Separated At Birth
A moving story of how LA Times reporter Scott Glover learned he was adopted and went off to Ireland in search of his biological mother:
As the Aer Lingus jet reached the coast of Ireland, it was low enough that I could make out the waves crashing onto the beach below. The land was a lush green. It was beautiful.It was quiet on the plane. Evelyn was asleep, with Nick stretched out on her lap in the row across from me. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, too. I pressed my face against the window to take in the view, and I felt tears rolling down my cheeks.
Is this where I was supposed to grow up? I wondered. Is this where I'm supposed to be from?
I once helped a close friend find her birth parents. It's a big thing, knowing who and where you're from.
))The land was a lush green. It was beautiful.((
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...
The unknown has a lot of emotional juice, it sparks our curiosity. The unsolved crime fascinates.
I'm not a big fan of tracking down birth parents, but I don't know how to talk anyone out of doing it. The unknown and mysterious beckon with the possibilities of greatness, while familiarity breeds contempt.
doombuggy at November 27, 2007 2:21 AM
What Doombuggy said. In human life, genetics aren't really "knowing who and where you're from."
Crid at November 27, 2007 3:48 AM
...Otherwise, people wouldn't be so patient with gays raising children, riiiiiiiiight?
Crid at November 27, 2007 3:49 AM
I know a number of gay parents with kids, and they don't keep a secret their kids' actual origins. Regarding my friend, who is heterosexual and has heterosexual parents, her parents who raised her are fantastic, and are the people who she considers parents, but she wanted to know her biological origins and learn why somebody or somebodies had to give her up. Imagine not having a clue as to your medical history. And genetics do make a person. This guy, for example, is the biological kid of a drunk. That knowledge seemed to help him.
Amy Alkon at November 27, 2007 4:08 AM
Off topic link. While in general, I disagree with you regarding health care, here's a link that supports your position.... Over the last eight years, the refusal of patients to die according to actuarial schedules has led the federal government to demand that hospices exceeding reimbursement limits repay hundreds of millions of dollars to Medicare.
jerry at November 27, 2007 4:15 AM
> Imagine not having a clue
> as to your medical history
Most people don't. I don't know anyone with a laminated card in their wallet listing the genetic propensities for this or that. "Paternal great-grandmother on Nana Johnson's side: shitty eyesight, mild childhood asthma, mid-life psoriasis, breast cancer at 74!" etc.
I think Doomy's really got the flavor of this one. Human nature tends to Shirley MacLaine-ism, pretending that in a past life you were a noble King, a tough but fair defender of your adoring serfs in an oft-besieged seaside valley of sunshine and fertile soil. Nobody ever dreams of how they were a toothless, surly, illiterate slave in the field who died in slow agony at 26, which is how it worked for most of humanity.
Jerry, what do you make of that article? It's the story of our times: Life keeps getting longer and better, and it's a tremendous pain in the ass.
Crid at November 27, 2007 4:53 AM
Nobody ever dreams of how they were a toothless, surly, illiterate slave in the field who died in slow agony at 26
Except for a friend of mine, who participated in a "past-life regression" in which she was "hypnotized" and led back to a "previous life", in which she was supposedly a "slave girl" in a "clan of neanderthals" (all quotated words are hers, by the way), and was "stoned to death". She says I was one of the ones who participated in the stoning, but for the life of me, I don't recall that! o_O
Flynne at November 27, 2007 5:10 AM
"I know a number of gay parents with kids, and they don't keep a secret their kids' actual origins. Regarding my friend, who is heterosexual and has heterosexual parents, her parents who raised her are fantastic, and are the people who she considers parents, but she wanted to know her biological origins..."
Bingo, Amy.
You can't forbid "grass is greener" syndrome, to borrow doombuggy's point. But adopting parents are encouraged to be ready for it and accept the kid's curiosity about where they come from as normal, inevitable in many cases - and not a strike against them.
On balance - because we have a ton of adoptions in our family - this seems to be a far better model for adoption than stonewalling or taking umbrage over questions of origins.
Jody Tresidder at November 27, 2007 5:14 AM
I don't know anyone with a laminated card in their wallet listing the genetic propensities for this or that. "Paternal great-grandmother on Nana Johnson's side: shitty eyesight, mild childhood asthma, mid-life psoriasis, breast cancer at 74!" etc.
