I’ve always known I was adopted. I remember my mother telling me when I was about 7 years old. She had great delivery and it came off like the many stories she’d read to me. Sensing it could be a confusing concept for a child, my mother pulled out my baby book and pointed to my birth announcement that read, “I wasn’t expected I was selected.” I don’t remember feeling much about the news but the announcement led me to to picture the way children were adopted. In my child’s mind prospective parents looked through a window as babies went by on a conveyor belt until they saw the child they wanted and said, “That one!” Rather an efficient process I thought.
A few years later, I’m probably about 10 years old, my mother announces that December 1st is Family Day. “Huh?” I ask, “What’s that?” She adds to the adoption story by explaining that it’s the date she and my father picked me up from the adoption agency and brought me home. Though not great at math I notice the difference between my September birthday and December 1st, “Where was I before Family Day?” I asked. “In a foster home,” my mother explains. My 10 year old brain thinks it sounds like a way station on the path to becoming my parents’ daughter. I’m still not thinking much about being adopted except I notice when I share the fact, people raise their eyebrows and it seems like a nifty tidbit of information.
The older I got, the more information my mother shared. My biological parents we’re getting a divorce and already had two boys under the age of five. Their mother was going to have to get a job to support them and three mouths to feed was one too many.
In my teens, twenties and beyond people would ask me if I ever wanted to find my biological parents. I did not. It just seemed too weird to show up decades later and knock on the door of people who had given me away. I didn’t feel angry about them putting me up for adoption and I had no need to mess with the cosmos that had already decided everyone’s life path. If anything I was mildly curious about the two biological brothers since I was an only child. But not enough to do anything about it.
And so my adoption was all neat and tidy and tucked away. Until it wasn’t. More to come.