In Favor of the Child

I don't remember exactly how old I was when I was told that I was adopted. It was probably when my twin sister and I were about nine or ten years old.

"Adopted? What does that mean?" I asked my adoptive mother.

"It means that I didn't give birth to you and your sister," my adoptive mother nervously tried to explain. "Your father and I went to pick you out. You were chosen."

Chosen. That was the word that stuck in my head. That was the word that made me feel "special" sometimes. That was also the word that confused me. For, as special as I felt for being chosen, when all the other kids in school were merely born, I couldn't shake a deep-down sadness, an indescribable hurt that only an adopted child could know. It's the plain, indisputable fact that, before you were chosen, you were given up.

Sometimes, when I was lying in bed at night, I tried to imagine who my parents were. What did they look like? How old were they? Were they still alive or did they both die from "pneumonia" like my adoptive parents said they did?

"Who do I look like?" I would wonder. "What nationality am I?" "Does my mother think about me every year on my birthday?" Do I have any other sisters or brothers?

As tempting as it was to try to find the answers to all these questions, I never thought seriously about searching for my birth parents. Part of the reason was that I felt like I was being disrespectful to my adoptive parents. There was a blanket of secrecy surrounding our adoption. You didn't ask questions. It wasn't to be talked about. The subject seemed to hurt them and make them uncomfortable. It filled their eyes with fear.

As I got older, my friends would ask me, "Don't you want to search for your real parents?"

"Nope." I would answer curtly. "They gave me up. If they want to find me, then they're going to have to search for me."

So the years went by and the questions remained unanswered. I accepted that little hole in the pit of my stomach as a part of my body that would never be filled. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never know my birth parents. I would never look into their eyes or feel their arms around me. I got used to feeling like a kind of alien, who was just plopped down onto the planet Earth.

I assimilated.

But all that time, I felt like I was unconsciously looking for other people from "My Planet." Someone who looked like me, felt like I did, and spoke my language.

Luckily, I was physically healthy. So, when I filled out medical forms, which asked for a "family history" of various illnesses or conditions, I just filled in the space with the word "adopted."

But then something happened that changed everything. In an instant, my desire to find my birth family went from "lukewarm," to a "nuclear explosion."

Our son was diagnosed with "Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome," a life-threatening heart condition.

It hit me like a bomb. Our normal, fourteen-year-old child was suddenly in need of every kind of medical information we could get our hands on.

Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome is an unusual kind of heart problem. The doctors told us that it was "familial," which means that it runs in families in an "erratic" kind of way. A second cousin or aunt or uncle may have passed it on to our son.

But, they also told us that there were "sporadic" cases, which appeared in a family, and never showed up again. The risk of "sudden death" from the problem was greater, depending on which category our son fell into.

When I started my search, I was told that all my records were "sealed." The only information that was available to me was "non-identifying" information. This information was unfortunately of no help to me, because Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome wasn't even named until the 1970's, after EKG's began to be used. All the "non-identifying" information that was given to me was filed in the 1950's. I knew that the only way I was going to find this illness in my family was to find relatives of mine and talk to them.

It suddenly occurred to me that, because my records were sealed and I had no access to my medical history, my son had no medical history, either! A system that was designed to protect my natural parents was indirectly hurting my son. I was furious!

In addition, my son was getting worse. His life-threatening episodes were becoming more frequent. They "upped" his dosage of medication. It didn't help.

Let me tell you, there's no mountain, no valley, no river and no ocean that a mother won't find her way over, through, or across, when her child is sick. She would lie, cheat, and steal and know that God would forgive her. Court records, seals, judges, and prison time are words that mean nothing, when she's looking at her son lying in a hospital bed. She would gladly walk through fire to save him.

One day, during our many stays at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, I looked at my son, and thought, "The court always rules in favor of the child, right? Well, the court didn't rule in favor of my child!"

Then something else occurred to me. At the time our son was hospitalized, I was thirty-five years old. But, I was still a child of adoption. In the adoption triangle, I was the only one who never got to put my hand up, and voice my opinion, in the adoption process. My birth parents made a choice to have me. My adoptive parents made a choice to adopt me. What choice did I have? None.

In a way, both my son and I were suffering because of a "mistake" my birth parents made. How unfair that is. We did nothing wrong, and yet we were suffering unjustly because of it.

I made a vow to find my family any way I could. And I did find them! Seven siblings altogether and more, so we hear. A set of twin boys is out there somewhere, they've told us. But I haven't been able to find them. They say that their last name might be "Glasgow" or "Martinson." We think they were born in Newark, NJ, around 1953 or 1954. It's rumored that one of the twins died shortly after birth. We suspect that he might have had the same heart condition as our son.

We're told that our birth father also had more children. Their last name should be recorded as "Kunz." We think that they might be living in the San Francisco area of California.

By talking to my relatives, I did learn that there was a second cousin who died suddenly from a "heart problem." We suspect that he had Wolff-Parkinson-White-Syndrome, too.

Our son has had three heart operations and is now a healthy, happy, twenty-three year old young man.

His mother has become a supporter of open birth records, providing that the adopted "child" is an "adult." Adopted "children" have to come "first," since we were "last" when it came to the decisions that were made "on our behalf." At the very least, we should have access to the same information everyone else has. Shouldn't we?

Mutual reunion registries are great, but they won't work if the birth parent is deceased. And if you can't prove that the parent is deceased, you can't have your records either.

My view on birth parent confidentiality is this: "You made the mistake and I'm very sorry about that. But, it's unfair of you to make me suffer for a mistake that you made. If I didn't do anything wrong, why am I being punished? My rights should come before yours, because I'm the innocent one here. I appreciate your giving me up, to give me a better life, but I should have the right to know everything about me."

I feel that any birth parent has the right to deny a reunion with the child they gave up. But the adoptee should at least be given the chance to search.

Finding my siblings has been one of the blessings that resulted from our son's medical emergency. It has been one of the most happy, wonderful, and rewarding experiences of my life to find and to get to know our sisters and brother.

Our birth mother is deceased. I wonder if she is looking down on all of her children, now reunited. I wonder what she thought when I found her son and daughter both living in the same town just a mile away from each other! And I wonder what she thought about her oldest daughter and me living in the same town, at the same time, for almost two years.

Did she laugh when three of her daughters picked up their forks at their first family meal, and realized that they were all left-handed? Does she get a kick out of us when we play practical jokes on each other? Does she like to watch us as we get together every year for a Christmas party at one of our sister's houses? Does she enjoy it when we attend the weddings of our children, having missed the opportunity to be at each other's weddings?

I hope she knows how blessed we all feel that we found each other while there's still time for us to enjoy each other. I hope she's smiling and happy that her children are all together, as it should be. We can't get back the years we lost, but we have many years ahead of us to enjoy.

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