Adoption 5: You’re SPECIAL! *gag* *ack*
Please read these entries first (or just scroll down 
) Clicking opens the posts in a new window:
Adoption Part 1
Adoption Part 2
Adoption Part 3
Adoption Part 4
Adoption Part 4.5
____________________
As mentioned before, over the years I’ve heard comments. You wouldn’t believe the crap some people say. Like my neighbor four years ago. I had just located my biological family and was telling her about it and she said, “Oh, I could never love an adopted kid like my own. In fact, my grandson is adopting a child, and I don’t even want the kid over here. I don’t consider it my grandchild.”
This from a lady who I knew for five years and considered “nice”. Hey, at least she admits her heart is closed to, um… “it”.
Sometimes, even well-meaning comments were over the top.
In the 5th grade, I was getting ready for a talent show. Me and my friend Laura were dressing up like cats and singing “We are Siamese.” I was in the bathroom applying my whiskers with eyebrow pencil when our teacher Mrs. Rush came bursting through the ladies room door. All the girls crowding around the mirrors stopped what they were doing, sensing something was horribly wrong due to Mrs. Rush’s demeanor.
Spying me, she hurried over and grabbed my shoulders. Wide-eyed and upset, she said, “I just heard you were adopted. Is this true?!”
Bewildered, I said, “Uh… yeah?”
With tears in her eyes, she pulled me to her bosom and held me tight. “That just means you were SPECIAL. You were CHOSEN!”
Poor, well-meaning Mrs. Rush. You could tell she felt sorry for me, an emotion I’m wholly uncomfortable with. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t FEEL “chosen”. Hell, I didn’t even remember the goddamn audition!
Besides, I wasn’t chosen. It was the throw of the dice, the luck of the draw. If I had been born a few days earlier or a few days later, I would have gone to a different family. In fact, if my adoptive parents had the ability to choose a baby, I would have been the LAST one they chose. As mentioned before, I was far from a perfect, pretty baby. And I was not a boy. Back then, it was an unspoken rule that if you asked to adopt a certain sex, or refuse to adopt a baby with cosmetic problems (which I had), then you probably would be turned down as a prospective adoptive parent. (Nowdays, you’re allowed to be much more specific on your “baby order” when adopting. People have become more open-minded about adopting different races, but they still want that baby to be a pretty and perfect one.) Bottom line: my parents had to agree to take what they were handed, or they wouldn’t make the list of suitable parents. And they certainly couldn’t take one look at me and say, “Uh, thanks but no thanks!” because they would have looked like assholes. They had already bragged to family, friends, and church members about the adoption process, and let everyone know when they got the call from the adoption agency that they had a baby for them. My parents had to take me; there was no backing out.
At the time of the fifth grade incident, we lived in a small town in Oklahoma. I used to walk home from school, since the bus took just as long, and I was getting bad headaches by then.
One day, my mother’s car was parked outside of my elementary school. I thought it was a treat; maybe she wanted to take me somewhere and do something, just the two of us. As she started driving, she threw a letter in my lap. It was a letter I had written to the advice lady of Seventeen magazine. I don’t recall what it said, but it spoke of trying to find my “real” mother. My mom had dug deep in my dresser drawers to find the hiding place I had for that letter.
I don’t remember what she told me, but I do remember she pretty much went off. It was basically a speech to burst my bubble about any romantic notions of replacing the mother I currently had. That if my bio mom had wanted me, she would have kept me, and she didn’t want me now, and I couldn’t find her, etc. She made me feel like a criminal for being curious.
She grudgingly told me as much as she could remember about what the adoption agency said about my biological mother. Hair color, etc. Apparently, she didn’t think the information was important enough to write down for me, so she was going off of memory. She talked as if every bit of information was doing me a favor, yet she was irritated about it like she had sand in her panties or something.
We didn’t speak of my biological background again until I was 18 and pushed her on it. Until then, I was left to fill in the blanks myself.
I haven’t seen my real mother since I was 2. I don’t remember a thing about her all I knew was it was a subject we didn’t talk about. Everyone hushed about it when I walked into the room and my step mother always threatened me if I even thought about talking to my Dad about it. It was a horrible time in his life and its to painful to bring up and here I was a product of it. Later I got them to talk to me when I found out my birth mother had lived with a girls family from school and she came up to me and said I know your Mother.. and I assumed she was talking about my step mother. So I was like Oh cool! Then she says, No your real mother. It hit my like a ton of bricks. I was 17 and realized I never thought about it. Some one else I didn’t knwo but some freshmen in my high school knew her and was throwing it in my face! Anyway I am babbling.. tough stuff it is.
Comment by Jaws — Monday, July 25, 2005 @ 2:52 pm
I now want to go punch your Mom in the face. Grrrrr. How can people be so goddamn MEAN to children?
Comment by Keith — Monday, July 25, 2005 @ 8:09 pm
People don’t know any better.
People don’t think about putting themselves in someone elses shoes.
I have been guilty too.
I have said the “you’re chosen, you’re special” line on adopted children in my inexperienced and sincere attempt to comfort them. I know better now…but years ago, I had no frame of reference. There is sincere and meaningful feeling in the attempt. Ignorance of how patronizing it is doesn’t come until you spend time with adults who have lived through the adoption experience, and express their hurt and feelings of being an outsider in their own worlds.
Comment by radmila — Monday, July 25, 2005 @ 9:26 pm
Someone I was very close to once was adopted, and into a family that already had two (not adopted) kids. She had a better relationship with her parents, but dealt with a lot of the same problems that you talk about. It was really hard for her, too. Why does it seem like the most emotionally precarious actions in life are the ones that require the least qualification or preparation?
I may well adopt a child someday. I know that that course is fraught with complications. Before reading your posts I had been wondering if it would be easier on the child to keep the adoption secret. But I guess not. It just seems like so much for a child to deal with!
Comment by B² — Tuesday, July 26, 2005 @ 1:13 am
As mother who put her first born up for adoption (an open adoption, we have a very good relationship) I would like to say “screw you” to all the people who say things like, “if she had wanted you, she would have kept you”, not just for myself but for all the children who have been adopted.
It wasn’t about wanting my first child, it was simply that I loved her enough to know that my life circumstances would limit her life and I wasn’t about to give her anything less than she deserved.
I am betting your biological mother was no different.
Comment by Unnamed Source — Wednesday, July 27, 2005 @ 7:50 pm