I know mine, it's just not laminated on a card.
Amy Alkon at November 27, 2007 5:14 AM
Actually, I don't think it's a "grass is greener" thing at all. My adopted friend had amazing parents and a charmed childhood. She was just curious about her biological origins. If you read the work of Nancy Segal on identical twins, you'll see how huge a role genetics seem to play in who we are.
Amy Alkon at November 27, 2007 5:22 AM
"I don't know anyone with a laminated card in their wallet listing the genetic propensities for this or that>/i>."
Actually, it's in your DNA, Crid.
Blood related families often have a decent tribal knowledge of recurring ailments -or simply a typical nose shape -in past and current generations.
When you are adopted, the search for your blood origins can indeed provide collateral medical knowledge.
Jody Tresidder at November 27, 2007 5:24 AM
> She says I was one of the
> ones who participated in the
> stoning,
Hey Flynne, that's where I remember you from! The great Willendorf Rockflying Festival of 22032 A.D.! You were that shapely brunette with the granite in her fists! I was the one-eyed guy who liked to chuck the limestone with a sideways lob, remember? That was a great afternoon.
Remember the tune everyone was whistling that weekend?
Crid at November 27, 2007 5:30 AM
Ah, yes, that would be Ian Drury's "Love is Like a Rock"! Thanks for the reminder, Crid, that was a lovely afternoon! o_O
Flynne at November 27, 2007 5:32 AM
> the search for your blood
> origins can indeed provide
> collateral medical knowledge.
Does collateral mean almost-worth-knowing? It's a great cover if you're feeling the need to track 'em down, I suppose...
Crid at November 27, 2007 5:33 AM
> Ian Drury's "Love is
> Like a Rock"!
I'm glad you remember... I was afraid you wouldn't recognize me without the ulcerating tumors at the jawline.
Shame how that shit fell out of fashion. Bitch had it coming.
Crid at November 27, 2007 5:49 AM
Mrs. Willendorf was my great, great, great, great, etc., etc., etc., grandmother.
If your origins are, for example, Ashkenazi (the paler Jews from Central and Eastern Europe), you're more prone to certain genetic diseases. Good to know so you can be monitored for them.
Amy Alkon at November 27, 2007 5:50 AM
"Does collateral mean almost-worth-knowing?"
It can mean more. In the case I know about, it was beta-blockers prescribed to my adopted nephew. His adolescent symptoms were extremely widely spaced fainting spells. Both times, my nephew underwent standard tests which came up normal. His birth family's history, however, showed two close male relatives who died unusually early - both in their 50s - from undiagnosed heart irregularities. One also suffered, anecdotally, from "weak" spells. The beta-blockers were prescribed to my nephew after further, specifically targeted tests, for "syncope".
It involved consultations between cardiologists in two countries.
This is as best I understand it, Crid.
Jody Tresidder at November 27, 2007 5:59 AM
Jesus interrupts a stoning, saying "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
A single stone comes flying out of the crowd, followed by the rest.
Jesus says, "I wish you wouldn't do that, mom."
doombuggy at November 27, 2007 6:49 AM
> Mrs. Willendorf was my great,
> great, great, great, etc.,
> etc., etc., grandmother.
Dearest Amy, the beauty in your generation may also be globally admired by now. And my eye is neither attuned nor discerning, but I just don't see the family resemblance. (And we've already done gay marriage this week, so let's save waist-to-hip ratios for another day.)
> It can mean more.
Absolutely, absolutely. For conditions discussed here and ten thousand others, I'm sure it's useful information to have, positively life-saving. But it's information which isn't even casually recorded for the vast majority of the globe's intact, full-blood families, and people seem to stumble along OK.
And I'd bet than in many cases of well-handled adoption (though I can't imagine how typically), the important thing is to get the kid into his loving home ASAP, and maybe fuss with the trivial paperwork on a future day that never comes. Healers of all types worry first about today, because you never know if there's a tomorrow anyway. The stories of families who reject a child with health conditions after receiving him are famous because they're so rare. I remember there was famous case of a kid born without a brain in my hometown hospital a few decades ago, and loving families we crawling out of the hills to adopt it. These families seem content to play the ball as it lies, with no Mulligans.
Again, I think Doomy nailed it in the first comment.
