Adoption

I was adopted. My adoptive parents (henceforth referred to as "parents," "Mom," "Dad," etc.) were very careful to make sure I knew this, from my earliest questions. I admit, I somehow got the impression that they had gone to a Baby Store, and picked me out of a display, but I digress. They told me all that they knew about my natural family, which turned out to be rather a lot.

I was the youngest of 9 children born to my father. His first 4 had a Tibetan mother, who died in the damp air of England. My mother was the young governess he had in his employ at the time of his first wife's death. He married the governess, and they had 5 children, of which I was the last. He was 60, by then, and had a bad heart. My mother advertised in a nursing journal for adoptive parents for her coming child. She personally interviewed all the couples who passed the screening-by-mail, and picked my parents herself. It was a private adoption, with no agencies involved. My natural father died six months after I was born, leaving my mother with 8 children to raise, in very adverse circumstances.

Suffice it to say, that she did a good job with them; better, perhaps, than she could have done with another baby to care for.

My parents emphasized how lucky they were to have found me. I was their only child. They were nice people. A bit old-fashioned, maybe, but people of the White Hat Brigade. I never once felt that I was not theirs, or that I didn't belong.

When, through a curious set of coincidences, my birth family finally contacted me, it was wonderful. A treat to see the physical resemblance, the similar gestures and interests; but they were, and remain, essentially strangers.

It was my adoptive parents who knew when I had the chicken pox and what my first words were, who put up with my teen angst and college omniscience, and whose faces come to mind when I think of Mom and Dad.