Why not search for birth parents ?
This entry was written for a young relative, and therefore assumes some little knowledge of recent family history. But you are ALL quite welcome to read it. I figured, since it took me so long to compose such a short and concise response to the questions, I might as well have others benefit from the answer. (Besides, it might convince one friend of mine that he's not the only one who gets a deluge of 3,287 words from a six-word email question.) <{:o)§---
Glynis, I did not know you were adopted. Did you ever try to find your biological parents? Or were things like that just not done at the time?
Answer:
"Things" were STARTING to be done back then. I'm kind of assuming you mean when I was a "real person" - which means when I was in high school, just past high school, college, etc. And before I "crossed over" to hideously old (which you mean as anything five years older than you are, and that age goes up one year every year at your birthday.). Yes, I KNOW about you young whippersnappers and how you think. But I won't be SO lame as to point out that overused saying, "I used to be one, too." That never works. Never worked in any generation either.
YOUR generation has totally perfected the TER, though. (Teenage Eye Rolling.)
Anyway, my sister (adopted separately, a year and a half older than me, and no genetic relation) made noises about wanting to find her birth mother back when we were in high school. (Funny, people mention the term birth parents, but usually more often birth mother, and almost NEVER birth father. Although, recently, there was a movie - recent meaning about ten years ago now - about a teenager wanting to meet her birth father. It's called "What a Girl Wants" and was with Amanda Bynes. It was a pretty cool movie - you can still rent it, or library. But what makes me remember it so much, what makes it really special for me - is not about finding the father (and she wasn't adopted, she lived with her own/real mother, just no father) - but one of the main characters in the movie was called GLYNIS !
Now, being a lucky person of normal name, you have no idea. In fact, since you actually know a "Glynis" (which is very rare and quite an HONOR, of course), this may not even be all that weird to you. But NOBODY around has this goofy name, and to hear it in a movie - several times - was so weird - COOOLL, but weird. SO COOL for me !!! And she gets her name yelled out several times in one scene. So, of course, after the boys have seen this movie, or even if I mention it, they start running the lines, and imitating that scene - for days, just to freak me out. You just have to watch it, and then let me know if you think it's freaky to hear that name, so often, too.
There was a British actress, still is, actually, she's 83, called Glynis Johns. My mother knew about her, of course, since my mom was born and raised in England, and the name "Glynis" is Welsh (from Wales - and that's a small country attached to England). The name, by the way, is a feminine form of "Glenn" - that somewhat common boy's name. A "glen" in Welsh/English, is a small depression in the land, a small, narrow, secluded valley. Just Great, Mom.....my sister gets a nice, normal name like Doreen, and you name me after a dip or a ditch. Thanks a lot.
That actress, Glynis Johns, was in only a few things that most Americans would have ever heard about. The one I tell people about is that she was the mother in the movie, "Mary Poppins" - the one that sang "Sister Suffragettes". You can search this up on YouTube now under "Sister Suffragettes", or "Mary Poppins Glynis Johns". She more recently was a grandmother in a movie with Sandra Bullock, called "While You Were Sleeping", but that's been about ten years also. (And yeah, I think she has a weird voice, too. LOL) She also starred in a FANTASTIC movie from just before I was born, but which my kids have seen several times and you just MUST watch this on YouTube (in 10 minute segments - how annoyingly fun) -- "The Court Jester", with Danny Kaye ! Not at all because you get to see my first name in the credits, probably only a thrill for me - but because it's a fantastically funny movie ! Especially the scene with "the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle". That shows Danny Kaye at his finest. He had a weird talent for strings of long words or nonsensical sayings, and could instantly mimic another language so well that even its natives thought they should be able to understand what he said, but it was their fault they couldn't.
