Some Thoughts on Being Adopted

Growing up, when I told people I was adopted they would always call me a liar. This was in part due to the fact that I look so much like my parents. Also, growing up there was no weird stigma for me over being adopted. I’ve pretty much know since I was old enough to comprehend what the word meant. No secrets. No weirdness. No dramatic story. No yearning for the answer to that ultimate question, “Who am I and where did I come from?” Nothing at all like it is on the television shows.

I wasn’t treated any different in my family than if I had been born to it through the conventional means. There just wasn’t any of that weird “out of place” feeling beyond what any kid growing up would feel. To be honest, I’ve had a pretty normal life.

My mother was unable to have children after my brother Tom was born and she really wanted a daughter so she and my dad decided to adopt. My grandmother, Bernice helped with the adoption. From what I can tell she knew my biological mother. I’m not sure exactly how. However it was she helped with the adoption.

Now why I was being given up for adoption is for the most part still shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. What I know is that my birth parents were either divorced or at the very least not still dating when I was conceived and that I was probably conceived at one of their on-again junctures. I apparently also have biological siblings running around somewhere out in the world. Which is a weird thought to me for some reason. Aside from this information all I know is that my birth mother gave me up because apparently where ever she was living was not a good place to raise a child. Or something along those lines. I’ve never been particularly interested in it. Which mystifies most people who ask me about it.

So on August 21st, 1980 my adoptive mother gets a call saying I was born. Though the doctor tried to convince her to change her mind. Something about how I was funny looking and how I looked sick and so on. From what my grandmother said it was because there was another family, friends of the doctor, who were trying to adopt me. My mother told him to shove it and that she didn’t care what I looked like. And she and my father drove up from San Jose to some rest stop half way between there and Coos Bay, Oregon and were given me by some person in a dark parking lot. Which sounds super shady but I assure you that it was totally legal and all squared away.

Oddly, knowing all this I’m still not too interested in finding my birth parents. Mostly it’s just I’ve always had the parents I’ve had and it’s not some big tragic story of how I remember my old life with other people. I’m also pretty sure knowing who they are isn’t going to do much to change who I am as a person. Sure it’d be nice to know a bit about things like medical, ethnic and historic background but really I’m more interested in the information on an  academic level. That’s not to say that I would be opposed to meeting the people who gave me birth. It’s just not something that keeps me up at night wondering who I am and all that jazz the TV shows like to imply all adopted kids do.

Well anyways, I figured I’d share that with you. Since it passed through my brain a bit ago as something that would be interesting to write.