LJ Idol 11 - Recency Bias
For some people, it's a given to know where they come from.
For some people, it's a piece of cake to fill out those medical history forms at the doctor's office.
For some people, you can look at a new baby and say, "Oh, she got that nose from her daddy" or "It looks like he got that red hair from his mommy."
Or if you're adopted, you don't get any of those luxuries. Filling out a medical history form at the doctor's office is humiliating. More often than not, you feel like an idiot because you don't know ANYTHING. With a helpless shrug and downcast eyes, I always tell my doctor, "Sorry, I'm adopted. I don't know anything."
I was born thirty five years ago in a charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence. My mother - the only woman I'll ever call Mom - worked there as a labor & delivery nurse for almost forty years before retiring in 2011. Her friend Joanie admitted my twenty-three year old birth mother. Her friend Sylvia delivered me, and once said words I have clung to ever since. "You look like her."
The first time I thought about looking for my biological parents was when I was eighteen. I decided not to go on a senior class trip (I was homeschooled, those kids hadn't been my friends in years anyway) on the pretense of starting to look for my mother. Mom gave me a letter from the lawyer that finalized my adoption, which later got left at the House of Repression when I fled in 2005. I had non-specific, non-identifying information. One of them was 5'4. The other was 5'11. Both had brown hair. One had green eyes. The other had brown. They were also Rainbow People, Mom told me. And their ethnic origin is English, Irish, French, Dutch and Swedish. This clearly explains my passions for fish and chips, potatoes, crepes, Edam cheese, and lingonberry pancakes.
Regardless, around Christmastime I happened to see that Washington State was going to be opening up birth records for adoptees. And at that time, I felt a combination of joy and fear. I knew that when June of 2014 rolled around, I would begin my search. At the time I discovered this, my husband and I were finishing up foster care classes. I had always said that I wouldn't start looking until we had a child so I could truly understand what a sacrifice my birthmother had made. The fact that June would probably coincide with the time when we'd have a foster child in our home seemed to make sense.
Up until today, I had forgotten about the new law in Washington State, opening up the birth records until today. I was using Whisper and saw that someone had posted a confession saying that they just discovered that they were adopted and that their family didn't know yet. And then I remembered that in June, I could finally request my original birth certificate. Finally unsealed. If I had not seen that whisper today, I wouldn't have remembered.
I looked at the PDF form that came up after Googling "Washington state adoption records" and it seems so easy. What do I need to start my search? A twenty dollar check or money order, which is sent to Olympia, and the form, completely filled out. I keep thinking that there should be more. Where's the part about having to stand on my head and count to a thousand? It shouldn't be so easy, I keep thinking. A twenty dollar check or money order and a completed form? Isn't there something like an adoption search board game where you run into a brick wall then draw a card that says "Do not pass go, do not collect twenty dollars?" There has to be more than just this. There HAS to be.
When I Googled the topic for this week's post - because I didn't have the faintest idea as to what the hell a "recency bias" is, I found a blurb about how it's the way that the last item that you put on a list is the main thing that you remember. I didn't make a list here of things that I wanted to do in 2014 - lose weight, pass a home inspection by the State, bring a kid into our house, get the knicknacks my parents gave me that belonged to my grandmother appraised, reread "Moving On" by Larry McMurtry, have a copy of "The Last Unicorn" signed by Peter Beagle and...yeah, that birth records thing.
So here I am, in the June of my thirty-fifth year on Earth, ready to, at the very least, attempt to find out where I come from. I wonder where I got my cheekbones, a feature that I despised as a child but have grown to love once I realized how jealous everyone else I meet is of them. I wonder if my birth mother also appreciates "Blue" by Joni Mitchell and also cries when she hears "Little Green" - but I think everyone does. I wonder if she has the same problem, where she starts laughing and then can't stop and ends up sounding like Darth Vader. Or if like me, she has the same fondness for puns, cookbooks, Margaret Atwood's novels, Marge Piercy's poetry.
I can't say that I'll absolutely be fine if I get rejected or if my search leads me nowhere. I don't know. I also have to bear in mind that you can't find someone who doesn't want to be found. I know that she could be dead. I know that she could have another family out there that doesn't know about me. I also know that maybe there's a possibility that I have a sister, and most importantly...there's a chance that maybe someday - maybe someday soon - that I'll be able to look into a face and God willing, see some of myself there.
