More Mama - from #2
Here's the beginning of my story about finding members of my birth family. Yup, I'm adopted.
Seeking My Birth Family - Part I
As an adopted adult daughter, my experience of parenting is complicated by both biology and history: my own little replicant runs by my side, hugs and kisses me, yells at me, cries and laughs. I have someone who really looks like me in my life! For the first several months after her birth, it was unimaginable that I could look into a pair of eyes the exact shade of brown as my own. Same skin color, same hair color, same eye color, same build. It’s still freaky! While emotionally significant, biology cannot compare to the past and present of my adoption, my history.
History is something altogether more complicated than biology. In my parenting adventures I have found many opportunities to grieve for the mother who never got to breastfeed, cuddle, or change and wash the diapers of her infant. When I felt that powerful mother-love, a surge of violent protection instinct, I wondered what parallel emotion my birth mom must have felt, and then grieved that loss, too.
Prior to the birth of my daughter, I didn’t want to imagine and experience so much loss. All this wondering got me off my butt and into the post office. After two years of putting it off for no good reason, I finally submitted my registration as a seeker to the State of Illinois Dept. of Children and Family Services.
After I sent the registration, I didn’t hear anything. She wasn’t looking either! I was disappointed again (I had registered all over in previous years, including the huge, and free, ISRR). I then discovered I could ask the State to seek my parent on my behalf. The stipulation: one relative only, and if they said no, or if they could not be located, too bad so sad. After some debate, and despite an ambiguous feeling of dread as I checked the right box, I chose to search for my birth mother.
Almost a year passed before I heard anything from the agency. I moved to another city and quit teaching part-time English composition to technical college students. I contemplated getting pregnant again. We night weaned. So I sent my worker an email asking what was up, and she called me the next business day. She was making progress, and my case was next on her list to work on.
Eventually they sent me a form with non-identifying information on it, culled from our 30+ year-old files. My birth mom was 19 at time of placement, blond and blue-eyed, a college student from a French family! My dad was olive skinned, dark brown hair and eyes, 21 at time of placement, a factory supervisor from a German family! I don’t look like my mom, but just like my dad. There was very little else in the file that could really sustain me, but every letter gave me something I didn’t have before - links to my physical place in the world, my family, my heritage. Was my birth father Jewish? Catholic? When did my mother’s family emigrate to the U.S.? Why were they Episcopalian? Her hobbies were art and music. Mine too! And when I was born, the cord was wrapped around my neck once, but it wasn’t a big deal in the medical record. So much I never knew, never. Maybe all I would ever know.
Then, a few months later, I received a letter from the agency: my old worker left the agency unexpectedly and my case had been assigned to someone else. More delays! More chance for failure! It is an emotionally risky business to wait for news of the biologically related.
But my skepticism was misplaced; this new worker contacted me in a month with concrete news about my birth mother. “Bad news, I’m afraid: your mother is deceased.”
Dead.
It took a very long time that day for this change to really sink in. Despite my being in a kind of shock, I sent my mom an email soon after I got the call. I wasn’t even thinking about what it meant, what I was now: an orphan. A motherless child. A mother without a past and no family history. She called me as soon as she read the email, asking if I was OK. “Oh,” I numbly answered, “I’m OK. Sad, but not devastated or anything. It wasn’t like we had a relationship or anything.” She knew I wasn’t thinking clearly, bless her wisdom. In a devastatingly appropriate and compassionate gesture, my mother wired two beautiful plants with her condolences to me, and a gift for my daughter. This made me finally get it - my mother was dead.
In the phone call, the worker told me she couldn’t say how my mother died, or when, or what her name was when she died. It was agency policy, she tactfully informed me. In situations like this, I could choose another relative. Did I want to do that? If so, there were two maternal aunts, both younger than my mother. She suggested I seek the youngest, since she was, well, the youngest. She did not recommend I search for my birth father.
I agreed, asked for the paperwork, and sent all the approvals and changes back, with a brief letter stating why I was searching and a very tiny bit about me. Another chance to find someone of blood.
A week later, I received another phone call: good news. She had managed to contact the youngest aunt, and my aunt was overjoyed that I was searching. A very emotional phone call, the worker said. She really wants to contact me. I was totally stunned. I couldn’t even react emotionally - I could speak, but not really think at all. Thoughts would form and float around in my head with no order, no logical progression, no way to make sense out of any of it. “Uhhh...” I said.
“She is willing to follow your lead. Whatever you want to do next, she is OK with that. What would you like to do next?”
Silence. “Uhh.... I don’t know. Ummm...”
“We strongly recommend you exchange anonymous letters for first contact.” She added reasons why this is reasonable. I thought exchanging letters sounded reasonable. No need to jump into something I couldn’t even pronounce at the time. “OK, letters sounds good. But no need to be anonymous. I don’t care if she has my address and phone number. I feel safer with letters. Emotionally safer.”
My worker chuckles lightly. Warns me, “You might get a phone call!”
A phone call! My heart skipped one beat.
“Oh, that’s all right. What am I going to do, tell her get away from me? Don’t ever contact me again!?” And I am confident that I can handle anything from this point on. Any one.
Careful what you say, I think. But jump off the cliff anyway. So now I am thinking about the letter, writing this instead. Wondering about my biological attachments in another state, in someone’s body, all my potential for history and biology and fear and closure and who knows what else. And I will write.
Which photos will I send? Will I look like her? Like my mother? Like my father?
