So I haven’t felt much like writing about adoption issues lately. Even though I’m always thinking about them. The fact of my adoption is never really that far from the surface. It is there in my relationship with my mother, with my daughters. It is always there, even when it seems not to be. Even when I go through long periods of not writing about it, or consciously considering it. It was there last month when I travelled five and a half hours by plane to go to my grandmother’s funeral. As my mother’s siblings and their children, my mother, brother and I gathered around my aunt’s kitchen, it was hard not to notice I am the only one who physically stands out. (Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the other thing” comes to mind.) It is rare for all of my mother’s family to be together in one room: we are scattered across the country. The last time we were all together was my grandmother’s 80th birthday nearly ten years ago. It is natural enough to check everyone out, see how they look, how they’ve changed, grown up. One of my cousins stated the obvious: “My god, it is so easy to see who belongs to what family unit here; each one looks so much alike. And then there’s you and A.” My older brother is also adopted. The funny thing is, he actually looks like he could be biologically related to my mother’s family. He has similar colouring, height, body type. In any case, I am comfortable around this side of my family; I like them, they are good people, funny people. But at times like those, I sometimes look around the room and think: who are these people?
I was close to my grandmother when I was a little child. She lived with us for a few years. I was her first granddaughter and she spent a lot of time caring for me, indulging me, holding me. When she lived with us, her room was the third floor attic. I would climb up those stairs early in the morning and crawl in bed with her. She called me her baby. I saw little of my grandmother in recent years and her health was poor; we did not talk much in the last several years of her life. But I took my daughters to visit her and she cherished their photos and all the information she could remember about them. When she died, I thought quite a bit about my father. I thought another person who loved me is gone from the world.
Last week when I was driving my daughter to preschool, she announced after an unusual quiet: “Grandma’s white, she didn’t give birth to you, did she? Another woman gave birth to you. She was white too.” And the conversation went something like this:
“That’s right.”
“But Grandma raised you. She’s your mum.”
“Yes.”
“You’re mixed race. I’m mixed race too. We’re black and white. We’re brown. Daddy’s the only one that’s white in our family.”
“Umm hmm.”
“Do you know the woman that gave birth to you? Do you remember her?”
“I don’t know her. I wish I did.”
“Where is she? You should look for her.”
“I have looked for her. I’ve looked very hard, but I can’t find her.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I don’t know her, but I miss her very much. I’d really like to know who she is.”
“Me too. I think she’s looking for you.”
“I don’t think she is. I don’t think she wants to be found.”
“Aww…… [more silence] You’ll never give me away will you?”
“No! You girls are the most important thing to me in the world. I would never do that.”
“No, because you love us, you’re our mum.”