I just found out last night that she was on three of the original BATMAN episodes as a villain ! Cool. But no one of your age has seen much original Batman. The dates I read were like 1967 - and I couldn't even SPELL the name Glynis back then, much less be allowed to watch Batman. (I was born in 1962, but not until 2 days after Christmas, so it's easier just to think 1963 most of the time - unless you're a math geek like a certain blond cousin. To keep things in perspective, that means I am almost exactly 3 years younger than "Uncle Pete", who was born in December 1959. I read somewhere, that 1962 is considered the last year of the "Baby Boomers"., and I'm at the very end of that. Great - so they will have used up all the Social Security before I get there, and it won't recover or get fixed until YOU need it. My typical kind of luck.)
What did you ask me? LOL
Oh yeah....so when my sister was talking about finding her birth mother, my Mom had a conniption ! It looked mostly like a fit, which looks like anger, but you could tell, (if you were intelligent, which my sister has never been accused of) that my Mom was deeply HURT. So this was a No Go for me.
But I wasn't really interested anyway. There have only been two times, (now three) that I have wished to know who she was.
Number 1.
>>> It was pretty WEIRD being pregnant when my mother had never been pregnant. It's not like I could ask her questions about it. She wouldn't know - not personally. And I figured it would be a painful subject to bring up, so I didn't talk about it almost at all for all those months. I didn't know at that time "whose FAULT" it was that we were adopted - my Mom's or my Dad's. Didn't think to ask until years later. We always assumed it was Mom's fault. Actually, what we really assumed was that they had never had SEX ! Seriously, we had NEVER seen them touch each other - even an arm, our entire lives ! Separate beds, then separate bedrooms on different floors ! My dad slept on the pull out couch in the den all of my high school years and until he died. And we had almost never seen them in PJs. My dad was nearly EIGHTY before I ever saw his bare feet ! When we went out to eat, they were always on different sides of the table, with one kid each. Even when my sister had left, same thing. And BOY, did they look uncomfortable the first few times they went out to eat with Pete and me. There was NO WAY he was going to accept sitting separately/across from me. Not even if it was with my Dad, and not Mom. He was rather unshakable on some things.
Surprised the hell out of me that my grandparents had ever had sex either. But public school science class claims that had to have happened at least once, since my mother was born to them. (Personally, I was leaning more towards another "virgin birth" scenario.) From what I've seen, British women are not exactly raging sex addicts, but that may have changed in the decades since World War II.
My dad was a "Yank", the British would have called him - a Yankee soldier from America, stationed in England most of the time, during World War II. Thankfully, he never had a combat position - that would have really damaged his psyche, I think. He was good at math, so he was the "paymaster" who took care of everyone's money and passed out their wages.
So, back to the subject.... That first time I wondered seriously about my birth mother - during pregnancy. But there was Grandma Vigeant I could ask about pregnancy questions - so that was a big help. We were really good friends, you know.
But actually, the first-est time was before that. But it wasn't a serious thing. (That's why I set it here as
Number Two.)
>>> Back in high school we had to sell a gazillion chocolate bars to raise money for new uniforms. Football players get new uniforms all the time - for free ! (insert bitterness and swearing here) I thought it would be cool for ME to know who SHE was and sell her a candy bar. Not tell her, just get to see what she looked like, and just for that 3 minutes. It surprised me that this thought came to me. I had never thought anything about it really, and had never cared. And I had thought that my sister was nuts, with wanting to meet hers. It was probably because there were so many strangers, so many opened doors. Maybe I had even MET her and didn't KNOW it? She'd better have bought a candy bar then, Cheapo ! LOL
So that's the two times. But I hinted that "now there's three". Weird way of putting that.
Number Three
>>> But now that my kids have been born, and for a few times while they were growing up, I've wanted to be able to send pictures to my birth mother, and show her my "finest accomplishments". And they're turning out pretty well, actually - another "surprises the hell out of me" moment.
