It was the moment, they said, when we became a family. They said it felt like an absolute miracle, not unlike the moment they met Charlotte, my little sister who was conceived by complete surprise shortly after they adopted me. The only difference, my mother was fond of saying, was that she wasn’t in any pain when she met me. That came later.
Growing up, I heard the story a million times, along with all the sentimental quotes about adoption, like the one framed in my bedroom for years: “Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but somehow miraculously still my own. Never forget for a single minute, you didn’t grow under my heart but in it.” I knew which celebrities had adopted babies, and more important, who had been adopted themselves: Steve Jobs, two presidents, including Bill Clinton (who was in the White House when I was born), two first ladies, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (who happened to also be married—how cool is that?), Darryl McDaniels from Run-DMC and, as my mother sometimes pointed out, Moses and Jesus.
Yet despite my full understanding of my adoption, I didn’t give much thought to my birth mother, and even less to my birth father. It was as if they were both bit players in the whole drama, completely beside the point but for their necessary contribution of a little DNA. And I certainly never felt rejected because they had given me up. My parents knew nothing about my birth mother, yet always explained with certainty that she didn’t “give me up” or “give me away”—she made a plan for me, the best one she could make under her circumstances, whatever those were. Looking back, I think they were probably just following the advice of some adoption book, but at the time I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. If anything, I felt sorry for her, believing that I was her loss; she wasn’t mine.
In fact, the first time I really wondered about her with anything more than a passing curiosity was in the fifth grade when we researched our family ancestry in social studies. I did my report on Ireland, like many of the kids in my class, explaining that my father’s people came from Galway, my mother’s from Cork. Of course, I understood that they weren’t really my bloodlines or my ancestors—and I made no bones about that fact in my report. Most everyone knew I was adopted, as I’d been in the same school since kindergarten, and it was no big deal, simply one of those bits of trivia, like being double-jointed or having an identical twin.
So I matter-of-factly informed the class that I knew nothing about my birth mother except that she was from Chicago. I didn’t know her name, and we had never seen a photo of her, but based on my blond hair and blue eyes, I guessed that she was Scandinavian—then narrowed it to Danish, maybe because I have a sweet tooth and liked the sound of it. My classmates seemed satisfied with this theory, except for annoying Gary Rusk who raised his hand, and without waiting to be called on, asked whether I was mad at my mother and if I ever planned on tracking her down. Envisioning a bounty hunter with a rifle and a couple of bloodhounds, I exchanged a look with my best friend, Belinda Greene. Then I cleared my throat and calmly replied, “I already have a mother. And no, I’m not mad at anyone.”
The seed was planted. Maybe I should be mad; clearly others would be—at least Gary would. He pressed on with his nosy line of questioning. “Could you find her if you wanted to? Like with a private investigator?”
“No. I don’t even, like, know her name. So how would I find her?” I said, thinking of all the many women who must have given birth at my hospital in Chicago on April Fools’ Day 1996.
Finished with my report, I sat down, and we went on to hear about Debbie Talierco’s Italian heritage. But for the rest of the class, and all that day in school, I couldn’t shake the thought of my birth mother. I didn’t yet want to find her, but I kept wondering if there was even a chance that I could.
So that night at the dinner table, during a tedious conversation about the Gallaghers’ newly adopted Yorkie puppy and how he kept nipping their toddler, and that they really needed to show that dog who was boss, I silently rehearsed the question that Gary had posed to me, somehow anticipating that it wasn’t something my parents, particularly my mother, wanted to discuss. It was one thing when they brought it up in the context of their prayers being answered; I knew it would be another thing altogether for me to focus on her.
“Why’d they get a Yorkie anyway? They should have rescued a dog,” Charlotte said, a tenderhearted animal lover. “I mean, it saves a life.”
I suddenly felt like a rescue dog myself, a total mutt, as I casually shook A.1. onto my pork chops, a habit I had picked up from my dad, who puts it on everything, including scrambled eggs.
“So I did this report today on my ancestors,” I began. “And, umm…my adoption came up.”
My mother stared at me, chewing, swallowing, waiting.