I AM adopted

I am an introvert by nature, and as a blogger I am also an oversharer. It's interesting to be the kind of person who would rather write something personal for potentially hundreds of people --- many of whom I don't know ---- to read on the internet than to actually pick up the phone and call someone I really love and tell them something I truly want them to know. I wrote about it a while ago here. It sort of amuses me in theory but in practice it’s pretty damn uncomfortable and I know I end up alienating people because a lot of the time I squirm at the thought of having a heart-to-heart. I read in a book about introverts that this is not uncommon behavior but I still think it’s weird and ultimately, it sucks. I never felt that close to any one person in my whole life but I always wanted to be. I wanted to have a best friend I was inseparable from, the kind I could tell everything to, or a twin sister who spoke the same secret language I did. I wanted to find my people, the ones I could kythe with like Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace in the Madeleine L'Engle books I treasured as a kid. When I was little my friends and I would talk about how we’d be best friends forever, go to the same college, be in each others’ weddings and be aunts to each others’ kids. I still want that super close sister like the Braverman siblings on Parenthood or a bestie who lives down the hall from me. But then I would have to TALK to them all the time, wouldn't I? 

One of the things I have written a lot about is my adoption. I talk a lot about it too, now that I am comfortable with it. I wasn’t always; I was raised to think of adoption as a private family matter. And in some ways it is. When I was a child I suppose talking about my adoption would have raised more questions about my parents than it did me. People should know better than to ask others about their fertility and conception issues but they do anyway. When it comes to questions about how I ended up surrendered at birth and becoming a part of my family, those are not mine to answer here; how my parents came to be my parents is not my story to tell. But as an adult adoptee, I don't necessarily agree with adoption being a private family matter anymore because it is a huge part of my identity as a human being, as a daughter and now also as a mother.

I remember once reading in a book about adoption that there is a difference between saying “I was adopted” and “I am adopted.” The book advocated for use of the former because, the author said, it identified the adoption as a singular event. Using the latter instead made adoption part of one’s identity. At the time I bought into that and I still say most of the time that “I was adopted as a baby.” But the truth is that I am adopted. Adoption is not an isolated, singular incident. It’s something I am every single day. I recently read this article and was surprised to see so much of my secret self in this woman’s words. Many adoptees live with a pain that other people can’t understand. As an adult, sharing and writing about my experiences helps me to heal.

Though I was able to "pass" when I was growing up, the truth is that I don't look like my parents at all and I don't act like them either. When I was growing up, we struggled hard to understand each other. It was not easy. I love my mother and father very, very much. They are my parents. I get defensive of them when well-intentioned people ask me if I know my “real” parents; of course I do. And as I get older I appreciate my mom and dad more and more and have a great deal of respect for their journey as parents. Best of all, we have a better relationship now than we ever did. But it wasn’t easy for any of us for a long, long time.

My parents may not have wanted to talk about adoption, but they were always as open with me about it and answered my questions as best they could. They told me that the adoption agency said that honesty and openness was the best way to approach things, and they took that to heart. So there was no finding papers hidden away in a drawer, no hushed conversation I accidentally overheard. I always knew that I was adopted, and I always knew everything they knew. Unfortunately, they knew very little, because my adoption, like most in New York in the 1970s, was completely closed. So really, there wasn't a whole lot to talk about. And that suited them – and me – for a long time.

Even though I have internalized and still grapple with the concept of my adoption being a private family matter, I have written publicly here and here and elsewhere about my experience as an adoptee, especially after my birth mother died three and a half years ago. The love I have for her is unique for me. Hugging her was unlike hugging anyone else in the world. She smelled familiar in a way no one else has. I felt like I fit into her arms in a way I’ve never fit anywhere else in the whole world. It blew my mind that I was developing a relationship with the person I grew inside of, the person who birthed me, saw me, held me before anyone else ever did. She became special to me in a way that was totally separate and apart from the way in which my adoptive mother -- or anyone else -- is special to me, and I was absolutely devastated when she died. 

I am used to a standard set of nosy questions about finding my "real" mother, what I knew, how I felt, my search and so on. I don’t mind the questions. I am so happy that it is commonplace nowadays for families to come in all different configurations and I teach my children that adoption is just another way that parents and children are brought together. My girls know that parents can be of any gender or sexual orientation and that children come into the world and into their families in many different ways. I want to normalize adoption for them because I want adoption to be normal. I want people not to shy away from the tough stuff about adoption. I want them to know that it's hard even when you love your parents, even when you look enough like them that you can "pass." I want them to know what I once heard: that adoption is like grafting a tree. It's uprooting. And it requires a lot of love and work to take. It's a big fucking deal and people who are part of the adoption triad as birth parent, adoptee or adoptive parent carry adoption with them long after the actual event and it’s a part of who they are.