But mostly, while I was pregnant, I thought about her a lot. I had no idea how L O N G nine months could really be, especially when it ends up being nine and a half months (Dang that Petey!). And I would think,
"What a GIFT to me." My mother certainly could have aborted me - you could find a way to get that done in 1962. There'd be doctors. And I was grateful for a second thing even more - that she gave me up. Sounds a bit weird - until I explain. Nowadays, all everyone ever talks about is prolife or prochoice. I hate these terms. "Choice" comes BEFORE conception - that's when you "choose" to say NO to the boy. If you say yes, you assume ALL the risks, one of which is pregnancy. "Choice" is not KILLING the baby. That's not “choice”, that's murder. And I looked it up recently, to see if the abortion methods had changed over the years - but they haven't. There are still basically two methods. One POISONS a living baby, which it inhales, and is so caustic it actually BURNS most/all their SKIN OFF, then you still have to go to Method Two once it's dead. Method Two - they go up there with a sharp instrument, loopshaped, I think, and physically cut/rip/tear the baby into pieces, limb from limb, then get the sucker thing and suck out the pieces. So that's "Pro-Choice" ??
But the Pro-Lifers aren't doing enough - in one area at least. Tell me, WHEN or WHERE have you ever HEARD about young ladies giving their babies up for adoption? NEVER ! Your own Vigeant clan...... Could they even GET a WHITE INFANT to adopt? And those two aunts were not "poor", or even lower middle class, so they'd have means. If you want an INFANT nowadays, you either have to get one with HIV, or a crack baby, or you have to go out of this country. (Don't think I am saying ANYTHING bad about your adopted cousins. Not at ALL ! And I have no idea if the aunts also were choosing from another country for other reasons besides “availability”. I'm simply saying about the state of things in our country these past few decades.) So these teenaged girls ALLLLLLL keep their babies, raise them in poverty and the stress that goes with that, raise them poorly because they are not mature enough themselves- and add in that stressful poverty thing - makes it MUCH harder for them than older, educated, married parents with real jobs. (And nobody mentions to them that they seriously hamper their chances at a good marriage this way, as many young men will not even start dating someone with another man's kid. Or two. Or three.....)
And worse - these idiotic girls - most of them are thinking - because you hear/read them actually SAYING IT OUT LOUD - that they're "keeping the baby because they want something/someone who will love THEM unconditionally." (Insert incredulous swear words here.) You have GOT to be kidding me !! Your kid will thank you for something once every six months at the maximum. You will actually learn what hatred is before you are finished. (No one else will tell you this out loud. I'm weird in that I say what everyone else knows, but won't admit they think so, too.)
But haven't you heard the joke line that goes - "That's why God makes them look like angels when they're asleep - so you won't KILL them !" Awww, Petey looks so cute.....Maybe I'll let him live another day.
~ ~ ~ ~
So my parents have both been dead now for over a decade. “Why not look for my birth mother now?”, you ask. Before it's too late?
Because it IS too late - for me. Yeah, she's running out of years. If I'm almost 50, and we assume she was 20, that'd make her 70 now. (Pretty good for a Music Major, eh? Big numbers.) Yeah, they do start dying around then. Or are much harder to find with no “normal” address because they're in an assisted living facility. But it's me. I'm just not someone you want to know anymore. I'm not someone you want popping back into your life unexpectedly after 5 decades. “On paper” I look terrible now. It was one thing when I was married, an engineer's wife,with a house, a car that works without having to do a rain dance every time you open the hatch, with 2 nicely behaved young kids. That sounds great on paper. Badly divorced, middle-aged, desperately poor, kids have grown and left, all alone, spends most of her time wishing life were over.... Not so much.
Wouldn't YOU wonder WHY I was showing up NOW? Wouldn't the first thing your other kids/family members did was rush to the estate lawyer and make sure that Mom's Will was iron-clad, and no loopholes for me?
And there was only 6 months between when they'd both died (Mom a month after Dad) and when he filed for divorce, and my life blew up. So there wasn't really any transition time to do that birth parent searching thing.
~ ~ ~ ~
It'd still be seriously cool to just get a letter to this unmet woman - to thank her for nine horrifically long months (or 9 and a half, in case that's an inherited trait). To thank her for facing potentially SIXTY-THREE even longer hours of labor (which I don't know if that happened with my birth, but that was Petey - that pest). To send her a pic or two of the boys through the years so she could enjoy their cute, shining faces. And to thank her even more - for GIVING ME UP ! That last gift may have been the hardest. (Although if you'd seen my early baby pictures, you'd know --- she simply couldn't stand to keep me !)
