I sit here watching an adopted baby Brown Headed Cowbird on my deck. He is with his parents. I know that he is adopted because I know a little about the Cowbird and he is twice the size of his parents. He’s demanding attention and they are stuffing him as fast as they can with the seed that I’ve left them. Female Cowbirds are kinda the sluts of the avian world. They get pregnant and use adoption as a form of child rearing. She leaves her eggs in other bird’s nests to be raised to adulthood. The baby must be in on this scheme for as soon as it hatches it tries to kick the other eggs out of the nest. If other eggs survive to hatchlings, the Cowbird will kill the others or be so demanding that the parents feed him and only him and the rest starve.
As luck would have it, I am also adopted. For the most part, humans choose their children and I always knew I was chosen. As a child, I pictured my parents in a room with a plethora of babies to choose from and I was the prettiest and sweetest and so of course they choose me. Chosen. Special. Different. I have always known these adjectives to be true about me. Adopted children are chosen. They are special. Just a little different. As a child, I took these adjectives to heart and they became part of who I was. I did feel just a little better than my sisters. I didn’t know anyone else adopted growing up and that made me special. My parents knew I was special. My sisters who were not adopted knew I was special and I ruled the roost, I’m sure all but kicking them out.
Yet, the complex human mind, even a tiny young mind, can hold two opposing truths as law. To be a chosen child means that someone else has not chosen you. They had a choice and chose – else, other, themselves, not you. It’s hard for a tiny mind to grasp the meaning behind such opposing laws. Discarded, unvalued, abandoned. Those words are not spoken to the adopted child, but others are. They speak of the birth children as “natural.†Everyone asks if you know where your “real†parents are. Of all the other comments, these two made my mind churn. My sisters are natural so I am unnatural. My parents are suddenly not real and they became my “adopted†parents. Where are my real parents? Are they lost? I suddenly worry about them. This begins a lifetime of imaginative sequences of the many alternate lives I could have lead, so I lead them in my head.
Today I have all these adjectives deep in my character. There are times when I feel I am special and have the confidence to do anything. It is a survival mechanism of confidence that I hold in front of me as I face my daily challenges. It has served me well as I am a strong minded, intelligent, successful adult woman. There are also times where inexplicably I can do nothing. Literally, there is a roadblock in my head and there is no detour.
As I grew into an older child, I noticed that something wasn’t right in my family. There was no word for it, but there was a lot of anger. Unspoken tension. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a way to address it. A young child has a young voice that is shushed often. As an 8 year old I knew it probably wasn’t right for me to be mixing my parent’s drinks. My father would yell out from the living room, “Jen, make me a final.†30 minutes later he would yell, “Jen, make me a final, final.†And so it went. From the driver’s seat of the car he would request his “final†beers from whoever was closest to the cooler. It seemed by naming his drinks as “final†he himself knew that he should stop with that final one, but after all words are just words.
My parents fought loudly and constantly. It was embarrassing to be part of this family. Everyone knew we were different and broken. Not only did our neighbors know, but vacationers in neighboring hotel rooms on either side of us knew. Diners at neighboring tables knew. Our dentist knew. The checkout girl knew. There was no place they would hold their tongues. As the years went by, my parents drank more and more until they were forced to limit their lives to support their drinking. By the time I was a teen, my father was in his mid 40s and had related health issues that forced him to quit his job and reduced his range from the house which enabled him to drink in private without public scrutiny. My mother worked longer hours so as not to be around him so much, and when she was home, she drank just as much as he did. Unfortunately, family wasn’t considered public and they were not ashamed or embarrassed by their behavior around us.
I grew up, made choices and left home very early. I regret some, most not. The one I regret the most is keeping these people in my life as long as I did. Why do we hit ourselves with a hammer repeatedly? Because it feels so good when we finally stop. It wasn’t until 22 years after I left home that I decided enough was enough and gave them up. Giving up family is very hard for someone who has been discarded. I felt I needed to make it work. You know, family first. Family ties. The natural kids didn’t seem to be bothered by this. They complained about it, but it seemed normal to them to accept their behavior. When I gave up my parents, my sisters decided to support my parents and therefore gave me up. I guess I can’t really blame them. They finally got their nest back. It’s been four years since I’ve talked to anyone in my family.
I wrote the following letter to my parents in March of this year, 2007.
Dear Dad and Mom,
A lot of time has passed. A lot of things have happened that none of us planned.
