I know nothing about the day I was born. I know, of course, the specific date (Sunday, June 13, 1965) and my vital statistics upon arrival (7 pounds, 9 ounces, 19 1/2 inches long). Hospitals are interested in these sort of things. Deliver her, weigh her, measure her — chalk up another healthy one for the record books. But the day itself is a mystery. When did I start clamoring to get out of the womb, to breathe on my own, to be? Was I on schedule, or, more as I usually am today, a little late? In wishful moments, I've imagined myself the perfect, low-maintenance infant — a couple of hours of labor and out. But nothing is for sure. Was my mother afraid? Did someone hold her hand through the waves of pain? How long did I stay with her until the woman from the adoption agency bundled me up and carried me away? An hour? A day?
My mom and dad like to tell the story of the day they brought me home from the adoption agency. It was July 14 -- I was one month, one day old -- and southern Wisconsin was mired in a heat wave. They sat in a stuffy second-floor room at Catholic Social Services, alone, waiting for me to arrive: 20 minutes; 30 minutes; 40 minutes. When the case worker finally brought me in, they say, I was covered with a film of sweat, wearing only a diaper well past its prime. "You were quite a vision," my mom says.
It took the two of them to change the diaper -- their first. There's even a rumor that it took more than one try. "We were not too experienced," my mom says. They dressed me in the requisite pink dress they's brought from home, complete with matching bloomers and bonnet, and carried me to the car like so many first-time parents do -- stiffly, awkwardly, probably entirely incorrectly. "We were a little bit apprehensive," my mom says.
The chin quivering started a few miles out of town. Thinking I was cold, my mom added layer after layer of blankets from the supply she'd brought along, "just in case." By the time we arrived home, she says, I was cocooned, splotchy and sweating, my tiny chin still quivering. My grandma took one look at me, laughed and gave me a cool bath. They say I slept throughout the night my first night home. The perfect, low-maintenance infant.
My story is different. One day when I was very young, my parents sat me down and told me, for the first time, that I was adopted. But I can't tell you anything about that day, that event. There was no eureka moment. I search my memory but simply can't remember a time when I didn't know. The words my parents used somehow became part of me: "You are special." "We chose you." "They wanted what was best for you."
People ask me when I first "found out" I was adopted. I can't answer. It's like asking when I first found out I could breathe.
Any quality is fair game for genetic linkage. My husband's stubbornness? His dad passed that along, my mother-in-law says. His penchant for gnawing chicken and turkey bones to a pearly white? He get that from his Grandma Kershner, I'm told each Thanksgiving.
Many times, this preoccupation with heritage annoys me. Genes are not destiny, I mutter to myself.
Underneath my annoyance, however, is a wistfulness: I can't participate in the genetic matching games. During holidays with my husband's family, I look around: Mark has his mother's hair; Stephen has his dad's smile. Christine has her mother's build; Eric's is more like his dad's. No one I know looks like me.
Life is odd in a world without mirrors. My particular quirk is family resemblances. They constantly surprise me. "You look alike!" I said to my boss and his sister recently, as if this was a profound revelation. They just stared at me.
I have one sister, also adopted. She recently became the first of us two to have a biological relative she's actually met -- her son. I first saw him when he was 3 weeks old. He had that newborn look -- pink, squinty, pinched, clearly still adjusting to life on the outside. But he had her eyes. "He looks like you," were my first words to her. Surprised again.
The standard response: "I could never do that." There's an incredulity in the comment, and the unspoken question: What kind of person could? I think that misses the point. Women don't give up their babies because they don't love them. They do it because they do.
My biological mother carried me for nine months and then gave me away. When I say it out loud, see it in print I've just typed, I'm incredulous too. How could she do it? But there's no judgment there. I guess my response is closest to awe. Where did she find the courage? The love? Could I ever do anything as selfless?
My parents had one day's notice that they were "getting" me. (They went shopping for diapers on the way to the adoption agency.) They knew they's been approved to adopt a baby, but knew nothing about who that baby might be or when she (or he) might arrive.
At the agency, they learned that a doctor had deemed my condition "satisfactory." They were told that I slept throughout the night, tolerated foods well and rarely spit up. And then they took me home forever.
My mom says she and my dad took one look at me and fell in love. "We thought you were the most beautiful baby we'd ever seen," she says. I wonder. Could it have been that easy? They had only the vaguest information about me — a few health and developmental details, some basic demographics about my biological relatives. They probably knew more about their car before they drove it home than they knew about me.
Parenting is always a bit of crap shoot, it seems. Forrest Gump might compare it to a box of chocolates — you never know what you're going to get. But most parents have a good idea of the raw biological material they're working with. My parents? They got the call, showed up and pledged to love a stranger-child they's never seen. Instant parenthood -- no biology required. Not a simple feat, I think. No matter what my mother says.
Last fall, my mom and I tried to get some answers to these questions. We called Catholic Social Services, almost on impulse, one day when I was home visiting. The person we needed to talk with wasn't available, so we left a message.
I'd gone back to Ohio when my mom got the return call. The case worker was friendly, even chatty, my mom says. Yes, she said, there was medical information available. And, by the way, my biological father was very successful. And it wouldn't be hard to track him down. Finding my biological mother would be relatively easy, too, she said. Just say the word and she'd get the paperwork going.
My mom told me all this on the phone that night. I listened, stunned, trying to take it all in. Just before we hung up, my mom said: "Oh, I almost forgot. She said your biological mother dropped out of college but went back and graduated after you were born."
Relief washed over me: Her life went on. That's one of the few times in my life I've cried for joy.
During my last visit to Wisconsin, my mom gave me a thick white envelope labeled "Kelly Ann's papers" and told me to open it when I got back home. She'd been saving it, she said, for when my questions started to come. Inside the envelope my "parental history" -- family histories, physical descriptions, everything but the names.
I reviewed this new information, neatly summarized in three Xeroxed sheets. "Father: 22 years old, 5 feet, 10 inches. 170 pounds. Protestant. German. Engineering student. Mother: 19. Catholic. Swiss-Irish. Music student."
The case worker wrote that my biological father "came into our office voluntarily and impressed the worker with his good intelligence." She described my biological mother as a "fairly pretty girl, tall and slender in build with long light brown hair and large brown eyes."
I stared at the sheets for a long time, getting acquainted with the strangers in my gene pool. Then I folded the sheets into the envelope, tucked them into my bottom desk drawer and picked up the phone. My parents were glad to hear I'd made it home safely.