Contrary to the way I was raised, my birth mother encouraged me to talk about my adoption. In fact, the day she and I met for the first time in person at a restaurant we both loved, she told every single person at the restaurant that I was the daughter she gave up 26 years before. She told the maitre d', the waitstaff, the other diners, anyone who would listen. She couldn't stop hugging me and asking them if they thought we looked alike. I was shocked -- and I loved it. She was so open. I wanted to be like her. I was like her. For the first time in my life, there was someone in the world that I was related to.  

Growing up, I didn't know that many domestic adoptees of my generation but those I did know were a lot like me: adopted within the same race and even religion, able to "pass" with their families, all records sealed. Some of them searched, but always for their birth mother. Just like me. Of all the wackadoo questions I was asked, very few people asked me about my birth father. If they had, I wouldn't have had much to say. Until this year, that is.

If my parents knew next to nothing about my birth mother, they knew absolutely nothing about my birth father. When I was 18, I wrote to the adoption agency to ask for my "non-identifying information," which was basically the only thing New York adoptees could legally do to satisfy their curiosity about where they came from. This was supposed to be enough but it wasn’t. How could it be? In the letter, I learned very little about my birth father; it seemed that my birth mother wanted it that way. I read that she refused to give the adoption agency any information about him at all. I didn't know why, but that was enough for me to put him -- and her -- out of my mind for another eight years.

When I was in my mid-twenties, someone told me that adoptees discover something critical about themselves when they reconnect with their birth mothers. This person, an adoptee himself and a former adoption counselor, explained that adoptees often grown up feeling somewhat lost.They're born and then immediately abandoned, after all. Maybe they lack a sense of true belonging. Maybe their identities are somewhat splintered. Maybe it's such a deeply subconscious feeling that they can't ever name it, but they know that something is just... off. He said that when they meet their birth mothers it's like fitting that last piece into the puzzle. And I believed him. But he never said anything about adoptees and their birth fathers and I never thought to ask.

I had never thought seriously about searching for either of them before that conversation. My birth father I’d written off as nothing more than a sperm donor. If my birth mother didn’t want him involved then I didn’t either. I fantasized about seeing my birth mother through a glass window, recognizing my face in hers, seeing her move from afar. In my mind, we never spoke. And yet, we made our ways back to each other and it was easier than I think either of us ever expected.  Some people hear the story and say I found her and others hear it and say she found me. Maybe someday I will write more about how it all happened. One way or another, we found each other and after a decade of trying to figure out who we were to each other, I had a baby and suddenly, she was Grandma and we became very close.

The relationship was and had always been, however, more or less on her terms. She was amazingly generous with me at times, and was the best and most thoughtful gift-giver I ever met. She drove hundreds of miles on a regular basis to spend just a few hours with me. She gave me books when she finished them because they made her think of me. She bought me cookbooks she thought I might like and we made the recipes together. She took me to museums, restaurants and shows she knew I would love. She was always willing to try new things, visit new places and have new experiences with me. She called me regularly no matter where on the planet I was living and no matter what our relationship was like at the time. And I loved her for all of that and more. But there were a couple of things she refused to do.

One of those things was to connect me with my birth father. When we first met, she gave me her high school yearbook and showed me his pictures. She told me everything she could remember about him. She answered every question I had and when I asked the inevitable one about whether she was going to tell him we were in touch, she grew vague and distant. Let’s think about that, she said. If you want to meet him, tell me. I am not sure I know how to find him, but let’s talk more when it’s important to you. I want to be the one to connect you, but not now. I was unsure and afraid, so I tucked that away. I figured we had plenty of time, and I didn’t think I could handle another reunion like that just yet. And what if it was worse? What if he didn’t want to hear from me? So I didn’t push. And then, decades too soon, she was gone.

A little more than a year ago, I got a call from a childhood friend of my birth mother’s. She left me a very cryptic voicemail in which she mentioned my birth father by name, saying she’d had a conversation with him that she wanted to fill me in on. It took three or four agonizing days of phone tag for me to catch up with her. When I did, she explained that she was not only a childhood friend and classmate of my birth mother’s, but also my father’s, and that year their high school class was holding their 40^th reunion. There he learned for the first time of my birth mother’s passing and that she and I had been in touch. He wanted to meet me; did I want to meet him? I was excited but afraid. I said I didn’t want to be the one to reach out first, so I gave her my contact information to pass on to him. And when I checked my email the next morning, there was a letter from my birth father in my inbox.

