Dylan Stafford

(Continued)

After we completed the first exercise, discussing our biggest adoption fears, we met a family, two children who’d been adopted and their mother who had adopted them.

The first speaker was the son.

He was in his early twenties, tall and thin as only people in their early twenties can be, with black hair and olive skin. He could have been Hispanic or Italian or tan.

He told us his story: when he realized he was adopted; what that meant to him; how he didn’t want his friends to know; how his adopted mom is his real mom; and some of his feelings toward his birth-mother.

Next came his sister. She was sixteen-years 0ld, also thin and with black hair but her features could have been Polynesian, or African-American or some California-blend. She and her brother had different birth-mothers.

Initially, she wasn’t as confident as her brother, but after a few minutes she warmed up and was soon rolling full speed.

She also told us when she became aware she was adopted, but her response was the opposite of her brother’s. She told all her friends she was adopted, no secret at all. To her, being adopted was no different than a street address or her favorite movie and she always let everyone know.

Like her brother, her adopted mother was 100% “her mother.”

I asked both of them in the question and answer period, “This morning, some of us worried that an adopted teen-ager would get upset and say ‘You’re not my real parents!’ Did you ever do that, either of you?”

They looked at each other for a moment, then answered.

The daughter, “No. I don’t think I ever did that. We fight–don’t get me wrong. We’re a regular daughter and mother and we have arguments like everyone, but I don’t think I ever said that.”

“She,” the son said, pointing at his mother seated at the front of the conference room across from him. “…she is my mother. No matter what, she raised me and loved me and gave me my life. I wouldn’t be who I am or have the life I have if she hadn’t done what she did adopting me.”

I got a bulge in my chest as I heard him speak. His words were direct and deep and he was wise beyond his years on this. At 23, he knew more about his love for his adopted mother than I did for mine when I was his age.

They talked about the relations each had for their biological mothers, the two women who had given birth to them and had placed them up for adoption, and again they differed. The son held some bitterness, some wondering of how she could give him away. But while the son’s feelings seemed complicated, the daughter seemed clearer. She felt that her biological mother had made a difficult choice, but one that was for the best. They were both grateful for the life they had, but they looked at the situation of their birth-mothers differently.

Only later, driving home, did it dawn on me that neither of them spoke of their birth-fathers. All the conversation revolved around the birth-mothers. I wondered about this, whether the birth-fathers were really less important, or some kind of blind spot, absent in its absence.

The majority of adoptions these days are called “open,” meaning the children can know who their biological mother is and the biological mothers can know who has adopted their children. I had the picture in my head of orphanages, of the Cider House Rules, but that isn’t the way adoption has evolved in the US. We have the foster care system, which has replaced the orphanage system.

And open adoptions have replaced closed adoptions. Open can range from ongoing contact, like visitations at birthdays or major holidays to pictures mailed once or twice a year. I wonder what Facebook will bring. Will biological mothers “friend” the adopted mothers?

When my cousin Joel adopted his two sons, each adoption was different. With his first son Jasper, there was contact with the birth-mother the first year or two and then it faded away. In contrast, there wasn’t much contact at all with the birth-mother of their second son.

Sometimes birth-mothers will have specific requests like choosing a middle name or wanting their child to receive a Catholic education. There can also be the opposite case where a birth-mother doesn’t want to make any decision, where she asks the social agency to choose the receiving family and give their child the best future possible.

After the two kids, the third speaker was the mom, the woman who’d adopted. She was a heavy-set, very Caucasion woman in her forties with blond hair and pale skin. She sat quietly while her kids had spoken but when it was her turn to share she had plenty to say.

She talked about her situation with her husband and how adoption was the only way they were going to be able to have a family. She talked about the waiting period and the receiving period and the adjustment time of bringing each new infant into her life.

She spoke calmly and I got calm listening. It was a process. It was work. There was diligence required. And there was magic and there was love and there was joy and there was bliss. It sounded like life, like our experience of having Jackson.

She wasn’t at all defensive. There was no apologetic tone to suggest she wasn’t 100% the mother of the two. That was re-assuring to me. I’ve wondered if I’ll “take” to our new child. I’ve worried that maybe I’ll feel like I’m mostly the daddy, but not all-the-way the daddy.

As I listened to her, I remembered the words my cousin Joel had shared with me about the moment he received his child.

“Dylan,” he’d said, “it’s funny. There’s all this lead time up front, gettting certified, making your profile book, taking the classes, and just basically making up your mind that you’re really going to do this. Then, when you actually get the call, that there’s a baby that could be a match, well, when the call comes and you say “yes” things move pretty fast after that. And I tell you, when they placed Jasper in our arms and they told us ‘Congratulations. He’s your baby boy.’ I tell you he was our baby boy. Instantly. All at once. All the way. It was like all the worries we’d had the previous year-plus, none of them were there. We were parents and he was our son.”

That one-hundred-percent-ness that I’d heard about from Joel, I was hearing that same assuredness from this mother. She was their mother. She was accountable for the parenting she provided her children and they were accountable for the actions and choices they made. For a moment I felt young, like I wasn’t yet married and hadn’t already become a father, like a teen-ager peeking into the world of the grown-ups and wondering if I’d be a good grown-up when it was my turn to be one.

She talked about how the kids didn’t look like her, and what that was like. “My husband’s darker complected, so our son and he favor each other a bit but not so much our daughter. Me… well you see me. I’m about as white as they come so there’s never really been anyone who thought I was the birth-mother. But that’s OK.”

People asked some more questions and the family replied and we wrapped up and went outside to sit in a beautiful California November Saturday afternoon, blue skies and warm sunshine and Subway sandwiches with a diet Coke.

I was emotionally drained, and we were only half way through the day.