Adoption story

There's a working parents blog where I work.  Since May is adoption month, they wanted some adoption stories.  Here's mine.  It's probably too long, and even worse, it doesn't really have a point, but here it is:

Adoption isn't something most people experience firsthand, so people often ask me questions about how we got our kids and what the adoption experience is like.  One of the first things I tell people is that every adoption is its own story; it's hard to draw parallels from one adoption to another.  I'll share a couple of thoughts about my family's experience.  I'll be interested to hear from others.

I have two kids, a seventeen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl.  My son, Tanner, was born in Kansas City, and my daughter, Lindsey, was born in Wichita, so we call ourselves an I-35 family.  Whenever we wanted another kid, we just drove south on I-35 until we found one.

One question I get is whether the kids know they're adopted and, if so, how we told them.  As is the case generally with adoptions these days, they've always known.  It's just part of the story of their lives.  It took them a little while to figure out exactly what it means to be adopted and how that's different from most families.  One day, when Tanner was about four years old, he suddenly piped up from the back seat of the car and said, "Dad, I can't remember--was I born or was I adopted?"

(Tanner just wandered by the computer and read what I've written so far.  He said that I need to tell everyone that it's okay to ask adopted kids about their adoption.  He says that when people find out he's adopted, they're first very surprised, and then they worry that they've blundered into a sensitive topic.  He wants everyone to relax.)

You'd think that having kids five and a half years apart would minimize the usual annoying sibling stuff, but no.  On one occasion three or four years ago, the kids were fighting about something.  Tanner yelled to Lindsey, "I'm so glad we're not related by blood!"  Lindsey's repose was, "Me, too!"  And then they resolved whatever their problem was and life went on as normal.

Lindsey just told me that I should talk about open versus closed adoptions.  That's too long to cover thoroughly in a blog entry, but I'll just say that we're in frequent contact with both of Lindsey's birth parents and their families.  Lindsey's biological grandmother, who is her birth father's mother, often sends her gifts and calls to see how she's doing.  We've gotten together with them several times.  That works well for everyone.

We're not in contact with Tanner's birth parents.  We met his birth father once, outside the courthouse when he was placed with us.  We don't have any information about him other than that meeting.  We met his birth mother once before Tanner was born and again at the courthouse.  His birth mother and I exchanged occasional emails until about six years ago, but I haven't heard anything from her since then.  I send her an email and a picture every year or so.  The email doesn't bounce back, but I don't ever get a response.  I wonder if she's getting them.  When she placed Tanner, she wrote him a letter explaining her decision and also enclosed some pictures of her and Tanner's birth father.  I read the letter to him several years ago.  I came across the letter and the pictures recently when I was doing some organizing.  I asked Tanner if he wanted to see them.  He shrugged and said no, he'd already seen them and didn't need to see them again.   I imagine there will come a time when he'll be more curious.

I'll close with a poem that Lindsey got for her birthday from one her birth mother's kids, Kailey, who is Lindsey's biological half-sister.  They've never met.  She's about nine years old. (Lindsey's birth mother, Michelle, stabilized her life after she placed Lindsey, got married, and has had five more kids.  "I was made for this!" she said to me after she'd had her third or fourth baby.)

Here's Kailey's message to Lindsey (spelling and punctuation as in original):

                Hi!!! I want to tell you a birthday song I made up for you.

                Happy birthday to you, you live in Minnesota l wonder about you , and you turned 12!!

                Happy birthday Half sis!

It was the first time it had occurred to Lindsey that she has a bunch of biological half-siblings out there somewhere.  Maybe we'll all get together someday and see who else in the bunch also has Lindsey's wide-set eyes, which she definitely got from Michelle.