gentle sort of person. He's very environmentally aware and usually pretty pc, without being annoyingly so. During the conversation, Bob said, in passing, that "To me, 75% of the reason to adopt is to do something good, to help a child." The comment didn't sit well with me at the time, but I wasn't really sure why. Because, it is true that altruism can play a role in adoption.

It wasn't until later, after I'd had time to think about it that I thought: Wow, Bob doesn't really get what adoption is about. I know he didn't mean anything by the comment, but he was speaking to an adoptee. I know that my parents did not adopt me "mostly" because they were trying to do a good deed, but almost exclusively because they wanted to be parents. So even at my age, I am still surprised by arcane ideas of adoption, especially among my over-educated, generally liberal and still fairly young friends(Bob is 35.)

My Dad always told me that I was special because I was chosen, and always made me feel like I was the gift, never, ever vice versa. Thankfully, noone in my extended family ever made me feel like I was a pity case either, which is why I am still sometimes naive about what a lot people really think about adoption. So I was a little hurt by Bob's comment, as unintentional as it was. I mean, how do you think any adopted child would feel if they were told that 75% of the reason their parents adopted them, was because they they felt sorry for them. "Oh, we saw your plight, and thought 'poor little thing', and we thought what a nice thing it would be to give you a home." What is also very damaging to a child is when their community perceives the adoption in that way, even if the parents do not. When Mrs. Jones across the street tells the adopted child how "lucky she is."

As I mentioned previously, I do not think that altruism should be separate from adoption. I think one of the great silver linings of adoption is that you are caring for a child that needs a home, or at least a better home than it has. In a world where I often feel helpless in the face of the horrific things that happen in our own country and around the globe, I think it would be fantastic to feel like I could have a (hopefully good) impact on at least one impressionable life. But again, that feeling is not part of the job description, it's part of the benefit package.

All of this brings me around to the initial question. I spoke to two different friends about my conversation with Bob. Both women looked at me blankly when I told them about Bob's 75% concept. Both times I went on to explain why I was somewhat offended by the statement. And both women continued to look very confused. Then they both explained to me that I was being oversensitive, and that he was only speaking for HIMSELF. TO HIM, if HE adopted that would be HIS main motivation, to help someone. One of the friends I spoke to actually would like to adopt, and said that the good deed element of adoption is highly motivating to her, although she did say her desire to parent a child was primary. In essence, my two friends thought I was being very silly for letting this nag at me.

Since Bob has a fertile myrtle wife and is a million miles away from adoption, I suppose I should not worry about it. He hasn't ever seriously put himself in the shoes of someone who is driven to adopt, and I'm sure he would look at it differently if he ever got to that point.

So am I crazy to think that Bob's comment is a microcosm of the world's misperceptions about adoption? Is it silly to be somewhat wounded (albeit very mildly - like an annoying paper cut?) Am I nuts to think that the overriding reason to adopt should be the desire to parent and love a child? To give and receive the gift of love? I just don't know, because I'm starting to feel a little high maintenance here.

the power of just

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between someone asking you "Why don't you just adopt?" vs. "Wow, what you've been through really sucks, would you consider adoption?" There is a a vast difference in the intention behind these two questions. One is a statement loaded with prejudgement, the other an expression of true caring.

It's almost as if subtitles are necessary for the prior question, so I've compiled a short list of possible translations to the question "Why don't you just adopt?"

"Can you stop complaining about infertility?"

"Would you stop being so narcissistic?"

"I would never adopt, but why don't you?"

"Isn't is selfish to do all that expensive medical treatment when there are needy children in (you name the remote country)? I would have adopted if I couldn't have had my four children naturally." (I always love that when people use the word "naturally." As though adoption, a practice that goes back thousands of years, is unnatural.)

"What's wrong with you?"

"Is is possible for me to any more holier than thou?"

"You are making me uncomfortable, can we change the subject now?"

"I don't have a clue about what you are going through."

"Wasn't adoption created for poor infertile things like you? Why go to all that ivf bother?

"I'm super fertile, so...what did you say again?"

There are a lot of responses to this dumbass question, but a good stock answer, if you don't bite the offender's head off, is something like a curt, "It is something we are considering."

Subtitles for this statement include:

"Why don't (didn't) you "just adopt?"

"Have you tried to have a baby for four years, and had 6 miscarriages along the way? Well then why don't you just shut up?"

"I'd be thrilled to adopt, but that doesn't mean I'd like to give up on the dream of having a child with my husband, the man I love, the man whose genes I have fantasized about blending with mine since our 5th date. Moron."

"You don't have a fucking clue, do you?"

"Wow you're right. You had your "own" kids and look how crappy they turned out."

"huh, thanks for completely dismissing my pain.

"Why don't you just get your fat ass out of my sight?"

I can see the short film in my head right now. The protaganist is an attractive woman with sad eyes, in her late thirties. The villain is a woman in her late thirties, surrounded by three grubby children that are climbing on the protaganist's furniture. What shall I call it? Hmm. Any suggestions?