Every now and then, once I'd had my own babies (between the times when you want to kill them), I actually cried, thinking about her - about how hard that probably was, and it likely was hard off and on through the years. I was so desperately attached and in love with my kids (yeah, even Petey) that I couldn't imagine having to face that. And yet, given that the “choice” always brought up the loudest is abortion..... I'd think that, even if she cried now and then, wondering about me, wishing for me - she'd remember I had a life - had LIFE! And the best one she could have given me at that time in her own life.
It was the gift of life itself, and then the gift of a life.
P.S. Trivial facts - I was adopted by my parents when I was four months old. They don't know anything at all about my birth mother, but Mom did tell me that the lady who took care of me in the meantime (“foster mother” it would be called today) - it was her first time ever, and that she was really attached to me, and upset about losing me. So apparently, despite looking like a hideous caricature of Mr. Magoo, I was indeed quite lovable. Awwwwww.
All we know about my sister's mother was that she was very young. And I don't remember how old she was when she got adopted. And she never looked like Mr. Magoo - quite the opposite. She made the traditional Gerber baby look like a monstrous freak, and she had gorgeous blonde curls to boot. (insert jealous swear word here)
As for me - my Mom had to TAPE a bow on my head for the LONGEST time so people wouldn't think I was a boy, and because I didn't have enough hair to hold a barrette. Those LUDICROUS headband thingies weren't invented until at least the late 80s. I'm just waiting for some news article that says a baby strangled on one. I mean, think about it. You'd never let any other strong loop of elastic band around your baby or toddler - other than for that VANITY, would you?
P.P.S. And just before I let you go...Let's have you learn from this....
Ask your parents questions - lots of questions NOW. You never know when you're going to lose them. I know, yours are much younger than mine were, but still. It didn't occur to me to ask until it was too late. (They didn't encourage that sort of thing much when I was growing up. British people can be quite reserved, and my father was seriously shy. But the blame falls on me. It's not like that would have been the only thing I did that made them uncomfortable over the years, right? And now I'll never know.
So sit down and THINK. Think AHEAD. Try to imagine what you would like to ask ten years from now, twenty years. And ask it NOW.
~ ~ ~ ~
Glynis, I did not know you were adopted. Did you ever try to find your biological parents? Or were things like that just not done at the time?
Answer:
"Things" were STARTING to be done back then. I'm kind of assuming you mean when I was a "real person" - which means when I was in high school, just past high school, college, etc. And before I "crossed over" to hideously old (which you mean as anything five years older than you are, and that age goes up one year every year at your birthday.). Yes, I KNOW about you young whippersnappers and how you think. But I won't be SO lame as to point out that overused saying, "I used to be one, too." That never works. Never worked in any generation either.
YOUR generation has totally perfected the TER, though. (Teenage Eye Rolling.)
Anyway, my sister (adopted separately, a year and a half older than me, and no genetic relation) made noises about wanting to find her birth mother back when we were in high school. (Funny, people mention the term birth parents, but usually more often birth mother, and almost NEVER birth father. Although, recently, there was a movie - recent meaning about ten years ago now - about a teenager wanting to meet her birth father. It's called "What a Girl Wants" and was with Amanda Bynes. It was a pretty cool movie - you can still rent it, or library. But what makes me remember it so much, what makes it really special for me - is not about finding the father (and she wasn't adopted, she lived with her own/real mother, just no father) - but one of the main characters in the movie was called GLYNIS !
Now, being a lucky person of normal name, you have no idea. In fact, since you actually know a "Glynis" (which is very rare and quite an HONOR, of course), this may not even be all that weird to you. But NOBODY around has this goofy name, and to hear it in a movie - several times - was so weird - COOOLL, but weird. SO COOL for me !!! And she gets her name yelled out several times in one scene. So, of course, after the boys have seen this movie, or even if I mention it, they start running the lines, and imitating that scene - for days, just to freak me out. You just have to watch it, and then let me know if you think it's freaky to hear that name, so often, too.
