I am really am sorry that there was too much angst for you to feel like you could hear the message behind “anti-adoption” sentiment. You sound like a very sincere person and like one I personally would like to have on the side of fighting for human rights.
It’s her son’s birthday this week. That haunting look just flickered quickly though her eyes when she told me. No one could have noticed the quiver in her voice. I saw it. I know what a birthday means.
“When do you usually crash?” I asked her.
“I’ll get hit on Wednesday” she replied.
Once upon a time I hadn’t yet gone to an adoption conference and I didn’t know how to make a hyperlink! Pretty funny!
Sometimes things are just not controllable Birth control is not infallible. Some infertility is not fixable. Hyper fertility is not always fixable either. I do my best to control it, but all I need is one sperm. You know, they are really, really little. Kinda hard to find and catch sometimes. Slippery little buggers with only one thing on their mind. In over 20 years, I missed 8. I have a normal sex life…how many of those guys have I seen a week, a year, in the past twenty years? Eight out of 200 million kabillion is NOT a bad ratio.
Since he would be 18, he could open up his records..if he desired. And if he did that, then he could “find” me and we could be “official” and then completely manage to avoid telling his folks that this has now been happening already for almost 7 months. Really, at this point all I wanted to do was avoid getting them upset and get him out form the burden of secrets.
I just realized that I have been “tagged” so here goes: What were you doing 10 years ago? I was still living in my cute little apartment in the middle of the boonies and being a single mommy to one, though I had started working for he interior design firm and was phasing out the restaurant world. I was in legal limbo waiting out both my divorce from P, and…
If I had not searched for my adopted child, then it would have been not an issue. But I am not a saint. I am not a completely unselfish person. I do have my weak moments..or strong..depending on your viewpoint and perspective. And no matter what..I am a mother.
And I just ask you all this..to try to imagine for a second what it is like to know your child is out there somewhere..and you have longed for so long..and you find out that there is a way to reach out and touch team again. All I can say was there was NO WAY I could have not done it.
For myself, I believe for him, for my other children…one click. I am not that saintly of a human.
The pain of adoption separation is so awful, I could not demand that my son is returned to me form his adoptive family. Give the adoptee back is said in anti-adoption circles, but then I am no better than the evil forces that did this to me. I am only contributing to more pain to relieve my own, I am them part of a problem.
I am a Taurus. Don’t tell me that I can’t do something that I want to do, because I will do it then. And don’t order me about either, I won’t listen. And you really can’t tell me about me
I had asked to have Max be my Friend, but he had to approve before we would be on each other’s list. She had called to tell me that he was appearing on my list. That meant that he was online and saw my message. He had approved me. I was Friends with my SON!
My eyes stare into the camera as if saying “Mine, still mine.” Then I put those maternal feelings aside and took on the mantle of being a good birthmother. I look at this face of my own and think, “How could anyone not have seen it and not felt the absolute cruel injustice of separating me from this babe? Why did no one say ‘just don’t'”
And then April came around and MySpace had a new feature. You could look up kids by their school listing. So of course, I plugged in his High School. At this point, I had trouble understanding WHY this kid was NOT on MySpace when it seemed like half the world was on it.After finding tons of kids, but no sign of my own, I decided to see who the kids had listed on their friends list. I think it was the second kid that I looked at..and BOOM! I almost feel off my chair. There he was.
At this point, my dearest and greatest wish was just to have a picture of my son.The waiting was, completely, making me crazy.After I looked at the return address, it registered what I held in my hands. Pictures of my son..the face that I had not seen in 16 and a half years, my baby, grown man/teenager /son.
Three days after starting my adoption search, I was able to go to bed that night knowing for the first time in 16 and a half years that my son was alive, that he was OK. I knew his name, I knew where he lived, I knew what he did, I knew what school he went to. It was the most amazing feeling on the face of the Earth. For the first time in sooo long I felt some peace.
Before I knew anything really about adoption searches and reunions, I had adoption fantasies about his 18th birthday and the telephone ringing, or the door knocking and tried to imagine how it would feel.It was pretty obvious that I knew little about adoption for real. I knew nothing about what an adoptee really could feel or think and my closest foray into a real reunion was watching Lifetime Movies.