Important Moments.

I was thinking this morning about what were the most important moments to me in my search and reunion. Two seemingly small events stood out.

The first was after I inadvertently learned my deceased birthfather’s name. I had been e-mailed a letter to some birth relatives to proof by my post adoption counselor and there it was. Plain as day. She had accidentally missed removing his name from one of the last paragraphs.

Needless to say, after a couple of hours on the internet I was in the car making the two-hour drive to the next state. Big football star in high school? We’re off to the library to look at yearbooks!

The first couple of yearbooks didn’t do much for me. Pictures of him led me to think I had the wrong guy. All the non-identifying information called him “your alleged birthfather” so maybe my birthmom had it wrong.

I opened one last book thinking I had made a two hour library trip for nothing when there it was. There was …Me! I was staring at myself. Granted I was in a 1960’s football uniform but there was absolutely, positively no question at all, it was me. I ran to the copy machine and fed five dollars into it for a copy of this picture. I didn’t even see the small sign that said the machine did not give change for the 5 cent copies and I had been duly warned. Don’t even think about asking the librarian for a refund. I looked over and she frowned at me, peering over her bifocals. It didn’t matter, I would have paid hundreds and I wanted to give her a big, sloppy kiss! Right on the lips!

For a split second, I contemplated how I could steal this book. I didn’t want to leave without it. I could saunter to the men’s room and maybe hide it under my shirt and pants. This would give me the appearance of either wearing a bullet-proof vest for fun or having an odd medical condition that required me to have life-sustaining medical apparatus attached to me at all times. I love a challenge but really how long could I have kept up the medical condition ruse? I imagined a state police car quietly falling in behind me as I left the library parking lot.

After sizing up my opponent, I decided to take the high road (my library lady friend didn’t look above frisking me and perhaps giving me a few discreet kicks in the ribs while she ripped the book out from under my clothes). I left with my five dollar copy.

The second most important moment was the call I received from the post adoption counselor. The first words out of her mouth were “I just got off the phone with your birthmother” and I went into a daze. She has a phone? She can speak on a phone? The fantasy birthmother and the real thing just collided in my head. Condition is serious but all expected to survive.

I think I speak for other reunited adoptees about the power of those seemingly innocent words. No more of those carefully handwritten letters to someone who has no basis in reality for me. Did they actually get to her? Those letters might as well have been torn into tiny pieces and held out the window to be scattered with the wind. Someone actually spoke to her and now that person is speaking to me. Two very small degrees of separation. If I could have been in the room, I would have heard my birthmother’s voice faintly coming from the phone as she spoke with the counselor. So very, very close but still winds, oceans and continents apart.

Three Rotten Things.

For some reason, these three rotten things people have said to me just popped into my head:

1. “Your dad is so nice. You must be adopted.”
2. “Aren’t you glad you were raised by your parents and not two stupid, young kids?”
3. “We still are trying to have a baby. We would only consider adoption as a last resort.”

Interesting?

Cabin in the Woods.

I received a card from my birthmom today. When I opened it, there were some really great pictures inside. There were several of the view from her house as well as some pictures of her cabin up near the Canadian border. It is so interesting how fascinated I am by her and her life. I almost memorize every detail in each picture. The painted welcome slate hung by the cabin door, the full birdfeeder in her yard, the small painted antique chair on her front porch with a basket of fall flowers on it. These details give me little tiny views into her life.

I remember early on in the reunion process, my birthmother asked the post adoption counselor what I needed from her. The counselor replied that adoptees often just want to know what their birthparents lives are like. It is funny how the small details are so satisfying to me and tell me so much about her. I notice the colorful curtains in the little window of the cabin.

I wonder if it all somehow winds back to that fantasy adoptees build in their thoughts and minds to somehow compensate for that underlying feeling of rejection.

“Your birth mother loved you very much but she just couldn’t take care of you.

In fact, she loved you so much she gave you away to a family that could take care of you”.

Why is that? Why couldn’t she take care of me? I don’t understand but I will create a romantic story in my head that will help me feel better. She will be the movie star who had a sultry affair with a co-star, the news journalist who had a boozy but intellectual one night stand or the spy with a career so crucial to international security that a child was completely out of the question.

When I first met my birthmom, I think I wanted her to tell me that she really wanted to keep me but circumstances just wouldn’t allow it. She told me that she really felt she made the right decision. My heart hurt. She didn’t ever want to keep me? I just didn’t understand.

Now, I find that I do understand. She was sixteen and in a big mess of trouble. The pretty, quiet, exceptional student who had been dating the big high school football star since they were just kids. High school sweethearts. She told him she was pregnant and when she wouldn’t or couldn’t marry him, he disappeared. Just vanished. She never, ever saw him again. Sixteen and completely alone.

She did what all girls in trouble had to do back then. She told her parents and the rest is history. History that was repeated again and again for girls in trouble back in those days. Sent away to “care for her sick aunt” and back at her desk in school barely 72 hours after I was born. Like nothing ever happened. Nice and clean. Tied up in a neat little bundle and tucked away.

“Never, ever talk about this to anyone. It is done. It is history.”

I understand so much now and my heart breaks for her. I remind her of him. I look, laugh, smile, walk and talk just like him. He dumped her and broke her sixteen year old heart. He was supposed to love her forever…