Crid at November 27, 2007 10:39 AM
My younger cousins are adopted, they know their birth mother and everything. (Twins) I think that is a good way to handle it.
I also have a good friend whose mother left her when she was quite young. When she was 16 some members of her mother's family dropped by (from California) "just to see how she turned out." So I guess the curiosity can go both ways for some. She thinks they just wanted a kidney or something, but she was out of town, so they didn't get to find out how awesome she is. :-)
Shinobi at November 27, 2007 12:22 PM
I have to disagree with doombuggy here. Some of us adoptees go into the search without blinders, and aren't disappointed with the truth.
I didn't officially know I was adopted until I was 21. My waste-of-an-orgasm older brother told me the day my Mom died (he was mad 'cause she'd cut him out of the will). I'd suspected for years though, so I wasn't quite as devastated as he'd hooped. I didn't look or act much like anyone else in the family, and Mom always got suspiciously teary-eyed over those adoption-themed after-school specials. So I kind of figured, but didn't really care.
Then my son was born, and there were some problems, and questions about family health I obviously couldn't answer. He came through just fine, but I realized I should try and find out what I could, which wasn't much until the internet grew up. At that point I signed up on one of the reunion sites with what information I had. The next day my sister signed up on the same site and I got a call from the site asking if they could give her my number. I said yes.
I found out from my sister that our mother had died of breast cancer at the ripe old age of 36. In her last months she told my sister about me and asked her to find me and share the medical history. As a result, I've had yearly mammograms since I turned 30 (which, by the way, you sometimes really have to push for). I also knew to watch for diabetes and hypertension at a young age, which is why they caught my gestational diabetes early in my later pregnancies. I found out my father was a recovering alcoholic, who actually recently died of a heart attack at 55.
I didn't have dreams of being the secret love child of millionaires, or the long-lost daughter of the Queen of Sheba. I was, of course, curious about my parents, and wanted to know why I was given up, though a little afraid to find out. Turns out my parents were 16, and felt giving me up was the right thing, which I'm sure it was. My adopted parents loved me, and I never wanted for love or security - security two teenagers would have been hard-pressed to provide.
I've seen home movies of my birth mother, and believe me, genetics goes a lot deeper than we tend to think. I resemble her only slightly, but the way she held her head, moved her hands, her expressions - they were like watching myself. I'm glad I got to see some of what I came from. I also have a really great relationship with my sisters, one a full sister, and two half-sisters. One in particular felt like a life-long friend by the end of our first three hour phone conversation. I wouldn't give them up now for anything.
All that being said, I don't agree with adoptees forcing themselves on their birth families. That's why I joined a reunion site. So I could be found if looked for. I do believe medical records should be made available to adoptees, though, which nowadays they usually are.
Kimberly at November 27, 2007 12:54 PM
Being adopted I didn't know anything about my genetic background for the longest time, and then literally about two weeks after the last time you wrote about this (Amy) and I had commented about how years ago I had sent the adoption agency a request for non-identifying birthparent information but never heard anything back, etc -- a letter shows up from a social worker at the agency saying, in effect, "sorry about the backlog; do you still want the information?" So I had them send it to me and I have to say it answered a lot of lingering questions I had, as my dearly departed Mom apparently had some knowledge about my birthparents and the situation leading up to my arrival but her vague explanations never quite made total sense. Clearly these were the documents she had seen, which included some pretty vivid condensations of an agency social worker's interviews with my birthmother and I have to conclude that my Mom either had a fanciful imagination or poor reading comprehension -- perhaps a little of both. The most important thing I discovered was that I was the result of a rather transgressive relationship between horny Catholics who just couldn't keep it in their pants, which was a big relief to me as I can think of nothing worse than being the product of a passionless, mechanical fuck. Though as a result I do feel a little responsible for the resulting turmoil in their lives, like I twisted their arms or something... well, I guess in a way I did. Sorry guys, but my existence was absolutely necessary. Anyway, the photocopied documents that came with the package weren't redacted very well and it was a pretty trivial thing to figure out their identities. But as neither filled out consent to contact forms I only spy on them from afar. They seem happy and at peace with their lives so unless sudden anonymous cashiers checks are called for I'll happily leave it at that. And now I know that I'm French on one side and Polish/Hungarian/Czech on the other. But I still don't know which one was the pervert.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at November 27, 2007 1:12 PM
> That's why I joined a reunion site.
