this woman’s work

Someone who worked for This American Life came by Open Adoption Support looking to hook up with someone for a story. This was our exchange (somewhat edited for length):

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Recently Madison’s been asking about her birth dad. (I know, I know, he didn’t give birth to her so he’s not her birth dad. I should say first dad but that’s not quite right so then I think bio dad but Madison says birth dad or birth daddy or birth father so we’ll go with that. Ok, let’s start again.)

Recently Madison’s been asking about her birth dad. She wanted to know if he was dead. He’s not dead but he’s not here either. So we talked about that. We talked about why he isn’t here. It’s hard to find 4-year old language to talk about why he isn’t here when I only have part of the story and the parts of the story I have aren’t the kind of stuff you share with a 4-year old. So I leave it with, “He hasn’t made very good choices and one of those not good choices is that we haven’t gotten to meet him.” That’s when she asked if he’s dead.

She wanted to know what he looked like so I told her what I know. I told her that I wish I’d gotten to meet him or had a picture of him. I know his vital statistics — the kind of stuff you’d get off a driver’s license. I told her that I don’t really know what he looks like but Pennie does and she can ask Pennie. I don’t know if she will — she’s shy about this stuff. But this time I think she got that he’s white because she asked if that’s why her skin isn’t as dark as Pennie’s. (Smart kid, eh?) And I said yes, that’s the reason. Then we compared our skin some because she wanted to do that and then I told her his nickname and it’s a funny nickname so we laughed about it a little bit.

This means this talk was also our first sex talk because it’s when she learned that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. I mean, I brought all of this up because I think I said, “It takes a man and a woman to make a baby and that’s why you have a birth mommy and a birth daddy.” (We have talked about birth daddy/birth father before.) She said, “Is Daddy my birth daddy?” And I said no. We have talked about this before but see, I don’t think kids always get this stuff all at once. For example Noah was listening in and even though we have told him all of this before, he still acted surprised about some of it. He hears the story once and gets one part. He hears the story again and gets another part. It takes repetition.

I also think a kid’s natural magical thinking can change the story so it’s important to tell it over and over again. Like Madison asking if Brett is her birth daddy. I’m sure she wants Brett to be her birth daddy, even more so now that her mad 4-year old love affair with her dad is rearing it’s developmentally appropriate head. Maybe she’s imagining that he is. Maybe this imagining is so compelling that she forgot the real story. So we talk about it. This time she is obviously listening harder because she thinks about his skin color in relation to her own skin color.

We’ve been talking a lot about adoption lately anyway after quite a bit of down time. Like recently I had a non-adoption related meeting with someone who happens to be adopted and so in the course of our non-adoption related meeting we talked about it. (Because really I’d rather talk about adoption and hear people’s adoption stories than I might want to talk about, say, tupperware or exercise regimes or new home buying or a myriad of other topics.) So when I got in the car when Brett and Madison came to pick me up and Madison said, “Who’s that?” pointing to the woman I’d been meeting with, I said, “That’s [insert name here] and she’s adopted like you. Do you remember what that means? It means she has a birth mommy and a birth daddy like you.”

I bring up other people’s adoptions because:

1. I want her to know that adoption is something that a lot of people experience.

2. I want her to know that adoption is not something that’s only a kid-thing (that adults are also adopted people).

Madison is also suddenly very interested in L’s story (AmFam’s L) likely because she’s seen L a few times at the park unexpectedly and she’s been reminded that L is also adopted. She is intrigued that L doesn’t know who her birth mommy is because L was in China and was in an orphanage. I told her that some children who are adopted have spent time in orphanges and others have not. I’ve reiterated that she has not. (I think that as she begins to hear other adoption stories that she might get confused that adoption is done only one way so I think it’s important to tell her these other ways but at the same time remind her of her own story.)

There haven’t been any great big emotional adoption stuff going on for her lately — it’s mostly been these kinds of factual, casual conversations but with more interest in the fact than she’s had in the past. It’s interesting to me though that now that she’s nailed down who Pennie is, she’s branched out to think about her bio dad. Doesn’t this seem to fall right in line with a non-adopted kids’ developmental process? All mommy-mommy-mommy and then at around four looking out and seeing this whole other world around them?

Last night I had a dream that I met Madison’s first dad only he was someone other than who he really is. And I was so relieved that I finally met him and that I could see where Madison got this and that and in my dream he was kind and loving and open to being a part of our family. I had Madison on my hip (she was just a baby) and I was talking to him and looking at her and he was surprised because we had all thought this other man was her father (the one who is in real life) and it turned out to be so much easier. We were all surprised.

