Someone asked recently how you would go about tracing your family if you suspected that you were adopted.

This link to the New York Times may provide some answers:  Finding Your Family

You might also try Late Discovery Adoptees

Peace

UM

Unsigned Masterpiece

January 20, 2012

In the meantime

Here are some interesting excerpts from a lecture on

Adoption and Addiction

The link to the complete lecture is at the end of the video.

Adoption and Addiction

I feel like I am living in Paris in the twenties lately.   I was able to score one of the first available rental copies of Woody Allen’s film, *Midnight in Paris.  I watched it about five times before I had to give it back.  Last time I saw the movie, I was in Paris.  My daughter, husband and I went to see it the night before we left for London and she left to come back to Canada.  It was amazing to watch it and then walk out of the cinema and be on the Blvd. Beaumarchais.   It’s a great movie.  It brings back happy memories.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

I think part of the reason it’s so popular is the fact that it is everyone’s dream to time travel.  If I could time travel, it would be back to the twenties and these days, I can say for certain, one of the destinations in my time travelling journey would be Paris in the twenties.

At the same time as I was watching Midnight in Paris I was also reading a book by Canadian writer, Morley Callaghan, entitled That Summer in Paris.  Someone in my writing group suggested that I read it.  Callaghan met Ernest Hemingway at the Toronto Star in 1923 when he was 19 and Hemingway was 24.  Hemingway believed Callaghan to be  a talented writer and he encouraged him to go to Paris.  Callaghan did go during the summer of 1929, shortly after his marriage and graduation from the University of Toronto law school.  There he met Scott and Zelda and all the other famous American ex-pats.  He and Hemingway became good friends and used to box regularly at the American Club in Paris. He also becomes friendly with Fitzgerald.

The book paints a very interesting portrait of both men.  Scott Fitzgerald appears to be a bundle of insecurities.  Hemingway, too, but for different reasons.

F. Scott Fitzgerald tells Callaghan a story about going to visit Louis Bromfield, an American writer and early environmentalist.   Bromfield came to the door of his chateau wearing his slippers.  According to Fitzgerald, he and Zelda considered this such a sign of disrespect that they never visited Bromfield again.

That Summer

After recounting this story, Callaghan says:

“… I marvel at the little things that shape the relationships of men; only the little things seem to do it.  Not the great matters of principle, or articles of faith, but fancied slights, a little detail acutely observed that is supposed to reveal how things really stand between friends.”

Callaghan goes on to say that years later he met Louis Bromfield and told him the story.  He describes Bromfield’s reaction:

“Wide-eyed, not smiling at all, full of wonder, he explained that he always wore those slippers in his own house when his guest was someone he felt close to.  He had often wondered why [Fitzgerald] had turned against him.”

As the summer of 1929 goes on, Callaghan finds himself in the middle an incident between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  It happens at the American Club.  This day, Hemingway and Callaghan box with Fitzgerald as timekeeper for the rounds.  Fitzgerald forgets to call time, lets a round go an extra minute and Callaghan ends up knocking Hemingway down. Hemingway thinks Fitzgerald wants to see him humiliated.  There is more to it than this but the relationships never really recover from the incident.  The story gets repeated and embellished.  It becomes very important to Hemingway that people believe he can knock out Callaghan.  He challenges Callaghan to another match.  He writes to Callaghan and wants him to admit Hemingway can knock him out. (Are we still talking about boxing here?)

Callaghan thinks that Hemingway is starting to believe his own publicity, his macho image.  He refuses to make any such admission believing that would just mean he was buying into the mythology.  Callaghan writes back in a joking manner, saying since he has never been knocked out, he cannot do what Hemingway requests.  Isn’t it better, he suggests, that they both believe in their own invincibility.  He says, “For heaven’s sake disarm.”  He never hears from Hemingway again.

It is Callaghan’s musing on the nature of these broken relationships that remind me of adoption or, more particularly, adoption reunions. He says that Hemingway and Fitzgerald appeared to remain nominal friends but “had become very cynical about each other.”  Callaghan is advised by his publisher, Max Perkins, to forget the whole thing.  He was reassured by Perkins that neither Hemingway not Fitzgerald held any grudge against him.  Callaghan comes to realize listening to Perkins was a mistake.

