Like a band of gypsies they go down the highway...

T-minus 13 days until live reunion. I've scheduled my time off at work. I've rented a car. I've made reservations for my brother's flight.

Two weeks from now, I will no longer be an only child. I will be in a room with both my brothers, and my grandmother, and the entire extended family - with the sole exception of my father, who is the compass point of the entire meeting but missing. He will be far away, dealing with his life, which is sinking faster than a lead cannonball. I forgive him, though, because I am a misogynist and he is broken, and his flight from reality has very little to do with me.

I'm beginning to feel something that might be guilt as regards her.  I know that she will be a short fifteen minute drive from where we are going. I know where she lives, what she looks like, who she's married to, what she does in her spare time, and something of her relationship with her remaining child. The thing is, though, that she doesn't know I know. She doesn't know that I'm meeting my brother there, who she also gave away. She doesn't know that she's a grandmother, or that her grandson will go the places she went when she carried us in the space beneath her lungs. She knows nothing except that she had children - a lot of children - and abandoned them.

I did romanticize her. I read reunion stories of mothers who waited for thirty, or forty, or fifty years for their lost child to come back. I read about how they ached. But to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, "To lose one [child], Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose [a whole frigging lot of them] looks like carelessness." I think I could process this better if I were one of several children of varying ages who were removed from her care after she'd done something - but we weren't abused, or turned over to foster care, or kept past the one-week Healthy White Baby sell-by date. We were individually packaged for Domestic Infant Adoption, and only to be sold separately.

Rambling, rambling. But should I contact her, or no? Is this guilt, or am I looking for an excuse to break down a few barriers when I know I'm angry with her, and not able to give selflessly?

She should know all about giving, right? She's the original professional.

I'm a misogynist...

I have always described myself as a feminist. I'm a little reactionary in some of my politics and I have an abiding passion for Edmund Burke that makes me susceptible to the rhetoric of tea partiers, Fox commentators, and anyone else who quotes him with abandon - but I can juxtapose Wollstonecraft against Burke and find just as much to agree with even though they were mortal enemies. I'm a working mother - an executive - and I know how much I owe to the women in the generation before me who shrugged off their shackles and beat a path for me to follow. I'm pro-choice. I read Gertrude Stein and Gloria Steinem.  If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have called myself a socially-liberal feminist.

But I'm not.

And here's how I know - I forgive him more than I forgive her. It's misogyny. A woman should care about her children. A woman should love her children enough to fight for them, or at least to keep from having multiple kids and giving them away. A woman shouldn't walk away. A man, though - well, shouldn't we just be grateful that he was there, that he talked to us in utero, that he cared for her when she was pregnant, that he didn't drive her to the abortion clinic or drive away. That he went to the hospital, signed the paternity papers, and signed away his rights. He stuck around long enough to give me away, so he - he can be forgiven almost anything. Her? Not so much.

I don't agree with these feelings. I think they're sentiments that Sarah Palin would agree with, and that terrifies me. The reasoning is specious - but this isn't reason. It's just feelings, and that's what I feel. She should have tried harder. She isn't much of a mother.

She did it three times.  I have another half-sibling somewhere out in the world, not his, but hers - and she gave that one up as well. Four children, and she kept one. I don't know that I can forgive her.

I've forgiven him everything. And I hate myself for that.

Family History

I met my aunt, in person. She's the only one who lives in the same metro area that I was raised in, and that's just coincidence. We had dinner - my husband, my son, her husband, and us. My aunt takes after a side of the family that I don't, so we don't look alike. We have the same sense of humor, though, and that was wonderful. I'm glad that I met her first - it was less charged, and I feel better prepared for some of the upcoming reunions that will involve my immediate family.

