"Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known." - Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto

Richard Ford, a novelist, responds to the quote above in regards to why he writes by beginning an essay with, "I've often been guilty of trying to answer the question above. (Why I Write) I've done it on public stages after readings, in panel discussions with dozing colleagues, standing before rows of smirking students, for cruel and cynical journalists in hotel rooms at home and abroad. And I can honestly say that I would never spontaneously have asked myself this question (Why do I Write?) had not someone else seemed interested or had my financial fortunes not seemed (correctly or incorrectly) tied to such speculation."

As I soak my literary thoughts in Ford's self-perceived revelations I am suddenly aware of two things. One being, how incredibly true the quote above is for me as a writer and two, how insanely true the same quote is in regards to my endeavors in adoption.

I suppose the mania began in 1995 when I suddenly became able to bring myself through the haze of relinquishment and for the first time see clearly what I had done. I had relinquished my son. Yet every recollection I had of those all to quick moments leading up to the final moment in which I surrendered my infant into the arms of his adoptive mother are swirled with a palate of dulled colors, tainted by frightened tears. The portrait simply does not make sense. The incorrigible emotions I suffered bled me of any mature reasoning and 'because it was the right thing' suddenly held very little weight. I needed to know more. More about my son's adoptive parents, more about the agency, more about how the financial aspects were handled, how I had actually made my decision, and ultimately why I wasn't getting pictures and letters on time. What did I sign? What did it mean? Did semi-openness have any benefits at all? Thus, the mania of my seeking out more information began. I had done something that had altered my very being ... and yet knew very little of it other than the immense grief I was unable to work through. Far too many unknowns kept me feverish during the nights and like the walking dead during the days. I had to make sense of something.

Yet as the years passed and I was expected to quit dwelling and begin moving on, I found myself feeling forced to complete the mania in secret. After hearing, "You did the right thing, Jonothan is loved and happy now," so many times with a hint of, "Please don't talk about this anymore," I disputed the tranquility others wanted for me and knew I would not accept peace until I had managed to turn over every rock and explore every bridge. The agency fell quickly into line with those in my life who wanted nothing more than for me to move ahead, and yet I received no counseling. I suppose, at that time, I may not have accepted it anyway, for my journey was one of knowledge not healing. When the pictures and letters did not arrive the mania took on an entirely new objective. Not only did I need to know how I did what I did, now I needed to know how it was my son's adoptive parents were doing what they were. Truly an incurable need.

By the year 2000, and just shortly after my son's tenth birthday, it was by mistake that the agency revealed my son's identity. After a ten year plight to know more than what I'd been given to know, I was faced head on with my first opportunity. I could pick up the phone and dial his number. I could get on a plane and sit at his front door. It was the ending, it seemed, to the never-ending story. The mania could very well be done.

As a writer I take great risks in spontaneously conjuring up characters and ciphering plots that can just as easily either inspire or horrify. These symbols, on paper, come from imagination or just as easily my own industrial illusion of a perfect time. Regardless of what I write, I have one ultimate safety net. No reader can truly decipher from where what I've written comes.

Ford describes, "The true connections could never really be traceable because they exist only in that murky silent, but fecund interstellar night where impulse, free association, instinct, and error reign. And even if I were faithfully to try explaining the etiological connections in a piece of writing I'd done, I still might lie about them, or I might just be wrong because I forgot. But in any case I'd finally have to make something up pretty much the way a scholar does - though not exactly like a writer who, as I said before, always starts with nothing."

It is fairly easy to take such risks in writing. Could I take such a risk by picking up my telephone and dialing the number of a child I'd seen but once as an infant? Did I have what it took to be able to lend the story to him in such a way that would result in traceable connections? Or would I, inadvertently, be forcing upon him the very same condition I suffer from ... that incurable mania to make the unknown known. Much too great a risk. So I gently replace the telephone receiver back into its lulling hold and step away. And as many writers do, I began to turn the plot. My journey as a birthmother looks very much like my basement wall during the first stages of my first novel. White lined 3 x 5 cards are taped up in messy rows all around the four gray-cemented walls and I grow dizzy attempting to fit characters and possible scenarios into a workable outline. What next ... the question I ask myself.

And then I see it. Fifteenth card, fourth row from the right on the third wall. This is where I go next. It was then I began to reach out to adoptive mothers in the safety zone of cyberspace. I would begin to share my story in the hopes that these mothers would show their true feelings, how they felt, why they did certain things, what fears motivated them, what reasoning lie behind their actions. If I could seek out a majority truth, then perhaps I would know, in a second seat sort of way, the unknown I lived with. How my son's adoptive parents feel about me, why they are unable to follow through with the semi-openness, and how and when and why they talk to my son about me. If there is any possible hope of communication in the following years, and if so, the best way to prepare for it. And deep down, I ache to know what they remember about that final day ... how I appeared to them, the words I might have said, and the image they took with them when they took my son.

A year passed and admittedly so I learned a great deal from many amazing adoptive mothers who so graciously shared their hearts with me. They became, without my creating, entities of a realistic pattern. Characters with meaning, purpose, revelation, and before I knew it I had fallen deeply in love with these women who had so easily stepped into the plot, turned the story, and eventually helped me change my own pattern. All I was seeking took a turn, and slowly in a very chameleon sort of way my colors and my needs changed. I, for this time, did not seek so eagerly to know my own unknown, but to make the unknown known for others. Very much like a parent who cautions a teenager on the devastating effects of alcohol abuse, always following the warning with something such as, "Trust me, I know, I've been there and don't want to see you go there too. I know what can happen." Fueled by some awkward sense of control, and I use that word as a metaphor only, I began reaching out in the hopes that someone else would not have to suffer the unknown as I had.

