Observe and report

Dear Friends and Family (old and new),

As many of you know, I’m adopted. I was adopted when I was about six weeks old. (“Fresh baby! Get her while she’s pink!) I’ve always known I was adopted. My parents said they would help me look for my birth family when I was ready.

I was never ready when they were alive.

It felt like it would be disrespectful to them to search. Also, what if my birth mother hadn’t told anyone about me? Showing up on her doorstep would be a bit of a surprise — and likely not in a Prize Patrol kind of way.

I had great parents. Howard and Jeanne loved me, and I loved them. I had a normal middle-class childhood: We lived in a standard subdivision of ’70s split levels (say that three times fast) outside of Atlanta, and I went to public schools but a private college (scholarship, FTW!). We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor. No abuse. (Unless you count all those times I got whacked with a fly swatter because of my smart mouth. And I certainly don’t.)

Some of my friends were adopted too, and we commiserated about what it must be like to actually look like someone else or see some of your behaviors handed down from a parent. My parents often looked at me like I was a zoo animal because I had so much more energy than they did. They were sedentary people. And y’all know I am … not.

Still, my friends weren’t so keen to search either. It’s a big thing. Rejection looms large.

All I knew about my birth mother was that she was a very young college student and didn’t feel she could care for me at the time.

When I left college myself and started thinking about starting a family, I wrote to the adoption agency to see if I could get any medical information. It felt important to find out if I had a family history of cancer, heart disease, diabetes (“The Shugahs” if you are from the South), etc.

They sent back a few pages of typed social information: birth parents’ first names, general background, number of siblings, physical features, college education, circumstances surrounding my conception and birth, etc.

Then, the kicker:

My people, I was not ready for that. I folded that little letter back up and tucked it into a file folder. There it stayed for nearly two decades.

And even now as I try to explain what has been going on over the past few years, I realize I have to stop here for now.

This feels like a four-part series: Beginning (this part), Discovery, Meeting Mom, Meeting Dad.

Stay tuned. (If you are interested, that is.)

XO,
Beth

*Credit to Harry and the boys.