PREFACE
I didn’t consciously set out to write a book about healing. What I thought I was going to do was write a memoir about being adopted and ultimately searching for my birth mother. But when I started to write, the story I had told countless times turned into something quite different. Every time I sat down, a scene from my life poured onto the page, and with each buried memory came the emotion connected to it. I spent an entire summer holed up in my office, a box of Kleenex in close reach, wondering what might come next and how to make sense of it. “Don’t worry about it,” my friend, confidant, and walking buddy, Elle, who is an author and editor, said. “Just keep writing. We can edit it later.” By the time the scenes stopped flowing, it was winter and I had a ream of paper filled with scenes from every aspect of my life. Now what?
I had undergone enough therapy to know that being adopted was the underlying cause of most of the issues that had ever surfaced and re-surfaced in my life, but I was thoroughly confused by the depth of my feelings and where they would lead me. Again, the universe came to my rescue and the book The Presence Process, by Michael Brown, was practically handed to me. This book contains a step-by-step procedure for healing the ghosts of our past so we can live liberated lives in the present. Suddenly, I understood that my ghosts were speaking to me and that my writing had put me on the path to healing.
I arranged my scenes in chronological order and gave them a thorough read, but I didn’t have a book; I merely had an assortment of recollections tied together with the thread of adoption. Then, as often happens when we step out of the way and let our inner guide support us, I had an opportunity to share my plight with local author Sands Hall, who, in her infinite wisdom, told me, “You need a plot.” I then spent the next several months writing about my search, hoping that when it was completed, I could meld the scenes together and be done. While the amalgam had substance and the process had helped me heal what author Nancy Newton Verrier calls “the primal wound,” I realized that my story had moved beyond the realm of memoir and into the realm of healing, that my experience in healing my inner child was what the book was actually about, and that the issues that plagued me undoubtedly beleaguered other adoptees, as well.
The most insidious aspect of adoption is its invisibility. At the very heart of adoption is a world that can be permeated by loss, shaped by lies and deception, cloaked in shame and guilt, surrounded by abandonment, and shrouded by fear, anger, and grief. No wonder we adoptees often make bad choices, act out, try too hard, don’t give a shit, care too much, or are loyal to a fault. Our pain is deep, yet the gash invisible, so no one can tell how we actually feel. Many of us vacillate between good and bad, fantasy and reality, intimacy and rejection, caution and carelessness, putting on a good show until something happens and we reach the tipping point. Unconscious of our repetitive patterns, we rarely make a connection between the loss of a birth mother, our unspoken grief, and our subsequent behavior.
Because of open adoption, much has changed since 1949, the year I was born. But for many adoptees and their families, the feelings and issues surrounding adoption are still too easily dismissed, minimized—or worse, ignored. Without realizing it, I spent most of my life looking for my birth mother’s heartbeat, projecting the pain caused by my loss wherever it would stick. What I hope to accomplish with this book is to create a deep understanding of how it feels to be adopted and, in the process, open the door to the same profound healing that I experienced while writing this book for all members of the adoption triad.
CHAPTER ONE: LOSS
In July, 1949, when the lawyers handed me to my parents, the medical community believed that a newborn baby was essentially a blank slate, with no prior memory or feelings. My birth mother’s emotional health was of no importance, and it was general policy not to provide the adoptive parents with any medical information. Social workers did their best to match the coloring and features of the baby with that of the parents, and in my case they did a very good job. I looked a lot like my adoptive mother, but my temperament and interests definitely came from another pond. Needless to say, in spite of the common belief, it appeared that I wasn’t about to be fooled. My parents might have been elated to receive me, and family members shared in the joy, but at three days old, I was inconsolable. The day they brought me home, my adoptive family made a movie, which I saw for the first time when I was about eleven. The impact of the film stays with me to this day.
THE MOVIE
For the first three years of my life, we lived in a duplex upstairs from my father’s oldest sister, Mollie, and his father, Louis, in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the west end of Toledo. I don’t remember much about living there, but I do have vivid memories of packing up our belongings and moving to the other, more up-scale side of town, into a four-plex apartment built by my mother’s father, Leo. Although our new apartment was in a better location, it was less spacious and lacked the storage. As a result, the attic was full of boxes that had been wedged into the tight space since moving day. Now, seven years later, during a routine inspection, the fire department declared my parents’ attic to be a hazard.
In their efforts to remedy the problem, my mother and father dragged every box from its dusty perch down the wooden stairs and into the living room of our apartment. While they were disassembling and bringing the dust of their past lives into the present, I, like Dick Tracy looking for clues, dug through boxes of musty-smelling photos and mildewed text books and rummaged through piles of outdated clothes.
Arms loaded with winter coats and jackets I had never seen before, my father stepped over a box labeled “test tubes” and dumped the pile onto the large, overstuffed chair where he usually took his evening nap. “I think this is the last of it.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and smeared dirt across his dusty face. “What a mess.”
I held up a metal case. “Hey, Dad, what’s this?”
My father stepped forward to examine it. “Oh, I forgot about those old movies. Most of them were taken when we lived in California, when I was in the Navy.” He stooped down and scrutinized the box. “Somewhere in there is one from the day we brought you home.” I felt a lump of emotion collect in my throat. “If you can find it, I’ll set up the projector after dinner.”
There were no labels on the outside of the cases, but inside each, in my mother’s perfect handwriting, was a slip of paper with the date and a brief description: 1935—Ruth and Henry’s wedding, 1939—Sandusky and Long Beach, 1944—Aunt Lillie’s cottage. Close to the bottom of the box I found the only one that meant something to me: July 1949—Janet. I held it in my hand as if it were a precious stone.
