Oh what a nasty piece of work art thou…

Two and a half pages of accusations from the boy who isn’t angry.

Now he is attacking my daughter.

Really, shame on him. The attacks, as usual, based on evidence that exists only in his head.

If there is anyone who is truly innocent in this whole adoption thing, it’s her. She was born after I found him and always thought of herself as a person with a big brother, That is until he pulled his first disappearing act.

Shortly after that happened and I cajoled him back into our lives, he wanted my daughter to fly out to his end of the country and visit him on her own. She was 8 years old and his disappearing act made her a bit nervous. She didn’t want to go. That was raised in the two and a half page diatribe. The daughter is now 20 years old. In other words that happened twelve years ago. I didn’t know her not going was that big an issue. It hasn’t been raised before.

His adoptive parents, he said, used to put him on a plane to Europe by himself regularly when he was that age.

I resisted the urge to write back and say oh was that the time that x happened or y happened. All the things that he has told me he suffered at the hands of his immediate and extended adoptive family.

In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be doing any writing or writing back any more. He did tell me in this latest email that he was blocking my email address but whatever – he is into dramatic power plays – that’s easy to get around if I want to but I don’t want to. I think this is it. His father – god love him – just may have been right. He has refused to have anything to do with him anymore and he says he feels better for it. He was tired of being attacked and on trial all the time.

The daughter too is feeling that enough is enough. She says he needs to explore the difference between suspicion and knowledge. I thought it was a very good and accurate turn of phrase.

Trust is an important thing in a relationship and he has done a very good job at destroying the trust in this one in the last almost three years. My doctor – the marathon runner – says adoptees have real issues with trust. I think she is right, as always, about that too.

Right now, his happy face mug is sitting in a sturdy card board box with some packing material around it. When I pulled it off the shelf, I found a rock inside. It is a rock that I picked up the day we went for a ride in the country when I went out to visit him. The wonderful day we had on the 18th anniversary of the day we met. It was supposed to be the crossover year. The start of knowing each other for more time than we had not.

I used to think there was hope as long as that mug was sitting on my bookcase. Now I think having hope is foolish and just prolonging the agony. He has gone over or been pushed into the dark side. I am not exaggerating when I say, I think he feels nothing but hate in his heart for me.

I don’t know how to find my way out of this. I started getting stomach pains after this latest attack.  I got them after the last series of attacks before this too.  That time I went on medication for my stomach. Not this time.

We are all sad about it. But I really don’t think there is anything we can do. I don’t think he is coming back.

I think he needs help and I don’t say that merely because he doesn’t want to have a relationship with me. I have seen this same scenario play out with his girlfriend, his male friends, his former business partner, his father, his father’s kids. I was just naive and stupid enough to think it wouldn’t happen with me. Or my daughter. It can’t be a very happy way to go through life.

How am I coping? I’m OK. I think I just have to learn to accept that it is over.

I repeat my mantra every now and then when I need to. It’s goes like this.

UM – You are not a “nasty piece of work who sees herself as a victim” and you know it.

And I do know it.

I hope he finds peace – those were his father’s words to me too. We really hope he does.

Sadly

UM

A Postscript to My Broken Silence

I wrote in my last post about what was going on with my son because I felt a bit uncomfortable writing about adoption when my own situation was not going so well.  Felt, in a way, as if I was committing a sin of omission.  Or pretending – and god knows there has been enough pretending.

I’m glad I wrote about it.  I actually felt better after I did. The same day I wrote the post I sent a quick email to my son saying I was trying again to reach him.

This morning I received an email from him – subject line  – Adoption.  In it he said he is “moving on” because it is clear he will never be part of my or his father’s family.

I’m sad.  I’m angry.  I’m incredibly frustrated. I am worried about him. I wish I could get through to him somehow.

Adoption, to me, seems to be the gift that just keeps on  #$@&!*$ giving.

Thank you to everyone for their responses to my previous post.  I don’t know any of you on sight but believe me  – your kind words help.

I worry that these experiences will discourage other people from looking.  I hope not.  My son used to say he would probably be in jail if he hadn’t met me.  If that’s true, I’m glad we met, no matter how things turn out in the end.

In my response to his email, I told him that I love him and care about him.  And, that that will not change because of an email and will not change even if I am never able to speak to him again.

And that’s the truth.

I just clicked on one of those “Related Blog Posts” that WordPress sticks at the end of yours.  Automatically generated.  This one was at the bottom of my “My Broken Silence ” post.

All the “related blog” said was this:

He’s haunted by the memory of a lost paradise
In his youth or a dream, he can’t be precise
He’s chained forever to a world that’s departed
It’s not enough, it’s not enough

His blood has frozen and curdled with fright
His knees have trembled and given way in the night
His hand has weakened at the moment of truth
His step has faltered

Pink Floyd ~ Sorrow

Whoa!

Peace

UM

At the Corner of Lost and Found…

This is where we all stand when we begin to search, isn’t it.  At the corner of Lost and Found, not knowing which direction to go.

I remember going to adoption support meetings where half the room had found and half the room was still looking.

It seemed like an impossible dream that you would ever make it to the other side of the intersection that divided that room. How did it happen? How did it go? That’s what you wanted to ask the people on the other side of the adoption reunion street.

