adoptedwriter

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I grew up in the 1960s-80s in Cincinnati, Ohio. At the time it was practically every kid's dream, boy or girl, to watch he Reds, meet the Reds, acquire players' autographs, have a Reds shirt and play the game yourself....even if all you did was play with a whiffle ball or tennis ball in the back yard. Every kid loved the Big Red Machine. I remember dashing in from school, changing clothes and going out to someone's back yard to play ball every sunny afternoon. It's what all the kids on my street did.

This was before steroid drug abuse, hating on immigrants, (and many players were former Cubans and Venezuelans), denying the National Anthem and other scandalous behaviors that way too many athletes today are known for. Back then we just wanted to feel absorbed in the game and appreciate the magical way the Big Red Machine era players seemed in tune like a family. We learned about their lives outside of baseball: Who was married, who had kids, where they came from before Cincinnati, where they hung out in the off season, did they play other sports, etc. 

I don't collect much fandom memorabilia, but I do have a few treasured souvenirs from the hey day of the Big Red Machine era, and I will never part with them:
a home run baseball that Johnny Bench hit...My uncle was in the stands and caught it...ticket stubs: one for play offs and one for a World Series game...buttons, mugs, high-ball glasses, a post card which is autographed by all the BRM players, If I go to a game now, I have my "super-fan" wear: My Bench 5 shirt, my red and white lei, my Reds logo headband and lanyard, a drawstring bag and earrings.

They don't play now like they used to, but I am still a fan at heart.

We got the good news we were hoping for. Yay!  It’s like advancing to a next level.  Now we look to August 6th for the next wave of good things to come. It’s all good. 
My family gets a point in the win column!

 

 

Most likely readers here already know that I am adopted, ( see DW/LJ handle). Most people on my Facebook also know unless they never see some of my news feed posts. I was painfully ashamed of being adopted for years; decades actually. I lied through my teeth to friends, colleagues and anyone else because I detested people’s responses like:

 

“You’re so lucky.”

“It was God’s plan.”

“You’re special because you were chosen.”

and my personal favorite, “You should thank your lucky stars!”

 

Those sayings only made me feel conflicted, ashamed for being under par and infantile. Since I wanted to avoid those conversations, I kept my mouth shut and faked it till I made it. That plan worked for a long time. 

 

Then I found a support group and I found my biological family. I wasn’t ashamed of my family, so I decided I shouldn’t keep hiding. Still, I had to learn how to do that, and part of learning how to “come out” would mean I’d have to learn how to deal with those less-aware societal comments I detested. 

 

Now my adoption is no secret. It’s not a source of shame, and

I have a rebuttal or a way to debunk each one of these one-sided remarks. For me to be lucky, at least one other person had to be unlucky and pay a helluva price. What kind of luck is that?  What if I don’t believe in a traditional G-d?  Puppies get chosen from a litter. Who should I thank?  My parents who adopted me?  Do you thank your parents who didn’t have to adopt you but still raised you? How much more thankful than you am I supposed to be?

 

Not only can I express these feelings in writing to my online friends and communities. If necessary, I can express these thoughts in real life. What I’ve discovered more often than not is that most people then reply with:

 

“I never thought about it that way before.”

“I can see how you think that way.”

and “That makes sense.”

 

This day and age is a lot “safer” for adopted people to not just come out but also speak up about their situation. We don’t agree with 100% closed adoptions, hidden truths, adoption for major profit, gaslighting or demeaning of anyone’s personal feelings regarding being adopted. We do agree with first-family support first, providing honest medical and heritage information and professional training that is specific to the adoptee experience for counselors, therapists and clergy. 

 

DNA testing is bringing more scientific evidence of how nature and nurture both have a place as well as the fact that missing and secret family members who were born out of wedlock years ago can’t be kept in a closet any longer. DNA = Do Not Argue. Adoptees are coming out, and we are outing the secret keepers one by one, agency by agency, state by state and country by country. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by my husband's dietary restrictions post by pass surgery:

Enjoy Every Sandwich:

 

Whole wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough rye?

Which bread type will I try?

The least in carbs, the highest in grain 

high fructose corn syrup … bad for the brain. 

 

Ham, turkey, roast beef, chicken?

Tuna, salami, in the kitchen

Processed meat is not good eaten’ 

Limited choices. I feel beaten. 

 

Provolone, mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss?

Special sauces brought pure bliss. 

Cheese has fat and sodium

Too much queso and I’ll need Imodium. 