I was still holding the film case when my mother, brown hair tied up with a handkerchief and dressed in pedal pushers, a blue-and-white seersucker sleeveless shirt, and a thin layer of dust, emerged from the attic and entered the living room. She sneezed and, with a finger under her nose, went to look for a tissue.
Film canister in hand, I followed her into the kitchen. “I found a box of old movies. Daddy said after dinner we could watch the one of me.”
My mother pressed the foot pedal on the garbage can and tossed the dirty Kleenex into the trash, walked over to the oven, and turned it on. “He did, did he?” She washed her hands, then reached into the freezer and took out three potpies. “Turkey okay for you?” Without waiting for me to answer, she continued, “I hope your father leaves me some hot water.” She opened the oven door, popped in the shiny tins, and set the timer. “By the time I’m done showering, the pies will be cooked and we can eat. Put some silverware and glasses on the table, will you, honey?” With that, she left.
Sitting through dinner was absolute torture. Instead of waiting for it to cool, I gulped my potpie without tasting it, burning the roof of my mouth so badly that I could feel the little pieces of skin hanging down with my tongue. Ignoring the pain, I wiggled in my seat waiting for my parents to finish. When I was certain I couldn’t sit still for another second, my father set down his fork and stood up. “Let’s go set it up.”
In the living room, he piled boxes on top of one another to create a stand for the projector, and I took some pictures down so we could use the far wall as a screen. When everything was ready, my mother sauntered in and took her usual place in the overstuffed swivel chair. Not bothering to cover a yawn, she reached over to the end table and picked up her pack of Salems. “God, I’m tired.”
It took only a few minutes for my father to thread the projector. “Lights, please.” As my mother reached over and turned off the table lamp, the smoke from her cigarette danced in the light between the projector and the wall. Draped over the ottoman, I bit my nails and waited.
The projector crackled as black-and-white images of the past flickered on the screen. A 1940 Ford sedan was parked by the curb. A thin, handsome man got out from behind the wheel, walked around the car to open the door for a woman pretty enough to be a movie star, who emerged holding something wrapped in a blanket. Wearing a summer dress that showed off her tiny waist, the woman flashed her Ipana smile at the camera as she held the infant out for her fans. Even without sound, I could tell that the baby was wailing. I gnawed at my thumbnail until hands reached in and took the screaming baby away. The woman heaved a sigh of relief as she wiped beads of sweat from her brow. The camera panned away from her to the final image—a swaddled baby being rocked and cooed at by a younger version of my Aunt Blanche, one of my father’s older sisters.
As my father fumbled to rewind the film, my mother turned on the light and lit another cigarette. Wiping a tear from my eye, I felt an ocean of rage surge through my body, aimed directly at my mother, “How could you let me cry like that?” My parents had told me that I was adopted when I was very young, implying that it was as ordinary as having brown hair and eyes, and light skin, but I knew better. There had been plenty of clues along the way, but my inconsolable tears were the proof I needed to substantiate my belief that being adopted made me different, more needy, more desperate, and I was furious with my mother for being such an inept caregiver.
My mother took a long drag from her cigarette and exhaled looking somewhere above my head. “I was told to let you cry.” She tapped her ash into the large, glass, monogrammed ashtray. “Dr. Spock, our pediatrician, my friends—they all told me babies cry because they have no other way to communicate.” Shrugging as if what I had just seen meant nothing, she inhaled deeply. “As long as your diaper was clean and you weren’t hungry, crying was just your way of talking—apparently, you had a lot to say.” Stubbing out the remainder of the Salem, my mother stood up, stretched, and made her exit. “I’m exhausted. See you two in the morning.” End of discussion.
A thin trail of smoke ascended from the ashtray, and I imaged what it was like for that tiny wailing baby to leave the comfort and safety of her mother’s womb and the familiarity of her mother’s heartbeat, only to be thrust into the arms of complete strangers. Mom? Mama? MOM…Where are you?
The projector stopped. Without speaking, my father knelt down and gently patted me on the head, careful not to mess up my shoulder-length hair. I wanted him to hold me close to his chest so I could smell his aftershave and feel the smoothness of his face. I wanted him to hold and rock that baby who was still crying inside for the mother who carried her for nine months and then vanished. But I didn’t know how to ask, and he didn’t know how to offer.
At eleven, I wasn’t able to understand that I was still carrying the pain I experienced as an infant. The loss of my birth mother broke my heart, and my parents didn’t have a clue about how I felt. After seven years of infertility, they finally had a baby, one who was adorable on the outside and, unfortunately, grief-stricken throughout. Suffice to say, I was not an easy child to raise. My parents did their best, but I was different than Peter and Mary, the children in The Chosen Baby, a picture book that became a bedtime ritual for the first few years of my life. Written in 1939 by Valentina P. Wasson as a way to explain adoption to her own adopted child, the book paints a picture of the ideal adoption.
There is no mention of the birth mother, or the loss the adoptive parents feel (whether they consciously admit it or not) because they are unable to have children of their own. In The Chosen Baby, everyone is kind, loving, and happy. Of course, this is what my parents wanted, and perhaps my mother thought that if she read the book to me every night, she could direct my destiny. But I was already imprinted from my loss, and it wouldn’t be long before my struggles would begin. In pre-school I was already having trouble getting along with other kids, but when the teacher suggested my mother take me to see a psychologist, she refused. Years later, she confided that she believed the real issue was wasn’t me, but her parenting skills. Even if my parents had taken me to see a psychologist, I doubt if they would have realized that my inability to get along with other kids had to do with the fact that I was still grieving from the loss of my birth mother. I was in mourning for someone who was never mentioned, and no one—including myself—knew. When I was seven, I officially discovered that being adopted made me different.
