Exposing some secrets from my adoption search

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Attaining the secrets from my closed adoption was the second hardest thing I never imagined I would do.  Writing about what unfurled is the first hardest thing.  I share an original poem, a quote, and a fresh piece of memoir.

Determined Silence 

Stop.  Shush. Do you hear that?
Not the train clicking along the tracks a mile away.
Not the birds chattering in the neighbor’s fruit trees. Listen harder.

It’s like the dialed down quiet of dried skin peeling off a sunburn,
Or the choking hitch in a newborn’s howl.
The jarring nothingness that sneaks in between what just was and what is to come.
Such is the determined silence of my closed adoption.

A sinkhole where forbidden information lies
About parents that perhaps hadn’t intended to be parents,
Parents that were too young, too poor to be parents,
Parents whose own parents wouldn’t let them be parents.
Those are my parents, all of them, some of them, maybe none of them.

People whose names are not on my birth record.
People with aliases or identities like “legally omitted.”
People whose addresses it is forbidden by law for me to know.
People who haven’t come to look for me, haven’t left me a letter or any kind of family tree.
Vanished parents who left me with profound wonder and disturbing loss.

It is the mystery of them and their glaring absence which seeps into my dreams and
Forces my dogged pursuit of personal story.

 My sister whispers to the hostess, pointing to our table on the other side of the diner.  Across from me, my mother’s hand mimics my sister’s gesturing. Both of them poke index fingers into the silence between their words.  My mother.  My sister. The three of us bound by birth and by blood, and by her birthday today.

From the kitchen doors, our server emerges with a small cake.  She stops to light the single candle plopped into its chocolate core. An entourage of waiters fall in behind her and they weave around the other diners. Singing, they surround my mother’s chair. Her stooped shoulders lift with a pleased smile.  Eight-seven years young she declares as she thanks them. My sister winks at me and I beam back at her. Five years of looking for my birth mother and nine years now of knowing her.

In the flame of the single flickering candle, memories flare and flash by. I see the brilliant fall day when first I heard my mother’s teacherly voice; the afternoon when first I hugged her and realized that her eyes are hazel like mine; and the evening of my own birthday, the first one with her – when she met her granddaughters, my children – for the first time.

Make a wish I say. As she purses her lips, I craft a private one. I wish for more birthdays, like this one, with my mother and my sister and me.

“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process

is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” – Brene Brown

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