Were you frightened? What did you say? What did they say? Did he look like you?

Meeting the person you are looking for is a life changing experience.

I decided to look for my child shortly after his 18th birthday and it wasn’t too long after that that I just happened to meet someone who knew someone who was able to help me. Although I found out a name fairly easily, (I was extremely lucky) I still had to find the person. Eventually I found an address. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why he was not living with his adoptive parents. It turned out they had thrown him out.

I spoke with an adoption support group in his city and the person on the phone urged me to get to him as soon as I could because he needed me. She scared me a little. I wanted to be careful, I didn’t want to offend or frighten anyone. I was very conscious of his adoptive parents and worried that I would be intruding at a difficult or inappropriate time. She urged me to make my presence known.

Despite my fears and concerns, things and people kept appearing in my life. (See my post – Adoption Reunion and the Library) I knew it meant I needed to keep going. I was not a very mystical person before looking for my son but I became more of one over the course of looking for him.

A new co-worker at my job was his parents’ next door neighbour.

My husband’s grade school teacher was his parents’ down the street neighbour.

His parents lived a half a block from my grandmother’s house.

Bit by bit, I started to get the picture and the message. Finally, I wrote him a letter.

We met one cold April morning at the bus station. He looked like me. I took him home. I made him a sandwich. That was something I thought I would never get to do.

He spent the night under my roof. I felt a great sense of peace.

The next weekend he met his father.

Peace

UM

Who’s Your Daddy?

No this isn’t about former presidential hopeful John Edwards.

It’s about gay parenting and an issue that will be familiar to most adoptive parents and all first mothers. First mothers being, I hesitate to point out, a group of people not so long out of the closet themselves.

I was reading an article in the September 2008 issue of The Walrus about gay parenthood. The author of the article, Matthew Hays, is a gay man who had been de-selected as a prospective father for a lesbian couple’s child in favour of a sperm bank. He writes quite poignantly about his loss of something he had never had nor contemplated until it was proposed to him by the couple.

The article, Frontier Families, The Complexities of Queer Parenthood, went on to say that many lesbian couples are choosing sperm bank fathers for their children rather than a (usually gay) friend because they are concerned about this other presence in their relationship with the child. They fear involvement by a known biological father.

I read the article through and kept thinking, I understand the concern in the situation I guess, but what about the children. What about their need to know who their parents are even if they are raised by one parent and that parent’s partner or, in my country, spouse?

Asking a question about wanting and needing to know your parents felt kind of familiar.

Children seemed so conspicuously absent in the article as a consideration that I read it through again. I could only recall one brief mention near the end about the child’s possible need to know it’s male parent. For the second reading, I sat, pen in hand, underlining the relevant portions to make sure I had not missed anything.

Some things noted on re-reading:

• The article did say that many lesbian moms do feel strongly about having the sperm donor /father around so the child can know his or her biological father as it grows up. However, the preference was explained in this way:

Many of those interviewed say this choice often boils down to a cultural difference. A lesbian couple from France, for example, may have a heightened consciousness of lineage and pedigree. For them the best choice would be to go with a known donor.

• A father in the article takes offence at the use of the term donor.

• Many of the lesbian moms wanted the opposite and asked that the gay men involved be referred to as donors.

• A lawyer says:

From a legal perspective, I would have to recommend that people go with an unknown donor, through a clinic…My strong advice …is to go with an unknown donor.

• One lesbian mom named Joan who chose the “father” rather than the “donor” route said:

I think that those who choose an anonymous donor are doing that to protect themselves, while those who have a known donor are doing that to protect the child.

And I have to agree with Joan.

Dealing with the question of sperm donors/fathers is something most first moms know something about in reunion. Many of them may have very mixed or very strong feelings about how much involvement they want from good old sperm donor/dad. But the fact still remains that he is, after all, the child’s father and whether Mom is keen on having him as part of the reunion or not, his existence and his identity will come up. And if Moms try and ignore the question, it won’t go away. The child will ask and most likely will want to know, or at least meet, his father.

And I’m certain it doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the child was raised in France.

When the question does come up, difficult as it may be, the mother in question should give full disclosure, name, address and telephone number, if she has it. And then make a quick phone call herself to prepare the guy, if she hasn’t already.

My daughter, who is in 3rd year university and went to grade school with a fair number of sperm bank kids, says that lesbian moms prefer anonymous sperm donors because they fear being forced into a joint custody arrangement. A few years down the road when the child is searching for identity, that argument will sound about as convincing as They said if I gave you up to this perfect couple you would be better off and I could get on with my life. Kids are great at smelling out a weak argument and they will interpret it as – I chose to deny you a relationship with the person who makes up half of your genes because it suited me.

Besides, with so many sibling registries popping up, sperm bank use is no guarantee of anonymity anymore.

As all first mothers know, sperm bank babies are just the next reunion wave. You cannot love the desire to know out of your children.

The days of totally closed and anonymous family creation are over.

Some people may have to use a sperm bank for legitimate reasons but they should do it with their eyes wide open. The child will want to know his father. No matter how loving a home he was raised in and no matter how much the couple tries to pretend, as the adoption industry did for years with first moms, that he isn’t there.

Peace

UM