Maybe it’s that I’m older. Maybe it’s that I’ve been through this before. Maybe it’s that I have a better relationship with my parents now than I did in 1999, or maybe it’s that I have children of my own and have less to lose. Maybe it’s that I’ve had years of therapy about adoption, or maybe it’s that he lives 3000 miles away so I don't feel a ton of pressure. Maybe it’s a little of all of that, and maybe it’s that what little of me is easygoing and direct is the part I get from my birth father. Our connection worked right away. 

With him I feel like myself. It’s easy to be with him. He’s funny, kind, generous, emotional.  He cares deeply for me and always has, it seems. I liked him immediately, and couldn’t help but see myself in his face, in his behavior. I thought for so many years that I was my birth mother’s doppelganger and perhaps I am, but I am also clearly this man’s child as well, not only in looks but in personality, in spirit. We met exactly a year ago and we grew close quickly; I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. And in some ways, I guess I have.

It is amazing to me how much of me comes from two human beings I never knew growing up and who, apart from an intense and magical teenage romance, really didn’t know each other either. It’s almost scary. I have flip-flopped considerably when it comes to where I stand on nature vs. nurture, being staunchly pro-nurture as a young person, probably because I hadn’t yet seen any evidence of nature in my life at that point. Then I was essentially agnostic for years, since I felt alienated from my adoptive parents and everyone else. Nature and nurture could suck it, I thought then. I was very isolated. That’s when I started reading books on adoption and learned that many other adoptees felt as I did: lost and alone. Meeting my biological mother was eerie in some ways and made a naturist out of me. Watching her move, listening to her voice, just looking into her face often felt like looking into a mirror. We barely knew each other and yet we could finish each others' sentences. Even when we struggled it was like I was fighting with myself, and I found myself trying to remember all that I had read in philosophy class about predestination because it almost seemed pointless at times to try as hard as I was to pursue a life of my own when I was this much like this other human being. The difficulties we had I believe had less to do with us not understanding each other or being dissimilar and way more to do with how alike we were, both adoptees, both such strong personalities, both so afraid of losing one another, of losing in general. I clung to her as if knowing her gave my life meaning, and in some ways I guess it did.

It’s true that meeting a birth parent is an eye opening experience. Finding your face in the face of another human being you’ve never seen before is indescribable. Then there are phases to reconnection that go beyond the initial reunion. There’s the “coming out” stage, which happily I was spared. I was very touched to learn that both my biological parents had been open about my existence to their families just as my parents had been open about my adoption to me, so there were no secrets to be revealed on either side. Then, introduction. There was the meeting of spouses and half-siblings. Siblings! I am an only child and somehow, I also have four siblings, and two nephews and a niece! I suddenly have huge extended families and lots of people who knew my parents who now also want to know me. It’s all so beautiful and strange and sometimes it’s overwhelming. If it’s hard for a biological parent and child to reconnect later in life and sustain that connection, think about how many times harder it is for the biological parent’s family to sustain a relationship with her biological child long after her death. That’s one we are still working through. There’s no instruction manual there, and we’re all just figuring it out as we go.

I felt deprived of family for so many years and now I sometimes catch myself feeling guilty for having three times as much family now as most people ever do. I find it laborious and, frankly, like TMI to always to have to say “my birth father” so sometimes I just say “my father” and then I feel a wave of shame. What about my adoptive father, the man I still at the age of 42 call "Daddy" like the Daddy’s girl I have always been? How would he feel if he heard me call someone else my father, even if that man really is also my father? But don’t I, an adoptee, really truly have two dads and two moms? I do, and still I feel like I am saying something wrong or that someone’s feelings will be hurt. Oy, some days it makes my head spin. This last and longest phase is assimilation. What am I to these people? What are they to me? Are these people my family? What is family, really? And what if there aren’t words in the English language to accurately describe this experience and the feelings I feel? That this is still something I think about is why I choose to say that I am adopted instead of saying that I was adopted. It was more than a hand-off, more than a signature on a form, more than a heartbroken teenage girl walking away from her baby and more than a baby coming into the lives of a couple who had been waiting for years. It’s still my story.