Anyway, she gave me a photo album. It contains pictures of my father's family going back to the 1840's, when photography was new. It's amazing to trace them down through the years, as their resemblance to me grows stronger and stronger. It's amazing to look at someone born a hundred years ago and think, "I have her chin"...these are things that I knew, intellectually, were missing from my life. But having them - oh, that's another thing entirely. More than any other photo, I keep going back to the one taken shortly after my birth. My grandmother stands with her children; my uncle, my aunt and her first husband, and my father. And my mother. His hand is on her shoulder, and he's looking over the top of her head. They're staring into the camera. I'm the only grandchild at that point in time. And I'm missing. I'm a thousand miles away, I'm toddling out behind the barn, watching the horses, playing with my dog. I'm not there - but I'm in the world. I have a life unfolding, but all I see in that picture is my not-there-ness, a space in her arms where I should have been. So - gifts. That come wrapped in the pain of knowing that the picture is incomplete.

Is it wrong to think about photoshopping myself in? I'm tempted, just to see what it would have looked like if they had, you know...kept me.

It does hurt.

Reunion

B-Dad's girlfriend hates me, and would like to shut me out of their lives. Luke needs support that I can't give him from half a continent away. My grandmother is myself in forty years. And my aunt has developed a friendship with my husband in the past week that is shocking since he was supportive of the search but totally opposed to being involved in the result.

And despite the emotions that are swirling around me, I am left with life instead of a fairy tale. This is a family. This is my family. It's not perfect. It's a little screwy. And it makes me feel like I belong.

They (Dad) keep(s) apologizing because it's messy and hard and not Leave it to Beaver. But I don't want that - it would feel too much like Pleasantville. That isn't who I am. Good lord, I'm listening to Grace Slick as I type this.

I know that some of these feelings of amazement won't last. I hope that eventually they feel enough like real family that I can just look at them as a major pain in the a** and a joy and a blessing like I do with my a-fam. When I try to ignore them because I know they're not going to disappear, that's when I know I'll feel like we've settled - it may take years.

What I hope I don't lose is this feeling I get who I am, where I come from, and how I relate to the world. It's the first time in my life I've ever felt this way...

And we're off...

Once upon a time...

It isn't a fairy story, but it's my story. And my history, and my roots. The search is over, and reunion has slammed into me like a train.

I found Luke's father on Facebook. Luke's father is my father. Luke's mother is my mother. This is the story of how I happened.

They were high school sweethearts, in their way. She isn't the one with the taste in fast men - that came from him. She was a fast girl. He was her rock. They experimented - more a Bob Seger song than Barry Manilow. It was the seventies, and they were working on their night moves. And then...me. They were dealing with the fallout and leaning on each other. And then...Luke.

I have known my father less than a week; twenty-four hours now, and a few days in the hospital before my parents came to pick me up. I love him already. He's lovely and amazing. I wish I could take away his pain, which is real. I wish I could convince him that I love him as he is, and that I don't blame him for anything. He is very present. But he's hard on himself. I'm like him that way. First mothers say that they don't tell them what it will be like. That you look at the tiny faces and love them instantly. They don't tell us that we will look at their mature faces and love them instantly too. They don't tell us that it will be another family member; that their burdens will be our burdens, and their joys our joys, and that a connection can strike like lightning.

They don't tell you the things that you will hear that will break your heart won't be cruel, but kind.

• Sweetheart
• You're beautiful
• You're amazing
• I always wondered and hoped for you
• You are my daughter
• I want to be your son's grandfather, too
• You will live to be ninety
• Your great-grandfather was...
• You are just like me

I am processing, processing. I am grateful. My brother has finally broken out of his shell. It took seeing a picture of our father...

Life is lovely and amazing.

Cuttings

Biology is irrelevant to botany
Remove the shoot, and
Root and branch still grow
In disparate climes, in foreign soil
Truncheons thrive or wane; they never yearn

Are we heterogeneous or akin?
Do we thirst for voices thrummed
Amidst our oceanic sabbath?
The strumming of a particular
Heart and lungs - the rhythm
We sheltered under.
Not indifferent, nor immaterial
That mother
Evokes the heartbeat of one
But the hands of another.