 

Can’t eat this. Shouldn’t have that. 

Too many grams of saturated fat. 

All those carbs and all that salt

Lousy genetics, no one’s fault.

 

All I want is to like my eats

And to not have to analyze every treat

Or feel like a zero because I ate a gyro

or a ne’er do well because of my HDL.

 

So if you have more luck than me

and can enjoy a BLT

or a Reuben or something else from the deli

or even just a peanut butter and jelly

 

savor and appreciate

every sandwich that you ate!

 Dear BB2.0,

 

Where are you? We’ve been waiting for a year now. When BB1 suddenly left last year we thought you’d appear soon, but no such luck. What’s going on?

 

What can I do to encourage you out of the shadows? We pray; we wish; we live well; we work to create good Karma. 

 

We’ve been trying to tell you for months how much you will be loved and cared for in this family. I know the world must look kinda scary and ridiculous right now between politics, acts of hate and climate changes,  but we, your family, are good people. We’re resilient, nurturing and ready for you.

 

For now, your cousin, HoneyB is taking the limelight. She’s the center of our world. She’s a great joy, but also ready to grow up and share life with her first cousin, you. 

 

Your future mom, most of all, is ready for you now to baby-step, (literally), out from the shade and join your future parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grandparents in the light which is your big, fun, welcoming and forever grateful gathering of family and friends

 

I get it.  The shade equals protection. Shade shields us from worry and challenges. Shade can grant security, but know that your parents will also be able to provide safety and stability for nurturing your young spirit. You will be fine. You will be raised to meet and exceed the demands of life. You will learn that life is good, and you will always have support. You, BB2.0 will learn how to bring positive energy to everything and everyone around you. You will be kind, mindful, brave. You’ll be a hard worker, a life long learner, at times a misfit but also a survivor, but most of all, you will be one of us. 

 

Chest tube is out. O2 is good. BP is low...like lower than normal, but that might be the drugs...He sat in a chair for a while, He is eating "real" food...He's getting potassium, magnesium, serotonin and a few other supplements but pain is low (relatively) and water retention is not that bad. (Some is expected. Lasix takes care o that.) Hub is responding well. He prob is not pleased that I chose to come home tonight instead of stay at the hospital, but I needed a break, a shower, and consistent sleep. I also just needed time to myself. I'm thankful he's doing OK. I'm thankful he is so responsive and not snippy, critical and cranky like my mom gets. Hope it stays that way. Overall, today was a "Good Day". Fuzzy1 and MX got moved and I was able to spare 2 hours to go help them as well. A baby gift arrived on our porch today...Giver is unknown for now. Hub also received a nice book from someone via Amazon. Giver is not known. Hmmm...

I miss my father-in-law. He was the most reliable, honest and unwavering person I have ever known. He was the embodiment of the American Dream, (as were many men of his era). Steve was born into middle class, rural Ohio, raised by his mother and adoring grandparents on a farm. Steve’s dad was aloof, boisterous and not around much, (off carousing and being a stunt pilot-turned-WWI and II Air Force hero). His father, “The Colonel”, as even his children knew him, insisted that his son would never be able to run a business successfully.

My father-in-law proved his father wrong by working his way up, first by working under others for larger companies, learning everything he could. Steve had good attention to detail, enjoyed his education, made a few very close friends and patiently waited for his time to shine. In the 1960s, he started up his own company and did very well until he retired in the early 1990s. It was not always easy because when you own your own business, you pretty much have to be more married to your work than you are to your spouse if you want your job and the jobs you’ve created for others to continue. Somehow he managed both work and marriage, (52 years), successfully and with style.

His life wasn’t as easy as he made it look, but he never gave up and never lost focus of what mattered to him; basically doing better in all the ways that his revered war hero father said would never come to pass. Steve always managed to do the right thing.

As a dad and husband, the man was Ward Cleaver, of Leave It To Beaver fame. Steve seemed to always have a solution for everything. He was not arrogant or a know-it-all. He was just that wise and level-headed. His role in life, it seemed, was to make other people’s lives less complicated and less worrisome. He was the ideal Boy Scout; always prepared, respectful to all, filled with integrity and incredibly helpful. He was a good dad who never enabled his kids but instead masterfully, quietly and calmly taught his sons about self-sufficiency and kindness.

He gave everyone the feeling that all issues could be dealt with. All questions had an answer. There was a tool for fixing anything broken and the best way to handle any conflict was with patience, perseverance, research and humor.

