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