Luke and Leia

Star Wars has become a major topic of conversation in our house. It isn't because I love the movies, although I have fond childhood memories of dressing up like Leia for Halloween and marrying off barbies to Han Solo action figures. Star Wars is my son's passion. And through it, I have found a way to bring my emotions, and my reality, down to a level where he can embrace what's happening. I find myself grateful for the first three episodes, which I didn't really connect to ten years ago when they were released.

I tell him that I'm like Princess Leia, and that I want to find my Padme and Anakin (and that no, I don't think my first father is anything like Lord Vadar - neither a Jedi nor evil). I have also had to try to explain about Luke, because there is a Luke in this story. He is the reason that I haven't yet contacted my birthmother.

My brother - and let's just go with this theme and call him Luke, shall we? - is not my twin, but close to it. He's a little less than two years my junior. I don't know yet if we have the same father; I would guess no, but I have no way of knowing one way or the other. Luke posted a few years ago on a website saying that he was looking for his first family. He gave a hyphenated last name for his first mother. The first part was my own birth name. We were born in the same hospital. I emailed him. At the time, it never occurred to me that we were related. I think I wanted to make sure that we connected in case either of us stumbled upon the wrong Skywalker in our search. All of the names involved - first mother's maiden name, her married name when she gave birth to Luke, her current married name, my adoptive name, and Luke's adoptive name - are terribly common. It's a miracle any of us ever managed to connect at all. Luke emailed me back, only to say that his first mother had given up a daughter a couple of years before him. The doctor and the attorney - both of whom handled no more than two adoptive families at any given time (no more than six or so adoptions per year) - were the same. Her last name wasn't that common.

Of course, I panicked. I think that's the moment when the fantasy died, and she became a real person. 'Homecoming Queen' didn't have another child two years later. She had given me up so as not to impede her medical school plans. But Real First Mother - this was the kind of girl who probably hung out on the corner with the smokers, drank Wild Turkey out of collectible bottles on the sly, and liked boys with fast cars, fast hands, and big mouths. In short - she was me. With less access to birth control.

About the time I was panicking, Luke was having his own life crisis, which had everything to do with his adoptive family and nothing to do with me. Our correspondence, however, trailed off. My guess is that both of us were scared to try to reopen the door. I didn't make the attempt until I stumbled upon her contact information, and it became real to me that she was our mother, and that he was my brother.

Tonight, I am worried about Luke. I spoke to his a-Mom last week. I've sent him emails. I've tried to connect on Facebook. He hasn't logged in to any of the sites in more than a month, and he hasn't talked to his a-Mom since the beginning of September. Maybe that's not unusual for a 29 year old single man. Maybe he's off on a hero's journey, fighting the Empire. It's strange to be so concerned about someone I've never met - but he's my brother. And as much as I know it isn't rational, I worry.

My son really wants to meet his uncle - especially one that's been described as Luke Skywalker. I will eventually have to tell him that my brother isn't a Jedi and doesn't have a lightsaber - but not yet. Not yet.

Secret Fantasies of the Adopted

We fantasize about our birth families. I'm not sure it's our fault, since the whole history of literature is littered with tales of secret adoption. The practice of adoption as we know it now, as a complete severing of ties and a legal 'rebirth' into a new family, is unknown to history. Before the twentieth century, legal adoptions didn't consume the identity of the adoptee, and ties between birth families and adoptive families were maintained. Witness Jane Austen's brother, Edward Austen Knight, who was adopted by infertile cousins well into his childhood; he did not cease to be her brother, and his daughter, Fanny, was Jane's favorite niece. Before the twentieth century, when infants were removed from their natural families and raised under the fiction of being the biological children of unrelated people, it was usually under the auspices of fairy tales and myths. When we fantasize, we have history on our side, and literature; we also have law. By issuing 'false' birth certificates which obfuscate our actual identities, the legal system engages in its own fairy story.