Steve had the best advice. He was stable and seemed god-like leading his family with a calming and loving hand.

I wish he were still here. He would be proud of how our kids and their spouses have turned out. He’d delight in his two great grandchildren and be proud of how his son, my husband looked after both his mother and aunt who suffered from Alzheimer’s for years. Steve would be impressed at how my husband, has become the next problem solver in both his career and in his home life.

Sadly, sometimes there’s one quandary that can’t always be solved: a serious medical diagnosis. Steve couldn’t escape it, and now my husband is facing a similar predicament. We don’t have an older, well informed, reassuring parent figure to guide us and pave the way this time. We’re on our own, and that’s scary as hell.

Adulting is hard. Adulting with no guidance is harder. Adulting with a serious diagnosis is terrifying. I’m not sure what to do…

I need votes! If I end up in a tie / write off situation I would prob have to sacrifice because the Baby is coming in 1-3 days! (Thank you medical induction process) Here's the link: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1013689.html I will most likely take a bye next week unless some sort of masterpiece in perfect form just spills forth lickety-split. Last day o work before Thanksgiving Break. Gotta make it count! Thanks for any help you can offer! (by voting)

I have an original birth certificate and a fabricated (aka “amended”) birth certificate. This happens a lot with adopted people. You might think it’s kinda cool and noteworthy to have two birth documents but it’s actually complicated. After 57 years, I’ve learned to deal with it, but It’s taken some soul-searching.

When I was very small and my (adoptive) parents explained that I was adopted they showed me my birth certificate. The only one they had was the changed one, but it was theirs, and it was mine. It bonded us as a family. It was the piece of identity on paper that I used for obtaining a social security number, a driver’s license, a passport, and a job. That paper was me. Only it wasn’t all me. It was legal, and it was real, but it also made part of me unreal.

My amended birth document contains my adoptive parents’ names as if they’d been the ones who conceived and birthed me. It lists my hospital of birth and my birth date. However, it does not list my time of birth nor my birth length/weight. Everyone I know has these tidbits of information. I often felt disturbed that my paperwork was lacking, (especially when people would talk about how big someone’s baby was and at what time they entered this world). You wouldn’t think those little-bitty details would matter that much, but they did to me. Honestly, until my mid-20s I hated, (yes literally), hated my birth certificate because it wasn’t real enough and it was not inclusive. Instead, I had a societally expected text to follow, and it was bullcrap because I did not have what other “normal” (in my young mind) people had.

My so-called script was to acknowledge that I was an adopted “child” and I was “chosen” by my adoptive parents, so that made me “ special” and “grateful”.

News flash: “Normal” people don’t use scripts; not for their birth story.

It took years for me to find the words to explain why this parlance was no good. For one thing, a child grows up. I’m not a child now, nor do I want to be. Adopted people do not want to be regarded as a perpetual child, but in many states, this is how adoption law works. We can smoke, drink, buy lottery tickets and serve in the military, but many of us cannot access our first birth certificate that has detailed information about our true start in life.

I’ve always associated the word, “chosen” with picking out a puppy from a litter or the old TV commercial slogan, “Choosy mothers choose Jif.” Being chosen implies that the adoptee has had no control. This verbiage potentially sets someone up to be hesitant and less inclined to seek leadership. Being chosen also implies hoping that other people out there deem you worthy enough to be selected. I refuse to believe that a child or baby in an orphanage who happened to never be adopted is in any way less worthy.

“Grateful”. Again this is a highly charged word. I’m grateful for a lot of things, but should I be more grateful than anyone else? How do you measure gratefulness anyway?

I found out from watching a TV talk show that adopted people in Ohio could actually acquire their original birth certificate, (referred to as an OBC in Adoption-land), so I sent Vital Statistics a twenty dollar check, and six weeks later the paper-pushers in Columbus sent me a big, fat envelope with copies of my real identity. My OBC even had listed the first, middle and last names of my birth parents, my pre-adoption name and a notation showing that I was not a first birth for my biological mother. I had a sibling out there!

The day I sat at my kitchen table and finally absorbed the realities reflected on these papers I changed from a functional but incomplete person to someone who felt whole and authentic. I no longer had to rely on a fabricated narrative about when, where and how I was born. My shame for not being grateful enough lifted from my soul, replaced by empowerment.

As I researched and uncovered more truths about my birth family for the rest of that year, I learned all I needed to know. I had to accept that due to my birth mother’s early-in-life death, I would never know all tidbits, but I had more than ever before. I had enough. I became the real me.