When I woke up I had that in-between feeling that I could somehow make my dream true if I just held onto it hard enough but then my eyes opened and I knew it wasn’t like that at all.

I don’t give these particular details on the blog so the most I’ll say is that I’m sad for everyone around Madison’s first dad. I’m sad for Madison and for Pennie and for him because he doesn’t know what he’s missing. And I’m sad for me a little, too, (selfish as that is) because I want to know him or at least see him. As Madison gets older and her face changes, I can see this whole other family in there and I feel so frustrated. But the situation is what it is and I just hope that at some point we can have some contact.

And now I’m off to stalk him on the internet — I’m eternally looking to see if he has a myspace or some such account but so far no luck.

I changed servers and it’s down and out. Argh! I’ve got promotional stuff going on next week so it needs to be fixed by then!

But enough about work. Because I’m caught up on work, which means I’m sitting here updating my blog and tonight I’m finally getting my long overdue hair cut in part because of that promotional stuff I’ve got going on.

The kids are out at park day and I’m glad Brett was able to get ‘em there even though I’m sad to miss it. I’m also missing out on hosting our small Thursday potluck but then again, I’ll like getting my hair done and I do need to edit something tonight that I finished about ten minutes ago. (If I look at it now I’ll think it’s perfect and I’ll be wrong so I’m letting it marinate.)

So! There’s this essay I want to write. I’ve been thinking about it since last fall because as you all know, I’m a slow writer except when it’s marketing stuff and then I’m super-speedy. I guess it’s better than the other way around because lemme tell you, marketing pays much better than personal essays.

The essay that I’ve been thinking about for months and months would also conveniently be a book chapter so I’m seeing this as a two birds one stone thing. One of the reasons I want to write it is because it’d be a personal essay that wouldn’t actually share anything PERSONAL  so I think it would be fun/challenging to try to do that.

I want to write about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison without ever actually talking about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison since it’s nobody’s business except hers and Madison’s. Instead I want to talk about how we (i.e., me and the reader) can ever really know and also about the fluidity of “knowing” so that Pennie’s reasons can’t be simplified but instead are an inadequate way to describe a huge complex personal decision with the context of a huge complex cultural creation. I want to show that the decision to place Madison — like any life-changing decision — is fluid and our understanding of “why” changes as we change. (Why did I marry Brett? There are a million reasons and every year I look at that decision and see new nuances and outside/inside influences that I didn’t see before.) I also want to use the essay as an exploration of the statistics and as way to talk about stereotypes and realities of birth motherhood as a way to say, “It doesn’t matter why Pennie placed personally but it does matter why women place culturally.” I want to use it as a way to challenge ideas about adoption and first motherhood and also make Pennie more visible to the reader as a whole person with rights and responsibilities without ever actually giving any of her story away. I want to answer people’s question “why?” in a satisfactory but open-ended way that has them understanding why without ever really knowing the answer.

Hopefully that kinda sorta makes sense.

I’m just at the wandering around wondering stage on this. What I have down here is as much as I have down anywhere (mostly scrawled notes) but that’s how I work so I’m stuck with it.

Over at Writing My Wrongs, Suz is making the incredibly brave decision to share her “unwed mother” diary with us. It’s heart-wrenching and valuable, especially for any of us harboring delusions about the kind of women who place their babies for adoption.

I was told the other day by someone in the know that most women placing a child for adoption in today’s domestic infant adoption world fit one of these three profiles:

1. A single mother who is parenting one or more children and feels another child would put too much strain on her family;
2. A couple who are parenting one or more children and feel another child would put too much strain on their family;
3. A single woman in her teens and early twenties whose parents make her place her child for adoption.

That these are three common scenarios sure seems true in blog-world, eh? But Jessica doesn’t fit any of these three (she is young, she is single, but most of her family was pressuring her to parent with one important person standing behind whatever decision she wanted to make). I think about how our relationship has been relatively smooth and I think this really plays into it. For one, she doesn’t have other children who need her right now and two, to place Madison was truly not a decision anyone made her do so whatever feelings she has about it now, they are likely much less complicated than they would be for a woman who was forced into making an adoption plan.

What was interesting (in the context of yesterday’s discussion with the editor) is that siblings are a part of almost every adoption (international or domestic) but they don’t get talked about all that much. Madison has birth siblings on her paternal side and we don’t and likely will not have access to them, which pains me because I think they — and Madison — deserve to at the very least have some knowledge of each other. And we hope that she will also someday have siblings on her first mom’s side.

Siblings is one of the things the editor would like me to address in the article and I’m looking forward to learning more about it. (Perspectives Press has this book duplicated online for the children of women who are making an adoption plan for a younger sibling. It made me tear up a couple of times.)