He says near the end of That Summer in Paris:  “Insulted and injured people…find themselves lying awake at night making up little speeches, some of them angry, and the one to whom the little speeches are addressed in the dark never has a chance to answer.”

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

“… [T]he little things that shape the relationships… Not the great matters of principle, or articles of faith, but fancied slights, a little detail acutely observed that is supposed to reveal how things really stand …”

It seems very much to echo exactly what happens in some adoption reunions to me.  The imagined slights.  The inability to disarm. The misunderstandings, the reluctance/inability to express the hurt.

The walking away like Scott and Zelda insulted by Louis Bromfield and his slippers.

Here is the haunting theme music from Midnight in Paris, where you can see Hemingway and Scott and Zelda come to life.  The song is called, interestingly enough,  Si Tu Vois Ma Mère  (If You See My Mother).  I think you will be hearing a lot of it around Oscar time.

*January 3, 2011

I came across this:  A Cultural Cheat Sheet for Midnight in Paris.  It tells you all about the real people portrayed in the movie and some of the locations.

*January 9, 2012

Another bit about MIP.  An interview with the actor who played Ernest Hemingway.

Peace

UM

Unsigned Masterpiece Post 

December 20th

UM Highlights – Nine Favourite Posts

#amwriting

Who needs DNA. Now a photograph will be enough to tell you who you are related to.

Surprise, we’re related.   The Daily Mail on line.

NaBloPoMo Last Day

adoption, reunion, reform, reality – we’re done!!

Oh NaBloPoMo, it’s time for us to part.  It’s been an interesting month.  We laughed, we cried.  Sometimes I cursed.  But it’s all over now.   It’s not you it’s me.  I think we should date other people.  And while I would like to remain friends, if we can, this will be our last meeting.

Why did I want to get to know you NaBloPoMo?  Well as I said on Day 1 I wanted to support The Declassified Adoptee and her Bloggers Taking Back Adoptember initiative (Yes, I said initiative. I used to work for the government.)

But supporting DCA just got me started. I did it for some other reasons too.

As a writer I know the more you write the better and so the idea of making this commitment to write everyday appealed to me.  I liked the writing, I liked the goal setting.  Yes I was worried about writing every day about my least favourite thing – adoption.  I jokingly left a comment on Adoptive Mom’s Margie’s blog that part of me thought I would write about adoption for every day for thirty days and then I would be writ out, spent, done.  No more adoption blogging.  Okay-I can hear the money changing hands out there as I type as to whether that will happen.  I am guessing that the odds are not in my favour.  But then Ha! they never were.

I had some other reasons.  October was the best month statistically speaking that Unsigned Masterpiece ever had.

Taking Back November!

This was due to the death of famous adoptee, Steve Jobs.  Who knew what an education about the long reaching effects of adoption his death would be to so many people.  I wanted to see if I could top October’s stats without Mr. Jobs (kind of like Apple.)  I am pleased to say we beat October. Yay!  By a few hundred hits so far.

I wanted to raise my profile a little, maybe pick up a few more followers. Check.

What did I get out of this that I didn’t expect?

I think my little typewriter is now a permanent fixture.  I really like my little typewriter.

I learned to do something technical in the linking area, that’s good.

I saw the benefits of going multi-platform.  I want to start another more general blog so that is good to know.

Like all journeys, like my trip on the the QM2, I got something out of it I didn’t expect.  Writing about adoption everyday seemed to make me calmer about it, more certain of all the things I believe about it.

So how do I assess my writing over the 30 days?  Some good, some ok, some so so.

I think these are my favs:

T is for Things Adoptive Parents Say
A is for All you need is …
F is for Feminists (or a letter to Gloria)

I think Ernest Hemingway said for every 100 pages he wrote there was one page of genius and 99 pages of garbage ( or words to that effect). I’ll accept three posts out thirty as not bad.

So long NaBloPoMo

In the midst of all this there was a crisis re my elderly mom that continues. Then in the midst that crisis my dog got sick. She started to limp and when it didn’t go away we took her in. Her hip was shot and there was a shadow on her bone that the vet worries may be cancer. The hip has now been repaired. The biopsy results should be back in a week or so.  Think positive thoughts.  The vet bill was $4000. The doggie – priceless. Unconditional love. More valuable than gold.