There was a British actress, still is, actually, she's 83, called Glynis Johns. My mother knew about her, of course, since my mom was born and raised in England, and the name "Glynis" is Welsh (from Wales - and that's a small country attached to England). The name, by the way, is a feminine form of "Glenn" - that somewhat common boy's name. A "glen" in Welsh/English, is a small depression in the land, a small, narrow, secluded valley. Just Great, Mom.....my sister gets a nice, normal name like Doreen, and you name me after a dip or a ditch. Thanks a lot.
That actress, Glynis Johns, was in only a few things that most Americans would have ever heard about. The one I tell people about is that she was the mother in the movie, "Mary Poppins" - the one that sang "Sister Suffragettes". You can search this up on YouTube now under "Sister Suffragettes", or "Mary Poppins Glynis Johns". She more recently was a grandmother in a movie with Sandra Bullock, called "While You Were Sleeping", but that's been about ten years also. (And yeah, I think she has a weird voice, too. LOL) She also starred in a FANTASTIC movie from just before I was born, but which my kids have seen several times and you just MUST watch this on YouTube (in 10 minute segments - how annoyingly fun) -- "The Court Jester", with Danny Kaye ! Not at all because you get to see my first name in the credits, probably only a thrill for me - but because it's a fantastically funny movie ! Especially the scene with "the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle". That shows Danny Kaye at his finest. He had a weird talent for strings of long words or nonsensical sayings, and could instantly mimic another language so well that even its natives thought they should be able to understand what he said, but it was their fault they couldn't.
I just found out last night that she was on three of the original BATMAN episodes as a villain ! Cool. But no one of your age has seen much original Batman. The dates I read were like 1967 - and I couldn't even SPELL the name Glynis back then, much less be allowed to watch Batman. (I was born in 1962, but not until 2 days after Christmas, so it's easier just to think 1963 most of the time - unless you're a math geek like a certain blond cousin. To keep things in perspective, that means I am almost exactly 3 years younger than "Uncle Pete", who was born in December 1959. I read somewhere, that 1962 is considered the last year of the "Baby Boomers"., and I'm at the very end of that. Great - so they will have used up all the Social Security before I get there, and it won't recover or get fixed until YOU need it. My typical kind of luck.)
What did you ask me? LOL
Oh yeah....so when my sister was talking about finding her birth mother, my Mom had a conniption ! It looked mostly like a fit, which looks like anger, but you could tell, (if you were intelligent, which my sister has never been accused of) that my Mom was deeply HURT. So this was a No Go for me.
But I wasn't really interested anyway. There have only been two times, (now three) that I have wished to know who she was.
Number 1.
>>> It was pretty WEIRD being pregnant when my mother had never been pregnant. It's not like I could ask her questions about it. She wouldn't know - not personally. And I figured it would be a painful subject to bring up, so I didn't talk about it almost at all for all those months. I didn't know at that time "whose FAULT" it was that we were adopted - my Mom's or my Dad's. Didn't think to ask until years later. We always assumed it was Mom's fault. Actually, what we really assumed was that they had never had SEX ! Seriously, we had NEVER seen them touch each other - even an arm, our entire lives ! Separate beds, then separate bedrooms on different floors ! My dad slept on the pull out couch in the den all of my high school years and until he died. And we had almost never seen them in PJs. My dad was nearly EIGHTY before I ever saw his bare feet ! When we went out to eat, they were always on different sides of the table, with one kid each. Even when my sister had left, same thing. And BOY, did they look uncomfortable the first few times they went out to eat with Pete and me. There was NO WAY he was going to accept sitting separately/across from me. Not even if it was with my Dad, and not Mom. He was rather unshakable on some things.
Surprised the hell out of me that my grandparents had ever had sex either. But public school science class claims that had to have happened at least once, since my mother was born to them. (Personally, I was leaning more towards another "virgin birth" scenario.) From what I've seen, British women are not exactly raging sex addicts, but that may have changed in the decades since World War II.