For some people, it's a piece of cake to fill out those medical history forms at the doctor's office.
For some people, you can look at a new baby and say, "Oh, she got that nose from her daddy" or "It looks like he got that red hair from his mommy."
Or if you're adopted, you don't get any of those luxuries. Filling out a medical history form at the doctor's office is humiliating. More often than not, you feel like an idiot because you don't know ANYTHING. With a helpless shrug and downcast eyes, I always tell my doctor, "Sorry, I'm adopted. I don't know anything."
I was born thirty five years ago in a charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence. My mother - the only woman I'll ever call Mom - worked there as a labor & delivery nurse for almost forty years before retiring in 2011. Her friend Joanie admitted my twenty-three year old birth mother. Her friend Sylvia delivered me, and once said words I have clung to ever since. "You look like her."
The first time I thought about looking for my biological parents was when I was eighteen. I decided not to go on a senior class trip (I was homeschooled, those kids hadn't been my friends in years anyway) on the pretense of starting to look for my mother. Mom gave me a letter from the lawyer that finalized my adoption, which later got left at the House of Repression when I fled in 2005. I had non-specific, non-identifying information. One of them was 5'4. The other was 5'11. Both had brown hair. One had green eyes. The other had brown. They were also Rainbow People, Mom told me. And their ethnic origin is English, Irish, French, Dutch and Swedish. This clearly explains my passions for fish and chips, potatoes, crepes, Edam cheese, and lingonberry pancakes.
Regardless, around Christmastime I happened to see that Washington State was going to be opening up birth records for adoptees. And at that time, I felt a combination of joy and fear. I knew that when June of 2014 rolled around, I would begin my search. At the time I discovered this, my husband and I were finishing up foster care classes. I had always said that I wouldn't start looking until we had a child so I could truly understand what a sacrifice my birthmother had made. The fact that June would probably coincide with the time when we'd have a foster child in our home seemed to make sense.
Up until today, I had forgotten about the new law in Washington State, opening up the birth records until today. I was using Whisper and saw that someone had posted a confession saying that they just discovered that they were adopted and that their family didn't know yet. And then I remembered that in June, I could finally request my original birth certificate. Finally unsealed. If I had not seen that whisper today, I wouldn't have remembered.
I looked at the PDF form that came up after Googling "Washington state adoption records" and it seems so easy. What do I need to start my search? A twenty dollar check or money order, which is sent to Olympia, and the form, completely filled out. I keep thinking that there should be more. Where's the part about having to stand on my head and count to a thousand? It shouldn't be so easy, I keep thinking. A twenty dollar check or money order and a completed form? Isn't there something like an adoption search board game where you run into a brick wall then draw a card that says "Do not pass go, do not collect twenty dollars?" There has to be more than just this. There HAS to be.
When I Googled the topic for this week's post - because I didn't have the faintest idea as to what the hell a "recency bias" is, I found a blurb about how it's the way that the last item that you put on a list is the main thing that you remember. I didn't make a list here of things that I wanted to do in 2014 - lose weight, pass a home inspection by the State, bring a kid into our house, get the knicknacks my parents gave me that belonged to my grandmother appraised, reread "Moving On" by Larry McMurtry, have a copy of "The Last Unicorn" signed by Peter Beagle and...yeah, that birth records thing.
So here I am, in the June of my thirty-fifth year on Earth, ready to, at the very least, attempt to find out where I come from. I wonder where I got my cheekbones, a feature that I despised as a child but have grown to love once I realized how jealous everyone else I meet is of them. I wonder if my birth mother also appreciates "Blue" by Joni Mitchell and also cries when she hears "Little Green" - but I think everyone does. I wonder if she has the same problem, where she starts laughing and then can't stop and ends up sounding like Darth Vader. Or if like me, she has the same fondness for puns, cookbooks, Margaret Atwood's novels, Marge Piercy's poetry.
I can't say that I'll absolutely be fine if I get rejected or if my search leads me nowhere. I don't know. I also have to bear in mind that you can't find someone who doesn't want to be found. I know that she could be dead. I know that she could have another family out there that doesn't know about me. I also know that maybe there's a possibility that I have a sister, and most importantly...there's a chance that maybe someday - maybe someday soon - that I'll be able to look into a face and God willing, see some of myself there.