> So I could be found if looked for.
> I do believe medical records should
> be made available to adoptees,
Zero argument, zero argument, good going. (And each green veggies!)
Crid at November 27, 2007 1:14 PM
"I've seen home movies of my birth mother, and believe me, genetics goes a lot deeper than we tend to think."
Kimberly,
I really smiled with recognition at that comment.
My father died much too young in a car accident, without ever trying to find the mother who gave him up at birth. (He had always remained angry about being "abandoned" at an orphanage - which was the story he'd been told about his origins by his adopting parents).
We traced his birth mother a long, long time later. She had just died (at 90 plus) after a very long happy marriage and four legitimate children without ever admitting she'd had a secret "love child" - my father -as a very young single woman.
Her very elderly husband was shocked at first to discover his beloved late wife's sad past as a girl. (That bit got a bit sticky!) But he graciously accepted the truth, managed to understand why she had never told, and then sent us photographs of the grandmother we never knew.
She was the dark haired, dark eyed, olive skinned "missing link" in our family. The absolute ancestral template of me and my siblings and our late father - our mother and "her" side of the family are typically very blond.
There was no useful medical knowledge in this case - but I'll never forget the pleasure of seeing her staggeringly familiar face for the first time. My brother and sisters felt the same.
(We also found some lovely new relatives!).
Jody Tresidder at November 27, 2007 2:09 PM
> But as neither filled out consent
> to contact forms I only spy on
> them from afar.
More great happy endings.
My only worry about this is that eventually it's kind of like paying off kidnappers. My mother used to talk about how when she was a little girl and a lot of common crime was becomning addressed at federal level, it became the default policy of authorities to prosecute kidnappers without mercy all the way to execution. The bad news was that in any particular case, it meant that there was no reason for a kidnapper who'd already set things in motion to protect the life of the kid... He was screwed anyway. But it made it clear that this wouldn't be tolerated in the United States. And while I'm sure it's a problem here, it's not as bad as it is in southern latitudes.
Adoption is often a fantastic blessing for children. When it goes well, nothing can make you as proud of civilization. If troubled young parents are concerned that someday a child is going to hunt them down to ask "What the fuck?" and shake them down for either guilt or commerce, then having all this paperwork sitting around might be a problem. We want to encourage incompetent parents to place children with loving families without fear. (Madonna lyrics are no help in this regard.)
No one could argue with the kinds of listings people here have discussed, or with the sensitivity you guys have shown. And if I understand correctly (and I've made zero study of this), the trend in recent years has been to allow the many teenage mothers to take a larger part of the selection of a family and the child's life after the handover. Someone else can speak to possible complications there.
I just worry that the impulse to investigate these origins can muck up a delicate and absolutely magical process in pursuit of a teenage fascination that doesn't, in the bigger picture, tell us about what it means to be human. Many of us have moved from towns full of family to distant lands in earliest childhoods. Going back to visit in adulthood, we see a familiar running posture on one guy and hear a familiar snicker rhythm from another, but all the meaninful character has branched.
Crid at November 27, 2007 9:35 PM
It is a happy ending. I was fully prepared to find out I was Charles and Squeaky's illegitimate scion of Evil. To find out my birthparents are actually eerie clones of me was a pleasant surprise. Also, now that I know I have genetic half-siblings coming out the ass I can relax and leave all the procreating to them.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at November 28, 2007 7:58 AM
I wasn't snarking; sincerest best wishes. And re: Charlie. sometimes a beard is just a grooming choice
(PS- each your vegatables above should have been eat your vegetables.)
Crid at November 28, 2007 8:38 AM
"As the Aer Lingus jet reached the coast of Ireland..."
Oh, it’s an actual airline...thought it was a branch of the mile-high club!
Doobie at November 28, 2007 7:37 PM
Tell that to Evil Spock.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at November 29, 2007 7:57 AM
He did look cool.
Crid at November 30, 2007 12:54 AM
Here
Crid at November 30, 2007 12:56 AM
Oh those ears! **swoons**
Flynne at November 30, 2007 6:16 AM
Yes, and I suppose he was a man of integrity in both universes.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at November 30, 2007 6:31 PM
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