This letter out of the blue might seem strange to you. I know I have cut off all contact from you both. It was something I felt I had to do at the time. I didn’t feel that I had a choice as a parent myself. I was protecting my little ones, like a mother bear would protect her cubs. I would do it again given the same set of circumstances.
But, circumstances change. Some close friends have had to lay their parents to rest recently. It’s been a wonderful process watching them go through this with their family members. They laughed with their siblings at stupid funny memories and cried at how frustrating other times had been. Their parents had been flawed people with real problems. None of them were without fault or turned out perfect children. These adult children wept in frustration at what their parents had failed to do for them emotionally, but also accepted their parents as human with faults and all. They were able to get angry about what they felt they were missing and yet they could also celebrate what was good about their parents. They were able to make peace with their parents before they passed and were able to give dignity and honor to their parents after their passing.
You have been on my mind daily since we parted. I have been very angry about what I felt I have missed in my life from you. I now understand that you are what you are. You are a product of your upbringing by imperfect parents just as your parents were, just as I am. I want you to know that I do remember good times and good things about you. There were times that we got each other through some very difficult situations. I want to thank you for what you were able to give as parents. I want to thank you for helping create who I am as an adult. I want to give you some peace so you can rest easy knowing that you turned out a smart, funny, creative yet imperfect adult child and I’m thankful for all you were able to do. When I think of you and when I talk of you it won’t be about the negative, it will be about the positive.
Love,
Jennifer
My parents are the kind of people that stalk. When I gave them up, they came over the house constantly to confront me and called the house repeated leaving long messages about what a rotten child I was. We moved. We disconnected our house phone. So, for this letter I had leased a post office box and put that as the return address on this letter. A part of me held onto hope that they had life awakening experiences that had changed them and are now ready to have a normal family relationship. But fearing the worst, I had not gone to check the box until last Thursday (July, 4 months later.) Suspecting you have bad news is always better than knowing.
With the loss of my adopted parents and the loss of my ex-husband’s family with the recent divorce, I’ve been feeling rather alone and very abandoned. Abandoned is the exact word here. It just feels like I was left with no afterthought. Not worthy, not necessary, not wanted, not valued. After sitting with this for a couple of months, I decided that it was time to reach out to my birth mother’s family. So I packed up my oldest child and went to Reading, Pennsylvania for a mini family reunion. My birth mother is the oldest of 11 children so there is no shortage of family here. I had met most of them once when I first met my birthmother. I was 24, married to my first husband and Hilary was 1. I didn’t keep in contact with most of them because I was busy with kid stuff and this was before the age of the internet. We didn’t have computers or email addresses back in the day, so it just wasn’t that convenient. One of her brothers and one sister has pursued a relationship with me. My Uncle Big John (he’s 6′ and some very large number of inches) and his sister, my Aunt Patrice. Over the years we have gone to stay at their houses, but not with any visitation regularity.
Hilary and I stayed with Uncle John and his wife, Jeanette. John is not a man who is easily impressed nor does he show emotion with any frivolity. His expressions and words are carefully conserved as if he has a limited number and rations them out to only the worthy. When he does speak, his words are weighed and not one is wasted. I often liken conversations with him to poems. Every word is vitally important to the point of the conversation and put there by careful design. Hours later I will decode his double meanings and let out an audible, “Ahhhh…†He’s the kind of man that does not command, but deserves and receives respect. And I feel compelled to give it freely. His wife, Jeanette, is the perfect mother. She is nurturing, warm and fuzzy, accepting and loving. She is chatty and makes up for John’s silence. Not in a “fill the air with nonsense†chatty, but in a “saying everything you need to hear†chatty. I love her to pieces. Makes me smile just to think about her. They have the kind of house that you feel instantly at home in, like you’ve been there a million times and belong.
This trip is for me to reconnect with my extended family and to find out where I come from. I ask John if he will take me to the cemetery where his Nana was buried. When my birthmother, Kathleen, was pregnant with me, one of the only people who knew was their Nana. Kathleen said that she always prayed for me and went to mass on my birthday. She died a year before I met Kathleen. Opportunity not mine to loose, still lost. I want to pay my respects to the woman who thought about me all my life. I also want to see where my birth father was buried. My father died before I had the chance to meet him. He was one month from his 40th birthday. He never married or had any other children, but he was engaged when he died.