My dad was a "Yank", the British would have called him - a Yankee soldier from America, stationed in England most of the time, during World War II. Thankfully, he never had a combat position - that would have really damaged his psyche, I think. He was good at math, so he was the "paymaster" who took care of everyone's money and passed out their wages.
So, back to the subject.... That first time I wondered seriously about my birth mother - during pregnancy. But there was Grandma Vigeant I could ask about pregnancy questions - so that was a big help. We were really good friends, you know.
But actually, the first-est time was before that. But it wasn't a serious thing. (That's why I set it here as
Number Two.)
>>> Back in high school we had to sell a gazillion chocolate bars to raise money for new uniforms. Football players get new uniforms all the time - for free ! (insert bitterness and swearing here) I thought it would be cool for ME to know who SHE was and sell her a candy bar. Not tell her, just get to see what she looked like, and just for that 3 minutes. It surprised me that this thought came to me. I had never thought anything about it really, and had never cared. And I had thought that my sister was nuts, with wanting to meet hers. It was probably because there were so many strangers, so many opened doors. Maybe I had even MET her and didn't KNOW it? She'd better have bought a candy bar then, Cheapo ! LOL
So that's the two times. But I hinted that "now there's three". Weird way of putting that.
Number Three
>>> But now that my kids have been born, and for a few times while they were growing up, I've wanted to be able to send pictures to my birth mother, and show her my "finest accomplishments". And they're turning out pretty well, actually - another "surprises the hell out of me" moment.
But mostly, while I was pregnant, I thought about her a lot. I had no idea how L O N G nine months could really be, especially when it ends up being nine and a half months (Dang that Petey!). And I would think,
"What a GIFT to me." My mother certainly could have aborted me - you could find a way to get that done in 1962. There'd be doctors. And I was grateful for a second thing even more - that she gave me up. Sounds a bit weird - until I explain. Nowadays, all everyone ever talks about is prolife or prochoice. I hate these terms. "Choice" comes BEFORE conception - that's when you "choose" to say NO to the boy. If you say yes, you assume ALL the risks, one of which is pregnancy. "Choice" is not KILLING the baby. That's not “choice”, that's murder. And I looked it up recently, to see if the abortion methods had changed over the years - but they haven't. There are still basically two methods. One POISONS a living baby, which it inhales, and is so caustic it actually BURNS most/all their SKIN OFF, then you still have to go to Method Two once it's dead. Method Two - they go up there with a sharp instrument, loopshaped, I think, and physically cut/rip/tear the baby into pieces, limb from limb, then get the sucker thing and suck out the pieces. So that's "Pro-Choice" ??
But the Pro-Lifers aren't doing enough - in one area at least. Tell me, WHEN or WHERE have you ever HEARD about young ladies giving their babies up for adoption? NEVER ! Your own Vigeant clan...... Could they even GET a WHITE INFANT to adopt? And those two aunts were not "poor", or even lower middle class, so they'd have means. If you want an INFANT nowadays, you either have to get one with HIV, or a crack baby, or you have to go out of this country. (Don't think I am saying ANYTHING bad about your adopted cousins. Not at ALL ! And I have no idea if the aunts also were choosing from another country for other reasons besides “availability”. I'm simply saying about the state of things in our country these past few decades.) So these teenaged girls ALLLLLLL keep their babies, raise them in poverty and the stress that goes with that, raise them poorly because they are not mature enough themselves- and add in that stressful poverty thing - makes it MUCH harder for them than older, educated, married parents with real jobs. (And nobody mentions to them that they seriously hamper their chances at a good marriage this way, as many young men will not even start dating someone with another man's kid. Or two. Or three.....)
And worse - these idiotic girls - most of them are thinking - because you hear/read them actually SAYING IT OUT LOUD - that they're "keeping the baby because they want something/someone who will love THEM unconditionally." (Insert incredulous swear words here.) You have GOT to be kidding me !! Your kid will thank you for something once every six months at the maximum. You will actually learn what hatred is before you are finished. (No one else will tell you this out loud. I'm weird in that I say what everyone else knows, but won't admit they think so, too.)
