Gee, you look familiar

Had to share the link to this interesting article.

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.

Y is for Y Not? The Big Bang Theory (And Adoption)

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

T is for That’s My Boy!

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

I is for If Our Mothers Had Blogs…

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

** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.

E is for ebook

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 18

adoption, reunion, rEform, reality**

Today E is for ebook.

Author Denise Roessle has written a book, Second Chance Mother, about her experience as a mother who relinquished a child to adoption and then met him twenty-six years later.  It has been published as an ebook and is available as of today.

Writing about the experience of adoption is always a tricky thing but I believe telling these stories is important.  The stories set out the reality of adoption for many mothers and children.  That promises made were not kept.  That children were not delivered into loving homes in some circumstances and that the sacrifice that was made in some ways seems to have been made for naught.

Here is an excerpt:

I pushed back the grief until I was as anesthetized as the day I had given birth. I imagined myself becoming stronger when in truth I had merely become more comfortable with the numbness.

I might as well have been dead. Except I wasn’t. The proof came in a phone call on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, almost twenty-six years after I had relinquished what turned out to be my only child.

On the website, the publisher describes the book and the journey that followed:

It’s a BIG boy,” she announced to her family and friends, setting free her twenty-six-year secret. But Joshua was not a boy. He was a grown man, with a history that fell far short of what she had envisioned for him when she’d been assured he would be “better off” without her. His adoptive parents had essentially given up on him at age thirteen, sending him away with only an eighth-grade education. He drifted through a series of institutions and group homes, and ultimately onto the New York City streets, where he fell into drugs and crime.

I hope you will check it out.

Peace

UM

** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.