Saturday morning we go to the cemetery and I am overwhelmed by what I see and my reaction to it. I see not only Nana and her husband, but grandparents, great grand parents and their great-great grand parents. I see the resting places of aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends. John tells me stories about each one; where they’re from, when they came here, who married who, who was happy, who drank, who died of what. I see my ancestry planted right in the ground. Even if I were still connected to my adopted parents, their alcoholism estranged them from their parents, brothers and sisters so there is no homestead, no cemetery, no reunions, no connections and worse, no stories. The magnitude of the moment will live with me forever. The tears just stream uncontrollably down my face. I can’t tell what this new emotion is and I try my best to keep in control of it. As Uncle Big John is not an emotional extrovert, I am uncomfortable blubbering in front of him, but there is nothing I can do about it. Wave after wave of nameless emotion floods through me pouring out my eyes. He is wonderfully silent and just lets me be with my outpouring.
After this ancestry tour, we go to see if we can find my birth father’s resting place. We have an idea of where it is from calling Kathleen earlier in the day, but it is one of two Jewish cemeteries side by side. We pull up and after hesitating for 1/2 a second, John turns into the one on the left. He pulls under a tree so the sun will not overheat the interior of the car for me and he gets out. I flank the left, he flanks the right and walks straight for about 3 minutes scanning headstones. Then he does the unthinkable and walks right into my father. I couldn’t believe it. Just like he is pulled to it. Considering that it took longer than that to locate his very large family that he’d visited many times before, on this 90 degree day it is a chilling moment. I see that my father’s mother passed earlier this year and is buried just behind him to the right. I have more family here although no guide to tell me the stories. I cry here too and John puts a stone in my hand to place on top of my father’s headstone. He is not sure of the significance, but all of them had stones that people had left so he didn’t want me to miss out on a Jewish tradition that we might not know about. It’s a simple act of respect from him to me and me to my father that touches my core. More of this incredible overwhelmingly nameless emotion pours out of me. He holds me until it passes and I am functioning again, and he tells me he loves me.
We head back to their house to get ready for the family reunion. On the way, John shows me where he taught finance classes at a local college and their old family home. It is on a private road, but for me he drives up. It is a huge house with 12 bedrooms six baths and two kitchens. He tells me stories and shows me where Nana lived in the apartment over the garage. We stop for “the best cheese steak in Philly” and even though I remind him we are in Reading, he says he’s never had any better anywhere. He’s right. He is showing me my history and my town that I never knew I had.
The family reunion is wonderful. There are three brothers and one sister together with some extended family members. They are interesting and funny characters. I learn a lot about their upbringing and what they are each up to now. I notice that my Aunt Sheila has my hands. She’s sitting across the room, and she’s over there with my hands. A physical connection to me. A genetic trait tying me to this family. The rest is all a blur, but a wonderful one. When everyone is gone, Hilary, Jeanette and I clean the kitchen and chat as if we’ve done this many times before, like it’s the most natural family thing to do. It feels right and I love the simple act that bonds me to this house and these people. Before I go to bed this night, Uncle Big John gathers me up in a hug and tells me he loves me and this is my home, this is where I come from.
The next day Hilary and I say our goodbyes and drive north to visit Aunt Patrice. She lives in NYC and has a country home upstate which is where we visit them. She and I clicked the first moment we met years ago. We have the exact same energy and enjoy all the same things. She loves to talk about the family and who she was close to, about Nana and she retells all the stories I just got from her siblings, only from her point of view. It was so cool to see all the photo albums and knickknacks around her house from local tourist sites I had just seen in Reading, PA. More connections. Her husband Tom brings out some food and we start talking about likes and dislikes. It turns out that that we both like the crispy burnt parts of all foods. We go on about it for 15 minutes. Then she says, “Nana loved the burnt parts too you know. She would always say, “Save me the crispy bits!”” More of this unnamed emotion poured out my eyes which started Patrice crying and made Hilary exclaim, “You are such a dork with this family stuff!” Before we leave she gives me a piece that her great grandmother had crocheted years ago. More tears. Now I have a tangible artifact of family history. Connections. Belonging.
It isn’t until I go to the post office box that I figure out what this new unnamed emotion is. I open the box and it is stuffed. Stuffed full of mail for other residents who had previously occupied box 155370. Junk mail, IRS notices, credit card solicitations – and not one thing for me. Nothing from my adopted parents. I close the box, return the key and cancel the lease on the box. It is then that I realize what the feeling is – relief. I feel overwhelming relief to not have to carry the burden of abandonment with me anymore. I belong.