From Oedipus and Heracles, to Moses and Mohammad, to Krishna and Roland, a great many cultures feature stories of children who were cursed, or illegitimate, or would be killed if they were kept with their natural families. Most of the time, the children turned out to be powerful, divine, or blessed. If we adoptees imagine our natural mother as a goddess, are we not just absorbing the Heracles myth into our personal narrative? If we imagine some greater destiny that will be fulfilled once we find our people, are we not evoking Moses?

The hardest part of the search is confronting the fantasy that we have built. We are not the only ones who construct the fiction - our adoptive parents play a role as well. Drummed into us, over and over, 'she was young and scared and wanted a good family and a good career, and he was a star basketball player who wanted a chance at scholarships', it takes us twenty or thirty years of feeling inadequate (just where did that basketball talent go?) until we realize that we have internalized another's paragon of a natural mother. Did our adoptive family invent these details on their own, or was the lawyer or adoption counselor or social worker perceptive enough to identify what they wanted to hear and create it?

"You were expecting Glee, weren't you?", said a friend as I showed him my natural mother's MySpace profile. A little, maybe. Idina Menzel would do, singing talent and fantastic genes and all. Nevermind that I sing like a Shakespeare character - "Had [she] been a dog that howled thus, they would have hanged [her]". What I really wanted, I confess, was Georgiana Cavendish. While I realize that I was born about 200 years too late for that to have been possible, her poem to Eliza Courtney is arguably the most beautiful verse ever written from a natural mother's point of view.

Unhappy child of indiscretion,
Poor slumberer on a breast forlorn
Pledge of reproof of past transgression
Dear, tho' unfortunate to be born

For thee a suppliant wish addressing
To Heaven thy mother fain would dare
But conscious blushes stain the blessing
And sighs suppress my broken prayer

But in spite of these my mind unshaken
In present duty turns to thee
Tho' long repented ne'er forgotten
Thy days shall lov'd and guarded be

And should th'ungenerous world upbraid thee
For mine and for thy father's ill
A nameless mother oft shall assist thee
A hand unseen protect thee still

And tho' to rank and wealth a stranger
Thy life a humble course must run
Soon shalt thou learn to fly the danger
Which I too late have learnt to shun

Meanwhile in these sequested valleys
Here may'st thou live in safe content
For innocence may smile at malice
And thou-Oh ! Thou art innocent

Who is Miss Begotten? Why is she writing this?

I read my six-year-old a book called, "Are You My Mother?". I watch Star Wars with him, and talk to him about what it means that Darth Vadar is Luke's father. I wonder why so many fairly tales feature children separated from their natural parents.

I am adopted, and I am searching for my roots.

I am thirty-one, a mother of one, a wife, and an executive at a multi-national retail company. I love history (I have two degrees in it, and almost went on to do a PhD), literature, art, skiing, riding horses, and hiking. I am not funny but I like to make jokes, and that trait is often uncomfortable for everyone around me. I cover up my vulnerability with a shell of competence and curtness; I am a hardball negotiator who cries at dog food commercials. I feel guilty for being the family historian, and I'm pretty sure my cousins both resent and feel puzzled by the older generation's tendency to will anything of historical significance to someone grafted onto the family tree. I secretly, though I will not admit it openly, feel more as if I am my adoptive ancestors' biographer than their descendant, and in truth I feel more connected to the family of the person I wrote my thesis on.

Academia and business are my defense mechanisms, and I approached the search for my roots the same way I would have pursued an elusive primary source, and probably with less emotional investment. I have reached a point where the search is beginning to culminate, to climax, and where the emotions are becoming ascendant. I feel the need to record the journey for those who will come after me, and I hope that it both comforts and elucidates.

Regarding my natural mother: I have a name, an address, a MySpace page. I have not acted upon the information - but I will, and soon.