 Maybe it is a story I need to write someday, so I can create the words and tell people what it’s like, but not today. Because the rest has yet to unfold. I don’t know what will happen and for today it doesn’t matter. I tell myself the more people there are in the world who love and support my children and me in whatever way they can, the better. We are all still learning each other, and with every interaction I also get to learn more about myself. How could that be a bad thing? 

Hold for the last time then slip away quietly...

my mother died.

it's been four days, i think. and how do i feel? i have no idea. sometimes i feel absolutely nothing at all, like i will never feel anything again. also i feel a million things at once. i am devastated. i feel cheated. i am sad. depressed. unmotivated. i feel like i was robbed of this relationship that took about ten years to blossom. i also feel like i don't have the right to mourn the loss of my mother the way my brother and sister do. i did not grow up with her like they did and i already have a mother.

after a lifetime of feeling like the puzzle piece that did not quite fit anywhere at all, being in her presence was a relief. like kicking off your high heels after a long hard day and sliding into slippers that just envelop your swollen feet. hugging her, breathing her smell, looking into her eyes... i didn't need to be with her my whole life to hear that satisfying "click" of the puzzle piece fitting perfectly in place, or to know that she was a part of me and i was a part of her. it felt so good to be found. and i know it felt the same for her. what was hard was coming to terms with biology, with DNA. with both of us adopted as babies, we both believed so strongly for so long that nurture overcame anything nature could throw our ways. this, we learned, was not true. the connection was there before either of us was able to accept it. our lives may have been as different as day and night when we came together, but she got me and i got her, even when it would have been a whole heck of a lot easier for both of us if we hadn't.

i spent much of my life feeling unnoticed and unnurtured and uncelebrated and unheard. i was a crybaby to get attention (this didn't work) and ended up with nicknames like "Sarah Heartburn" which i didn't even understand, let alone find funny. i was told again and again that i had no sense of humor, that i had to learn to play by myself, that i was making a bigger deal out of X or Y or Z than i should. i rebelled and revolted and did all kinds of things that got different kinds of attention (this didn't help) which resulted in nicknames i'm not even going to list. the antidote to this materialized in my birth mother. she noticed. she listened and talked back. she nurtured and celebrated. all of which was validating in a way i'd never experienced. the relief i felt was indescribable. i had a soul sister. i wasn't alone with my sensitivity, my reactive and moody self because she was like that too. and that made it easier to be less sensitive, less reactive, and just more myself.

so it's all so wrong to be sitting here typing these things in the past tense. listened. talked. nurtured. celebrated. it's not right that there will be no more listening, nurturing or celebrating. she was so young, so healthy, so ALIVE. i thought we had years, decades. she was going to be at newbie's birth. she was the only one we wanted there and i knew there would be fallout from the other grandmothers in our lives but i didn't care. she would walk into our apartment and get right down on the floor to play with the baby. she sat on the kitchen floor and brushed cheerios and cat hair off her designer clothes and just loved on my kid. she held her for hours, unwilling to let her cry herself to sleep. she fed her and bathed her and just loved her - and me - from near and far. after a year of this, i began to imagine family visits for years to come. in my mind she was right next to me at bee's high school graduation, at her wedding. how can she be gone when i felt like we were just getting started?

and now i have more questions. what happens now? her family is family to me, but am i family to her family? do they want me around at all? do they look at me and see her and does it hurt or does it help? do i reach out to them? and if i do, how? and when? or do i back off? last week we talked about how many people would be so deeply affected by this loss. my sister said "she had a lot of love to give." i, too, have a lot of love to give and i want to give that love to my mother's family -- they are my family too. but how do i express this? how much do they know about me? what did she say about me? does it matter? do i have the right to be there, to ask questions, to expect answers? do i have the right to ask for a keepsake? will i become more comfortable with these details that we never needed to iron out? and what the hell do i tell people without having to launch into a long personal history that i don't particularly want to share? i can't say "i lost my mother" without feeling that i have to explain that i have two. though i may overshare in my blog, in the rest of my life i am somewhat tight-lipped. it feels weird and wrong to go into detail, like i have to make excuses or validate my feelings of loss. i didn't explain anything at work. i just said it was my mother. so what happens when someone walks up to my father when he is there to walk the dogs and offers their condolences on the loss of his wife, my mom,  who is at home and doing just fine? i don't want to explain and i don't want to hear "oh, it was ONLY your birth mother." she was the only connection i had to myself for so long when i felt so alone for even longer. she taught me how to be me when i hated everything about myself. she helped me see that even in my flaws there is strength. in being like me, she taught me to like me. so there is no ONLY. this is like losing a limb.