It was hard to keep blogging. I almost gave up.  MyBirthNameIsAllison saved me from quitting.  I was reminded of the joys of mutual support and for that I thank her.

I’m glad I kept going.

Thanks to all of you out there for following and welcome if you are new.  And thanks to old on line friends for reading along.  Congrats to the other NABloPoMoers.  Joy, you crack me up too.  I wish I could have read more of everybody. Thanks to Suz of WritingMyWrongs for guest posting.

Every now and then someone would apologize for not keeping up with their reading.  I would tell them not to worry. I was having trouble myself and I knew my husband (and biggest fan) was falling behind too.  All adoption everyday for 30 days is a lot.

Unsigned Masterpiece will be returning to its old schedule of publishing once a month around the twentieth – unless there is a second coming of Steve Jobs or some other comment-worthy adoption news.

Peace and so long NaBloPoMo 2011

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 29

adoption, reunion, reform, realitY

My penultimate post for NaBloPoMo.  I decided to write about whatever I want to write about today.  I am still dealing with the elderly parent issues and the doggie just came home from the vet’s post surgery.

Tomorrow I am going to talk about the whole NaBloPoMo experience.  But today:

Thank You Cheesecake Factory – The Big Bang Theory (and Adoption)

As readers of this blog know, I am crazy about Madmen. But my other favourite show is the Big Bang Theory.

What’s not to like with the excellent writing and the theme song by The Bakenaked Ladies, a Canadian band. The women on the Big Bang Theory fare a whole lot better than the women on Madmen where those 60′s guys are not very evolved.

My favourite character on the Big Bang Theory is Howard Wolowitz. He’s the least educated of the four guys, holding a mere masters degree in engineering from MIT to their three PhD’s in Physics.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about why I like him the best. In some ways, I really don’t understand it. He lives with his mother for one thing. I mean everybody knows – Never date a guy who lives with his mother.

His clothes are a joke.  He always dresses in shirt and turtle neck. He’s coordinated.  Too coordinated.  Way too coordinated.  You can tell a lot of thought has gone into that wardrobe but it totally fails too.   It, the wardrobe, like his bachelor-pad bedroom in his mother’s house, is right out of 1975.  A time when, by my calculations, Howard was not yet born.

He drives a scooter. He seems to think it’s a Harley.  Howard comes on to women in ways that are just way too much and way too creepy.  Yet there is something endearing about him.

What is it? Howard Wolowitz is always looking for love.  On the surface it appears to be sex but I think it is really about love.

Howard is trying so hard.   It’s so sad that he goes about it in a way that pretty much guarantees he is not going to get what he wants.  And he can’t see what is getting in his way.

Among other things, Howard’s relationship with his mother is a tad symbiotic.

Sweet Bernadette...

She screams at him. He screams at her.  (Proving that living with your biological parents can be no picnic sometimes too.) He says it is hell living with her but when an opportunity to move out of her house and in with one of the guys comes his way, he can’t take it.  You can tell he’s afraid.

Simon Helberg, the actor who plays Howard, takes more risks than any of the other actors on the show.  He shows us his vulnerability.  He bursts into tears when he finds an old “Alph” toy because it was just such a toy that was his comfort when his father walked out on his mother – and him.  And he can humiliate himself wonderfully.  There’s the time he sang the song “Bernadette” by the Four Tops for his girlfriend when she was mad at him.

Somebody told me once that when adoptees meet their mothers they project the parenting style of their adoptive mother onto their mothers.

Sort of like Howard tried to do with Bernadette.

When Howard braves his mother’s wrath and moves in briefly with Bernadette, unconsciously he tries to turn her into his mother.  Bernadette cares enough about herself and him to call him on it.

Yes Howard may have a masters degree from MIT but, about some things, like love, he is not so smart.

Peace

UM

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 28

adoption, reunion, reform, realiTy

A few months ago, my son woke up and decided a really good thing to do would be to go on Twitter and trash his mother.  Not the other mother, the amother, but this mother, me.  At the time it happened I had had no involvement with him for  almost two years, not since the last time he decided to trash and accuse me (and his father) of things – although that time it was to my face, more or less,  via email.

As things sometimes pan out, when he decided to Twitter-trash me the universe had my back.  A friend discovered what was happening.  I used to have my UM Twitter feed appear on this blog.   I guess he found the address there.  She got a new follower and somewhat uncharacteristically checked him out.  To her surprise, she discovered many, many tweets about me.  And they weren’t very nice.

