I always knew. We were told before we understood what adoption meant. My brother and I have different skin tones from our parents so it’s fairly obvious but they were truth-tellers anyway. What a difference the truth makes.
Growing up in a family that had no blood ties but who were bound, instead, by love gave me a specific way of thinking about the world. Anyone I met was potentially related to me. If we go way back, we all stem from one human being but how many of us think about it with every interaction? I looked for likeness in everyone.
When I met my biological mother, me 20, her 37, it felt unimaginably easy. We connected through the Maine Adoption Reunion Registry. She was in love and had just gotten married. They would end up adopting a child themselves. I would be fortunate enough to be a stem-cell donor for a transplant that would give her almost three more years of life.
She led me to finding my biological father five years later. To make contact for the first time, I would take three buses and arrive in a part of Maine seen by very few. I’d meet my two half sisters, 9 and 11 years my junior who’d just learned about me and who were (thankfully) excited to have another sister from NYC.
I’d learn I have my father’s nose and knees and my mother’s hands, handwriting and gestures. I’d learn that to have four parents felt exceedingly lucky. The two who raised me felt like my parents and two who made me felt more like siblings or, dare I say, angels. I’d also learn that losing four parents is doubly painful.
When I meet other adoptees, I feel a sense of ease. It’s like a secret society. Because there is no special handshake the connection is typically revealed in some roundabout way. No two perspectives are the same, but I notice similarities. Fierce independence is a character trait my brother and I share across very dissimilar personalities. Did the experience of being given up at birth prepare us to feel untethered and wildly self-protective from the first breath? Or are these our inherent personalities? These are gloriously unanswerable questions.