I began devising checklists of all the things I should have asked but didn't know to. I wrote furiously in an attempt to travel back in time and re-do all the moments that could have saved me heartache. What I did not expect during this time was the harsh revisitation of my emotional truths that had for so long been buried under the dulling desire I'd been victim to. The grief, the loss, the agony, the denial, and the raw truth of the act I'd done exploded onto the pages. I was forced to read what I had no intention of writing. Realizing only then, no definition, no unknown, no amount of seeking could ever change the decision I made and the effects it had. The only sense I could make of it was having enough sense to accept it for what it was, and slowly begin to craft in exultation who then it would make me out to be.

Ford concludes his essay with, "Frank Kermode wrote thirty years ago, in his wonderful book "The Sense of an Ending," "It is not that we are connoisseurs of chaos, but that we are surrounded by it, and equipped for coexistence with it only by our fictive powers." To my mind, not to believe in invention, in our fictive powers, but instead to think that all is traceable, that the rabbit must finally be in the hole waiting, is (because it's dead wrong) a certain recipe for the williwaws of disappointment and a small but needless reproach to mankind's saving capacity to imagine what could be better and, with good hope, then, to seek it."

I can only propose that many birthmothers, like me, at some point in their journey have an aching desire to know more. In the beginning this desire emerges in the form of the many cruel and agonizing what if's, those demanding questions we torture ourselves raw with far into sleepless nights. The should I's, the could I's, and the what now's, all penetrating ghosts of our self-doubts. The dulling questions we know, subconsciously, will never quite be answered yet we ask them anyhow as if to punish ourselves. And then they come again, for those of us who have experienced un-met expectations, that travesty we're faced with when the path we had hoped for takes a drastic turn. When the openness we had, all that while, to justify our decision with, is lost and we are suddenly faced with just our choice and why we made it. Every reason we believed validated our choice slips from our grasp and now we ask ourselves, did I choose right, where did I go wrong, what did I do to deserve this, and ultimately ... the reason I chose this way was because I believed it was best for my child ... is it still the best even though everything has changed? Suddenly the somewhat known becomes the un-known. Where once we felt a deep and welcome peace when sitting in agreement about the course of the adoptions we were entering into, where once we sat at dinner with two people who would raise our child and had not one inhibition in regards to how they felt about us; now we fear all that we believed to be true and wonder ... how in the world can I justify this now?

And yet again it seeps slowly into our very beings when we are faced with reunion. The unknown is presented to us yet we cannot help but to adhere to expectations. Those dream-like assumptions of what we want it to be, what we hope it to be, what it might be from the years of our illusions as we struggled to define all those variables we did not truly understand. The what if's rear their ugly heads again, yet this time it is not just our sanity at stake but the possibility of holstering a relationship with our children. We begin to define our relinquishments at an all new level; we struggle to make sense of the unknown yet not for our sake this time, but for our children. They will want answers.

It seems at every stage we fall prey to the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known. So then, can there be finality? A conclusion that has the power to suddenly shock us into revelation? A last word that suddenly makes sense of it all?

If there were, I wouldn't want to read it. I wouldn't even write it. All great writers know that our job is to lead the reader up the mountain, knowing just when the perfect moment exists for us to step away and allow them to take in the view without us. Great writers have the ability to write their own truths in such a way that causes readers to see their own.

As birthmothers this is the ultimate freedom. This is the final acceptance of the unknown. To make our decisions and to live our lives to the greatest extent possible so that when our children take that trek up the mountain seeking answers to their unknowns, we will have the strength to step kindly off to the side and allow them the view to themselves.

So if you, like me, have spent any amount of time considered wasteful on seeking the unknown, remember Ford's words ... " ... instead to think that all is traceable, that the rabbit must finally be in the hole waiting, is (because it's dead wrong) a certain recipe for the williwaws of disappointment and a small but needless reproach to mankind's saving capacity to imagine what could be better and, with good hope, then, to seek it."

After all, conjuring up all the ways the rabbit attempts to find the hole is much more pleasurable than simply tossing him into it. And maybe just maybe, even if the rabbit was in the hole waiting, you may not even get to the hole yourself until far after the snake that, to your surprise, was also seeking the unknown.

Using Ford's explanation to decipher my own ... And I can honestly say that I would never spontaneously have asked myself this question (Why do I seek the unknown?) had I not assumed someone else would one day seem interested (my son) or had my emotional fortunes not seemed (correctly or incorrectly) tied to such speculation.

So I gently surrender to these things I've assumed needed knowing. I take pride in the ways in which my decision was made to relinquish my first-born; by heart, by spirit, by a reassuring peace that asked me to trust in a reason I could never explain. I will treasure the imaginary characters I have drawn into belief, the adoptive parents raising a son who eventually will embody the plots of two separate novels. I will forever continue forward, leaving signs of my presence along the way, upwards towards the mountaintop to where both closure and new beginnings coincide together inside a view that I will never see through any other eyes than my own. And every question I have kept, every curiosity I've played with, will eventually pale in comparison to the revelation possibly given me by the only One who truly can define the unknown. Even then I may reject the knowledge of it simply because I am a writer ... and to have a definitive ending would never do.