what does it mean to have two mothers? how can i be so devastated by this? i have only "known" her again for twelve years. though before that i thought about her in some capacity every day. we connected during the absolute worst, darkest, most unpleasant part of my life. i would not have blamed her if she'd never wanted to talk to me again. one of the first things she said to me was that all my life she'd only ever wanted to know that i was happy. and back then i definitely wasn't, so if that was her only wish, meeting me must have been heartbreaking. but for me, meeting her again was a whirlwind, getting to know her was like looking in the mirror. there was no mistaking the connection. we looked and acted so much alike. yet building a relationship was nothing short of a challenge, if for no other reason than we both led our lives with our hearts more than our minds. and there was just so much ambivalence and confusion and guilt about my birth. so much revisiting that neither of us wanted to do but both of us needed to. so much to undo, like abandonment issues, oversensitivity, guilt and anger (whether perceived or real). and yet there was so much good - we looked alike and talked alike, we felt alike and we loved and lived alike in so many ways. this nearly undid us as while it is so good to be like someone it can also be completely unhelpful and unproductive. and there is no code, no guideline for how to be a mother or a daughter to someone you know so well but have only just met, especially when we already had families with mothers and daughters - as well as sons and fathers - to consider but not compare. we were constantly hurting each other without intending to. yet we both tried. for years we tried. she'd call and leave message after message at times when i refused to pick up. i'd send long confusing emotional emails in response that sent her retreating into silence. we made connections both small and big, in fits and starts. for every two baby steps forward we took one back, but we were slowly coming to a place of peace. and when bee came, it all clicked and we were suddenly in a place full of constant and consistent joy and love. bee wasn't even a week old when she made the trip to us and we walked in the rain to lunch. she held my daughter and stared into her face. she said, "i know this face. i know this nose, these lips." she wept as she talked to the baby like she'd known her forever. then she looked at me with tears running down her cheeks. she asked now that i had experienced childbirth and held my baby in my arms, could i ever understand how she didn't keep me? can you ever forgive me? i cried and said you were so brave, so strong. i couldn't have done it. i admire you for being able to do what you had to do. and we are here now. there is nothing to forgive. it doesn't matter anymore. and it really didn't.

she has told me she had no choice. she had no options. still a child herself, her mother made this terrible decision for her and it's something she was never able to forgive. instead, she looked ahead. we were both able to focus on bee, this tiny little life that we were both going to get to keep.

so she became bee's grandma. she fussed over us all. she remembered our birthdays, our anniversary with gifts that were exactly what we wanted or needed, so festively wrapped that opening each box felt like going a party. she called and texted regularly. she drove four hours each way to take us to dinner, to babysit so we could go out. she stayed late or came early when she had business in new york. she talked to me about what made her happy and what made her sad, what she loved about life and what she found frustrating. i felt trusted. and she earned our trust. i never censored myself around her. she was the only person we left bee with and i knew we could count on her to be there when the new baby came. she opened her home and her life to us in ways no one ever did before. she bought a stroller, a high chair and a booster seat to help us travel to her more lightly and more often but we never even got to use them. we were supposed to visit for memorial day weekend to celebrate my husband's birthday and to make summer plans and talk about what we needed from her at the birth. i was looking forward to this visit so much. standing in her dining room without her three days ago as we packed up our cheerios and soy milk and got ready to make the sad trip home, my sister nudged me. "did you see this?" on the corkboard in the middle of pictures of bee and other family babies, next to the red sox season schedule, was a post it note with my name on it pinned to a handful of vegan recipes cut out from various newspapers and magazines. she'd been looking forward to the visit too.

i am now staring at the screen. rereading what i've written. not knowing how to end this. i am not willing to end this. i feel crushed by the loss of what we had but thinking about the loss of our future is so difficult that i can barely breathe. i need to focus on the positive. i feel lucky to have come to such a loving place with her and i feel honored that my husband, my daughter and i were among the people she loved the most. i am looking ahead to new beginnings with the family i was just getting to know and love too.

she sent me an email a few months ago that in five sentences made me happier than anything anyone has ever said to me before or since that i will close this entry with. it sums up everything i have written in a way that lets me know we were on the same page before she died and that she saw ahead of her a lifetime that included me and my husband and child(ren).

Aimee, more and more, I feel the joy inherent in our relationship. In some ways our type of circumstances can make for an extraordinary connection. We have so many real ties and resemblances and over time we have been able to shake off most of the haunting murmurs in our attics.

I am very very happy to have you, Bee and Johnny in my heart.

I love you.

I love you too.