Birthmothers

You know what a broken heart looks like? Like a sobbing teenager in a hospital bed giving a two-day-old infant she knows she can't take care of to a couple she hopes can.

Orphans. The word is thrown around alot in cases of International Adoption. On those long walks in the summer with my family when all this first came up, I was comfortable with orphans. Who couldn't appreciate giving an orphan a home?

Then, while on the boards, people kept making references to "traveling south", once in Ethiopia, to meet the "family" - overtaxed aunts and uncles?

No, the poster made clear that she was in contact with the birthmother. Initially, I rebelled (in my mind) -- "Wait! Whoa, hold the phone, nobody said anything about birthmothers!"

Since that moment, I have worked on educating myself about open adoption, trying to visualize explaining it to a child, weaving it into our lives.

Much of my fear comes from the fallout from my sister's closed adoption, her birthmother's return and then her birthmother abandoning the relationship. In our case, the birthmother was a destabilizing influence, to say the least.

That's why Dan Savage's essay, LIVING WITH A VERY OPEN ADOPTION really spoke to me.

It provoked me to visualize a moment I intellectually comprehend happens, but on which I dared not dwell:

I was thirty-three years old when we adopted DJ, and I thought I knew what a broken heart was, how it felt, what it looked like. I didn't know anything. You know what a broken heart looks like? Like a sobbing teenager in a hospital bed giving a two-day-old infant she knows she can't take care of to a couple she hopes can.

I won't be there for that part. We will get a referral picture. Maybe, if she shows up, we will meet the mother months later. That doesn't mean that a moment such as the one described above didn't happen. It's just uncomfortable (or, maybe, emotionally crippling) to think about.

Dan continues:

Ask a couple hoping to tadopt what they want most in the world and they'll tell you there's only one thing on earth they want: a baby, a healthy baby. But many couples want something more: They want their child's biologincal parents to disappear. THey want their child's viological mothe rand father to be forever absent so there will never be any question about who their child's "real" parents are.

In my darker, less proud moments, I admit to this. I was shocked that Dan Savage put it in an essay in an actual book. (He goes on to explain that he never felt this way and wanted an open adoption).

Then, in other moments, I would find myself agreeing with the anti-adoption folks, that maybe the whole idea of adoption is wrong on the face of it -- cruel and confusing to the kid, robbing them of a sense of culture and history and family. Better to stay in Ethiopia.

I guess, at some point, I grew up. After long talks, my wife and I started discussing about ways to keep the birthmother "in the family". My wife would talk about feeling a connection "as a mother" to this woman -- knowing what it feels like to be pregnant and experience birth...

Um, no, I didn't get it. Intellectually, I was all about discussing it, but emotionally -- nada. My "heart" wasn't guiding me. My heart was shrunk back in my chest cavity hiding from the whole thing.

Then, I wrote that review for Bob Shacochis' essay, KEEPING IT ALL IN THE FAMILY. As I recall, my review reflected my initial feeling: "basically useless to me".

Well, yesterday, I found myself ruminating on it, for no particular reason, when, suddenly, my heart spoke up: "What if, for whatever reason, you were tapped to take care of your niece, like Bob was? How would that be? More importantly, how would you treat your sister in such an instance?"

Suddenly, it came to me, a gloss on the "Golden Rule" that made sense to me intellectually AND emotionally: The birthmother will become family. TREAT HER THE WAY YOU'D TREAT YOUR SISTER. TREAT YOUR ADOPTED CHILD THE WAY YOU WOULD TREAT YOUR NIECE, IF YOU HAD LEGAL CUSTODY. Instantly, everything became clear. I would never not "parent" her. I'd be the parental role model. I'd teach right from wrong, exert my "parental authority", or whatever, but I'd never try to create a fantasy that my sister didn't exist. I wouldn't fail to acknowledge her role in my neice's life, or try to quell the unique bond they would share. I would never try to deny her importance to my child's identity in a misguided attempt to make her feel "normal", "the same as the bio kids", "part of the family" or "ours". She WILL be "ours"... and she won't be. She will also be the daughter of a man and woman in Ethiopia... and that makes THEM part of our family, too -- to be treated with the same respect and decency as a sister or brother.