She had faith in my intestinal fortitude so she let me know.  I went in and read a few things.  Checked out who he’d followed from my list – a few Moms, a few adoptees.  From what I saw, same old stuff.   I got in touch with the people on my list and I forwarded the link to a few people who knew what had been going on with him for a few years but hadn’t ever seen it live and in person, as it were.  Then I decided better to just let it go.

However, that was not to be. The responses I got back from the people I sent the link to were a bit worrisome.   For example:

“My heart aches for you.”

“I started to cry when I was reading this.”

“OMG, are you alright?”

And from the less reticent – “Fuck him!”

This made me think perhaps I ought to check this out a little further.  Without reading, I printed them up.

Twitter

There were six and a half pages.

That is a lot of talkin’ trash about me over a couple of days at 140 characters a shot.

But even though I had the six and a half pages in my hand, I still was not going to read.  That honour fell to, you guessed it, my husband.  As I told him, I don’t want to read these but I think somebody should.  My husband is the most objective person I know.  Annoyingly secure, as I tell him frequently.  So he, who has never demonstrated anything but kindness to my son, read and reported back.  Told me about the things he’d said.  Same old stuff but a few new wrinkles. The tweets started two days before what would have been the 24th anniversary of our first meeting in 1987.  Our reunion fell apart on his birthday in 2005.  I stopped talking to him in 2009 because he just kept attacking me and twisting everything that I said.

Armed with these six and a half pages of tweets, I thought about what to do next.  I seriously, and I mean seriously, thought about putting them in an envelope and mailing them to his adopted parents or the companies he does business with or some of his friends.   I thought of sending one of the six pages to him with Really? written across it.  But I only thought about doing it.  I didn’t do it. 

I can’t help wondering if someone is encouraging him to think and act the way he does.  Maybe its his adoptive parents or one of their friends or a happy adoptee girlfriend.  Maybe one of those adoption hearts and flowers  therapists.  Or maybe he is doing it all on his own.  Who knows.

I only read three tweets myself but they were a pretty good example of what I am talking about.

In his very first tweet he talks about how when he came here to meet me for the first time, I dragged him around like “some kind of trophy.”  Of course, I would say I was proud of him and wanted him to meet all my friends, welcome him to my life, treat him like a member of my family but I guess I was wrong.

In another, he refers to my daughter as his “half-sister.”  She was born after I met him.  She never thought of him as her “half brother”  just her big brother.  No one in our family has ever thought of him as half an anything.   He is my son.  He is her brother.  She was very hurt the first time he vanished from all our lives without any explanation to any of us.  Insensed, that anyone would even ask him “Why?”

And finally, I read a comment on my morals.  Or lack thereof.  According to my son, my morals are no better than his father’s (???) because I admitted that in 1978 when his father unexpectedly showed up where I was attending law school, he put the moves on me and I was tempted.  Sometimes I think adoptees forget or don’t realize there was a living breathing relationship involved in their arriving on the face of this earth. But that is another post for another day.

Sure I was tempted.  But his father was married and so was I.  And even though my husband was living in another city and I had, as the cops would say, opportunity, that didn’t change the fact our son had been given up for adoption.  No thanks.  Not interested in picking up where we left off and acting like nothing had happened.

But am I confused here?  If you are tempted to do something that you probably shouldn’t do and you don’t do it, isn’t that a good thing?

In my view, anyone who would do this has a great desire to hurt and humiliate (read shame).  Shaming – That’s adoption old-school.  Most of us gave up that one when we decided to come out of the adoption closet.

When my friend (and fellow blogger) found the tweets for me, she asked my permission to do a post about it and she did.  With my agreement she didn’t identify me at the time out of respect for my privacy.  It was all pretty new and raw.  That someone was directing that much anger at me, particularly someone who is my son, was upsetting.  I’ve never had that happen in my life before. But something always felt not quite right about the non-identification of me as the recipient.   Like I did have something to be ashamed of.

He wrote me a very nice New Year’s message once, a few years before the trouble started.  In it he praised my honesty and integrity.  He said my daughter was a testament  to these qualities in me.  He said I was the only one of the parents who was totally 100% honest with him even when that was a difficult thing to be.