*************

There are no words for how crappy I feel about the election right now. For years I've been worried about what will happen in the Supreme Court if Bush gets re-elected. Now it looks like we are going to find out. Say good-by to abortion rights and equal rights for gays and lesbians, not to mention any health care reform. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...infinity fucks.

life and death

I have an update on my friend's friend Sara. It's been almost three weeks since her daughter passed. Her health problems, which I don't want to detail in case she could be identified, were so fundamental that there was no chance that she could survive. However, she did survive for almost 25 hours after they took her off the ventilator. She died in her mother's arms.

I know the grief and emptiness that she and her husband are going through must feel unfathomable, bottomless.

It turns out that her sister-in-law, who appears to be of the evil sister-in-law variety that I've heard about so often on infertility blogs, had a daughter only a week after Sara's daughter was born. When I heard that, I burst out crying. I hated that she was going to have to suffer with that reality, that reminder, for the rest of her life.

*********

Just one day after Sara's daughter was born, another baby was born. This one a boy, born to an unwed couple, twenty year old students, who felt completely unequipped to take care of their child. They loved each other and planned to stay together, but knew they couldn't be parents yet.

Six days before the mother was due they contacted some friends of mine whom I'll call Cecil and Jane. Cecil and Jane had signed with an adoption agency last fall and completed their homestudy in May. The young couple had both been drawn to my friends' bio, partly because they had a particularly goofy photo accompanying their profile.The two of them were sitting together, with their golden retriever between them, mugging at the camera and imitating their dog's expression. The young couple also liked Cecil and Jane because they were willing to have a more open adoption than many people.

After meeting with the couple, both sides felt completely sure they would be doing the right thing. Jane told me that she was astonished at just how well she could relate to the couple. She said it was uncanny how all four of them looked they could be related to each other. Both women were blondish Scandinavian types, both men tall and lanky. Jane said they seemed like very sweet drama geeks, which is kind of how I imagine Cecil and Jane when they were in high school and college.

The baby was born a few days after his due date and Cecil and Jane were at the hospital when he was born, although not in the room. They sent us photos of Jane holding the baby, smiling at the camera. The next photo down was a shot of all four parents. All of them looking at their son. I was struck at that moment with the difference that forty years can make. When I was born, the nurses did not allow my birthmother to see me and drugged her up so heavily they hoped she wouldn't mind. Back then they thought it would be easier that way, if you looked the other way, it wouldn't be real. Looking at that photo, I thought about how hard it would be to hold that baby and then to give him to someone else. Heart wrenching is an understatement. But I also thought that knowledge is power. They had a choice about who would take care of their baby. They knew they would be able to see how he grew, what he would become.

Cecil and Jane are wonderful people and they will be loving and generous parents. They had fully been expecting a transracial baby. Jane's best friend is a mixed race adoptee and Jane and Cecil had been talking with her constantly, making sure they had tools in place that would help with raising a child of a different race. Oddly enough, they ended up with a white baby. You can imagine the comments that they will be getting about that already - about how "lucky" they were, or if they had to wait longer to "get a white one." In one way I do think the child is lucky, because it will be his choice to discuss whether he is adopted or not. No one will look at his family and ask stupid questions about his "real" parents. But I do know that Cecil and Jane could not give a rat's ass about that, they are just thrilled to be parents.

Jane commented in her email that they have already, two weeks into parenthood, heard a lot of astonishing comments. While people are delighted that she and Cecil have found a child to adopt, they have comdemned the young mother for getting pregnant in the first place, and then for deciding to allow someone else to raise her child. " How could she give her child away?!" People so often feel free to judge things they know nothing about. I know in my birthmother's case it was excruciating, but putting me up for adoption just seemed like the most practical thing to do. It seemed like the best thing she could do for me. Sometimes the selfish ones are those that do not give up their children to adoption.

Jane and Cecil had always wanted to adopt, but thought they would have a biological child first. In her late thirties, Jane had two miscarriages, one was a blighted ovum, another an ectopic. One of her tubes is blocked, but apparently not completely, because an egg did get down the tube enough to get fertilized and lodge just at the opening of the uterus.

Jane wanted no part of fertility treatments and she and Cecil decided to go straight for adoption. At the time I thought she should give it one more shot, but in retrospect, I admire the wisdom of her decision. It's a funny side note that Jane did get pregnant very easily, and at the end of our conversation the other day she said, "I do know how to get pregnant. If any of your friends need to know, I can tell them." I responded "..., well..." She hurriedly added "If timing is the issue." I wanted to say, do you think anyone who really, really is having a hard time getting pregnant couldn't recite "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" line, chapter and verse? But instead I just said, "Well, sometimes it's not really an issue of timing." I wasn't going to dampen her bliss. She deserves it.

********

Grief and joy. Joy and grief. It's a fuck of a lot more fun to be on the joy side of the fence.