My Quick and Dirty Adoption Story

I have always known I was adopted. It’s the first thing I knew about, really, just like knowing you have brown eyes or red hair. I grew up with that story. My mother, the one that raised me, always started it this way: “Your natural mother was old enough to have other kids and to know that she couldn’t keep a third one. We don’t know why. I imagine some day another red-headed child will come to the door and tell us they’re your brother or sister and then we’ll know. For now, know this: we always dreamed of having a baby and we picked you.”

The story told little details about where they were when they found out I was available, how I looked when they saw me, who they told first, and who came to help them the day I arrived. Tiny inconsequentialities that were the only story of the first three months of my life.

Three years after they adopted me, my parents adopted another daughter. They heard about her the day she was born, signed the papers the next day, saw her the day after that, and brought her home, all before she was five days old. Her story got added to my story — how I charged in that first day we saw her and tried to carry her off when the adoption society said we’d need to leave her overnight.

When I got older, some details of my adoption story changed and grew. They added facts about the foster homes I lived in, the medical care I received while there, and details about my natural father, who I had never thought about until they mentioned him. As a young girl, I only thought about how did I resemble my natural mother. Girls took after their mothers, right? What did I need to know about a father? I already had one I looked enough like.

Eventually, I grew up. My curiosity increased so much that my parents gave me copies of my adoption paperwork. I finally saw all the details they had in their possession and understood the story they had woven from them. But it wasn’t enough. I always wanted more.

When I turned eighteen, I undertook the search for my natural family. I joined online bulletin boards, sent out query after query for official files, and made a folder of everything I found out. I searched for six years before two important pieces of information finally fell into place.

The year my first child was born, I found my birth family. We talked just a few days before 9/11 happened. I had a flight out for later that week. We had to wait until January before we could travel out to meet my birthmother, her husband, and her son.

It’s been nearly twenty years since I first met my birthfamily. I’ve met more of them over the years, some just online through Facebook or Ancestry and some in person. We talk over Skype sometimes. My children have met their birthfamily cousins.

In the end, I have two sets of families and two sets of stories to keep in my heart. After nearly forty-five years of living with them, I’m ready to tell some of those stories now. Today the general outline, tomorrow soon enough for the details.