To be fair, I should say the tweets were taken down but nothing is ever completely gone on the internet.  Those six and a half pages of tweets I have tucked away should be made available to anyone who is thinking about giving a child up for adoption.  Just to let them see the anger.

On November 30th I am going to write about what I got out of blogging everyday.   I can tell that among other things it has brought a change in my feelings toward him.  As people are fond of saying, you can’t control other people or what happens to you, all you can control is your reaction.  I worry about him.  I still think probably we shouldn’t be talking to each other but he is my son. I care what happens to him.  I hope he is doing well.  I hope he has gotten in touch with what is really bothering him.

Well, talking about 1978 and me being busy defending my virtue has made me think about the lyrics of this song.  I’ve always liked it.  Too bad it wasn’t around ten years earlier, in 1968.

Peace

UM

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 27

adoption, reunion, reform, realIty**

A little over the shock of yesterday.  My dog goes in for surgery tomorrow so please  think positive thoughts.

If Our Mothers Had Blogs…

I am speaking here of the mothers of the mothers of the adopted.  I got to thinking about this when I read over at Joy’s Division about the adoptive mother blogging on behalf of what appears to be an adult adoptee.

If there is one thing that adoptees and Moms agree on it is the fact that adoptive parents have been treated as the voice of adoption for too many years.  That bothers us.  They are, after all, the people who have benefited from adoption the most.  They have not lost anything in adoption; they have gained everything.

In the blog that Joy refers to, the aMom conducts an interview with her adopted daughter.  Adopted daughter says all the right things.  How adoption has had no impact on her life and how she is happy to have been adopted and has no interest in finding out anything about her family of origins.  My son used to say that any adoptee who says that is lying.  I have no idea what he would say now but that is what he used to say.

I suspect that in some a parent circles, this kind of a response is a badge of honour.  “Our Katie has no interest,” they tell their friends.  “Only unhappy, messed up adoptees search, and that certainly isn’t our Katie.”  The implication being that we have done our job right.  “And we are so thankful because who knows what poor Katie might have found.”

I always suspect that these are the same aparents that will say they have always been supportive of a search but the kid wasn’t interested.  Perhaps not really interested or perhaps the kid is no dummy and gets the subliminal message.  Searcher = ingrate, disloyal adoptee.

These were the aMom’s questions for her daughter.

I asked her if being adopted had ever been a hindrance to her in any way, “No”

Was it ever? “No”

Do you wish, or have you ever wished you weren’t adopted? “No”

Have you ever wanted to search for your biological roots? “No”

Why  mother started speaking about adoption I don’t know.  It seemed a propos of nothing, given what the rest of the post was about: Her daughter trying to win a singing contest.  Maybe it was just her way of taking out the big stamp that says MINE!

So to go back to my original point, this got me thinking, what would my mother have said if she was out here in the blogosphere and writing about me and adoption.

Q & A

Mom:  Is giving the baby up for adoption having any negative impact on your life?

Daughter: No

Mom:  Did it ever?

Daughter:  Oh no.

Mom:  Do you ever wish you hadn’t given the baby up for adoption?

Daughter:  No

Mom:  Have you ever wanted to search for the baby you etc., etc.

Daughter:  No

There is a danger when one group of people who have no understanding decide to speak for another group who lives with the issues.

If my son found my parents first instead of me he would have been told that I was happy, I had no interest in digging up the past and he should go home and honour the excellent adoptive parents that had no doubt been chosen for him.

The Q & A is imaginary only because my Mom doesn’t have a blog but the content and her speculation about the answers is not imaginary.  That is what she believed or wanted to believe.

The truth, of course, lay elsewhere.

Peace

UM

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 26

adoption, reunion, reform, reaLity**

Remember doing that when you were a kid and you didn’t want to hear what some one was saying.

La la la… Adoption is wonderful.  La la la… Adoption works for me.

La la la

I feel like a bit of a fake blogging today.  My elderly mother was taken to the hospital in the middle of the night last night and I just found out my dog has to have an operation. Her right hip is totally destroyed and the vet worries she may have cancer.

I don’t know NaBloPoMo.  What did John Lennon say about life is what happens when you are making other plans?

My daughter is going to be very upset about the dog and the Grandma.

We are keeping our fingers crossed.