What, ultimately, is the cost of passing on? Of belonging?
Seeking My Birth Family - Part I
As an adopted adult daughter, my experience of parenting is complicated by both biology and history: my own little replicant runs by my side, hugs and kisses me, yells at me, cries and laughs. I have someone who really looks like me in my life! For the first several months after her birth, it was unimaginable that I could look into a pair of eyes the exact shade of brown as my own. Same skin color, same hair color, same eye color, same build. It’s still freaky! While emotionally significant, biology cannot compare to the past and present of my adoption, my history.
History is something altogether more complicated than biology. In my parenting adventures I have found many opportunities to grieve for the mother who never got to breastfeed, cuddle, or change and wash the diapers of her infant. When I felt that powerful mother-love, a surge of violent protection instinct, I wondered what parallel emotion my birth mom must have felt, and then grieved that loss, too.
Prior to the birth of my daughter, I didn’t want to imagine and experience so much loss. All this wondering got me off my butt and into the post office. After two years of putting it off for no good reason, I finally submitted my registration as a seeker to the State of Illinois Dept. of Children and Family Services.
After I sent the registration, I didn’t hear anything. She wasn’t looking either! I was disappointed again (I had registered all over in previous years, including the huge, and free, ISRR). I then discovered I could ask the State to seek my parent on my behalf. The stipulation: one relative only, and if they said no, or if they could not be located, too bad so sad. After some debate, and despite an ambiguous feeling of dread as I checked the right box, I chose to search for my birth mother.
Almost a year passed before I heard anything from the agency. I moved to another city and quit teaching part-time English composition to technical college students. I contemplated getting pregnant again. We night weaned. So I sent my worker an email asking what was up, and she called me the next business day. She was making progress, and my case was next on her list to work on.
Eventually they sent me a form with non-identifying information on it, culled from our 30+ year-old files. My birth mom was 19 at time of placement, blond and blue-eyed, a college student from a French family! My dad was olive skinned, dark brown hair and eyes, 21 at time of placement, a factory supervisor from a German family! I don’t look like my mom, but just like my dad. There was very little else in the file that could really sustain me, but every letter gave me something I didn’t have before - links to my physical place in the world, my family, my heritage. Was my birth father Jewish? Catholic? When did my mother’s family emigrate to the U.S.? Why were they Episcopalian? Her hobbies were art and music. Mine too! And when I was born, the cord was wrapped around my neck once, but it wasn’t a big deal in the medical record. So much I never knew, never. Maybe all I would ever know.
Then, a few months later, I received a letter from the agency: my old worker left the agency unexpectedly and my case had been assigned to someone else. More delays! More chance for failure! It is an emotionally risky business to wait for news of the biologically related.
But my skepticism was misplaced; this new worker contacted me in a month with concrete news about my birth mother. “Bad news, I’m afraid: your mother is deceased.”
Dead.
It took a very long time that day for this change to really sink in. Despite my being in a kind of shock, I sent my mom an email soon after I got the call. I wasn’t even thinking about what it meant, what I was now: an orphan. A motherless child. A mother without a past and no family history. She called me as soon as she read the email, asking if I was OK. “Oh,” I numbly answered, “I’m OK. Sad, but not devastated or anything. It wasn’t like we had a relationship or anything.” She knew I wasn’t thinking clearly, bless her wisdom. In a devastatingly appropriate and compassionate gesture, my mother wired two beautiful plants with her condolences to me, and a gift for my daughter. This made me finally get it - my mother was dead.
In the phone call, the worker told me she couldn’t say how my mother died, or when, or what her name was when she died. It was agency policy, she tactfully informed me. In situations like this, I could choose another relative. Did I want to do that? If so, there were two maternal aunts, both younger than my mother. She suggested I seek the youngest, since she was, well, the youngest. She did not recommend I search for my birth father.
I agreed, asked for the paperwork, and sent all the approvals and changes back, with a brief letter stating why I was searching and a very tiny bit about me. Another chance to find someone of blood.
A week later, I received another phone call: good news. She had managed to contact the youngest aunt, and my aunt was overjoyed that I was searching. A very emotional phone call, the worker said. She really wants to contact me. I was totally stunned. I couldn’t even react emotionally - I could speak, but not really think at all. Thoughts would form and float around in my head with no order, no logical progression, no way to make sense out of any of it. “Uhhh...” I said.
“She is willing to follow your lead. Whatever you want to do next, she is OK with that. What would you like to do next?”
Silence. “Uhh.... I don’t know. Ummm...”
“We strongly recommend you exchange anonymous letters for first contact.” She added reasons why this is reasonable. I thought exchanging letters sounded reasonable. No need to jump into something I couldn’t even pronounce at the time. “OK, letters sounds good. But no need to be anonymous. I don’t care if she has my address and phone number. I feel safer with letters. Emotionally safer.”
My worker chuckles lightly. Warns me, “You might get a phone call!”
A phone call! My heart skipped one beat.
“Oh, that’s all right. What am I going to do, tell her get away from me? Don’t ever contact me again!?” And I am confident that I can handle anything from this point on. Any one.
Careful what you say, I think. But jump off the cliff anyway. So now I am thinking about the letter, writing this instead. Wondering about my biological attachments in another state, in someone’s body, all my potential for history and biology and fear and closure and who knows what else. And I will write.
Which photos will I send? Will I look like her? Like my mother? Like my father?
What, ultimately, is the cost of passing on? Of belonging?
posted by Skim @ 4:57 PM
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