But haven't you heard the joke line that goes - "That's why God makes them look like angels when they're asleep - so you won't KILL them !" Awww, Petey looks so cute.....Maybe I'll let him live another day.
~ ~ ~ ~
So my parents have both been dead now for over a decade. “Why not look for my birth mother now?”, you ask. Before it's too late?
Because it IS too late - for me. Yeah, she's running out of years. If I'm almost 50, and we assume she was 20, that'd make her 70 now. (Pretty good for a Music Major, eh? Big numbers.) Yeah, they do start dying around then. Or are much harder to find with no “normal” address because they're in an assisted living facility. But it's me. I'm just not someone you want to know anymore. I'm not someone you want popping back into your life unexpectedly after 5 decades. “On paper” I look terrible now. It was one thing when I was married, an engineer's wife,with a house, a car that works without having to do a rain dance every time you open the hatch, with 2 nicely behaved young kids. That sounds great on paper. Badly divorced, middle-aged, desperately poor, kids have grown and left, all alone, spends most of her time wishing life were over.... Not so much.
Wouldn't YOU wonder WHY I was showing up NOW? Wouldn't the first thing your other kids/family members did was rush to the estate lawyer and make sure that Mom's Will was iron-clad, and no loopholes for me?
And there was only 6 months between when they'd both died (Mom a month after Dad) and when he filed for divorce, and my life blew up. So there wasn't really any transition time to do that birth parent searching thing.
~ ~ ~ ~
It'd still be seriously cool to just get a letter to this unmet woman - to thank her for nine horrifically long months (or 9 and a half, in case that's an inherited trait). To thank her for facing potentially SIXTY-THREE even longer hours of labor (which I don't know if that happened with my birth, but that was Petey - that pest). To send her a pic or two of the boys through the years so she could enjoy their cute, shining faces. And to thank her even more - for GIVING ME UP ! That last gift may have been the hardest. (Although if you'd seen my early baby pictures, you'd know --- she simply couldn't stand to keep me !)
Every now and then, once I'd had my own babies (between the times when you want to kill them), I actually cried, thinking about her - about how hard that probably was, and it likely was hard off and on through the years. I was so desperately attached and in love with my kids (yeah, even Petey) that I couldn't imagine having to face that. And yet, given that the “choice” always brought up the loudest is abortion..... I'd think that, even if she cried now and then, wondering about me, wishing for me - she'd remember I had a life - had LIFE! And the best one she could have given me at that time in her own life.
It was the gift of life itself, and then the gift of a life.
P.S. Trivial facts - I was adopted by my parents when I was four months old. They don't know anything at all about my birth mother, but Mom did tell me that the lady who took care of me in the meantime (“foster mother” it would be called today) - it was her first time ever, and that she was really attached to me, and upset about losing me. So apparently, despite looking like a hideous caricature of Mr. Magoo, I was indeed quite lovable. Awwwwww.
All we know about my sister's mother was that she was very young. And I don't remember how old she was when she got adopted. And she never looked like Mr. Magoo - quite the opposite. She made the traditional Gerber baby look like a monstrous freak, and she had gorgeous blonde curls to boot. (insert jealous swear word here)
As for me - my Mom had to TAPE a bow on my head for the LONGEST time so people wouldn't think I was a boy, and because I didn't have enough hair to hold a barrette. Those LUDICROUS headband thingies weren't invented until at least the late 80s. I'm just waiting for some news article that says a baby strangled on one. I mean, think about it. You'd never let any other strong loop of elastic band around your baby or toddler - other than for that VANITY, would you?
P.P.S. And just before I let you go...Let's have you learn from this....
Ask your parents questions - lots of questions NOW. You never know when you're going to lose them. I know, yours are much younger than mine were, but still. It didn't occur to me to ask until it was too late. (They didn't encourage that sort of thing much when I was growing up. British people can be quite reserved, and my father was seriously shy. But the blame falls on me. It's not like that would have been the only thing I did that made them uncomfortable over the years, right? And now I'll never know.
So sit down and THINK. Think AHEAD. Try to imagine what you would like to ask ten years from now, twenty years. And ask it NOW.
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