These days I happily share my birth story and I no longer hate it or find my natal facts lacking except in one way.
After all that time wishing and searching, my birth time and size were still omitted. Some things will always remain a mystery…

A belief among educators is that first you learn to read. Then you read to learn.

When my younger daughter, Fuzzy1, was in early elementary school, I suspected that she had some sort of learning struggle beyond just “math sucks, reading is boring”, etc. I knew better than to compare her to her older sister who was a “keen, lean, reading machine” by mid kindergarten. The intelligence was clearly there in my Fuzzy1; it was the wiring between her eyes and her brain that was not standard issue. Her speech was advanced. Her memory and observation skills were in some ways better than mine. She was a smart, spirited little girl, and it broke my heart when she felt misunderstood and frustrated while struggling to work out sounds, blends and digraphs in even simple words. It was heart breaking because I loved reading books, and I wanted the same for my girl.

Books were my escape as a kid. Books were like a socially acceptable TV in my head when I was grounded from regular TV or needed a brain break while struggling with my own school work or unpleasant kids at school. Books were heaven.

I feared my youngest daughter would never have the beloved sanity-saving outlet from which I benefited and self-soothed. I grieved how we might not ever share a love for reading together. One of her teachers described her as “at risk” which both frightened and angered me.

My kid was not like that.

We invested in the “Hooked on Phonics” System to the tune of almost $400 including shipping and handling. We received hundreds of cute paper back, short stories with lovely, bright illustrations and easy to read vocabulary. Fuzzy1 wanted nothing to do with the overwhelming pile of more books she could not read. She used them as target practice, flinging them at the wall.

We began the process of having her tested for special services at school. As I suspected, the testing showed her to be dyslexic. To what extent couldn’t be determined because she was so little, but the school admins recognized her skills at socializing, art, and using her visual, auditory, and tactile memory effectively. She recognized symbols and logos for cars, clothing and restaurants, so literacy at some level was there. She had so much potential.

It took time, but we spent as many opportunities as we could reading together. I wanted her to love literature. We purchased and checked out audio books when possible, and this saved time and reduced her anxiety and frustration. We took shopping trips to the local Barnes and Noble and libraries. Bringing home books was never something I said no to. I wanted both my kids to always know that reading was a positive thing.

The LRC teachers and aides at school worked their magic, and as a fellow professional, I knew how to work WITH them and trust them instead of being “that mom” at every conference and on report card day. I’m trained to teach kids Spanish. Mrs. H. was trained to teach kids reading and how to manage organization, time and stress management as it pertains to learning. (I learned a few teaching tips myself from dear Mrs. H. which I’ve passed on to my tutoring kids. )

Fuzzy1 did learn to love story books in time. She grew up as educational software became more available for in-home purchase, and my husband researched what was best to buy and which games and activities our kids could enjoy together. One of their favorites was about taking a tour of the Titanic. They also explored math blaster and Mario typing. However, diskettes and DVDs never have outnumbered all the physical books at various reading levels which gradually filled our house.

Between the dedicated educators she had from second grade through her senior year of high school, combined with non stop family support and enrichment, Fuzzy1 indeed learned how to read and appreciate anything she set her mind to. Due to time constraints, more of her reading has been for school and professional needs, and she can do it accurately and in a timely way. Dyslexia can’t be “cured”, but it can be managed. It did not stop her from realizing her dream of becoming a nurse. If anything it’s made her a better advocate for people of need. She’s one of the most dedicated and compassionate people you’ll ever meet.

Two weeks ago we had a baby shower for Fuzzy1 and her own baby, who is due in November. Fuzzy1 isn’t much into baby trends or assigning themes, but when you get a bunch of teachers and librarians together for a shindig, the main idea for the party before the blessed event was obvious: Bring A Book!

How 20 people managed to bring 20 different pieces of written work, (no duplicate purchases), is amazing. MX’s grandma gave them the collection of MX’s dad’s Little Golden Books she’d saved for 55 years and she signed each book for her future granddaughter.

I have a bookcase vacuum-packed with my girls’ books too; everything from Maggie Simpson’s Counting Book to Everybody Poops, the Curious George and Madeline tales plus good ole Dr. Seuss. My new favorite kid books are the Pete The Cat series by Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean. Will we ever have time to read them all? You bet your Wonky Donkey we will! This kid is going to have a lot of reading material. One way or another, this grandchild, and hopefully a few others, will never lack literary luxuries.

There’s no such thing as having too many books!