Adoption Day Is Almost Like A Birthday

Because of my closed adoption, there is no record of the events leading up to the births of my twin sister and me. Until I met my birth mom in 2011, I didn’t know whether she had seen or held us before surrendering us to the state. So, instead of the play-by-play of what happened on a cold, February morning in Chicago, the events surrounding our Adoption Day became the family legend which has trailed us into adulthood. In my adoptive family, we did not celebrate our Adoption Day like adoptees from open adoption currently do. Not because it wasn’t meaningful, it just wasn’t a thing when I was growing up in the 1960s.

When my adoptive parents collected my twin sister and me from St. Vincent’s Orphanage in Chicago on March 6, 1959, we were already three weeks old.  Information from our adoption file shows that we had been transferred from the hospital to St. Vincent’s five days after we were born. When my birth mom relinquished her parental rights, we became wards of the state, and the Sisters of Charity–the religious order who ran St. Vincent’s–cared for my twin sister and me while we waited for Catholic Charities to place us in a closed adoption. 

Sixty years later, my adoptive mother still tears up when she recounts “the call” from Catholic Charities informing her she was to become a parent for the first time. Her vivid retelling of this moment has become so real to me, it’s almost as if I was in the room with her when she picked up the phone.

Mom had been immersed in a lesson plan with her busy, third-grade class at St. Cletus in La Grange. First, there was a rap at the classroom door, and then the school secretary stepped inside the classroom.

“You have a phone call in the office,” she said. 

The entire staff at St. Cletus knew my folks had experienced a half dozen miscarriages during their five-year marriage. At 26 and 27, Mom and Dad had been waiting nearly two years to adopt. 

As the story goes, Mom left the administrator in charge of her class of forty-three students and rushed down the wide hallway. With each hurried step, Mom became more certain the phone call she was about to take was the one that would change her life. When she stopped at the office’s open door, she was out of breath. The Principal glanced up from paperwork, took one look at my mother’s flushed face, and then jabbed a finger towards the school secretary’s phone. Mom darted to the adjacent desk, staring at the rotary dial phone with its flashing red “hold” button. She squeezed her eyes shut and sent off a quick prayer, and then she lifted the receiver and punched the blinking, red button. 

“Hello,” she said, her voice soft, questioning.

“Mrs. Ryan?  This is Marge Duffy calling, the social worker at Catholic Charities.”

“Yes… Hello, Marge.” Mom moved the phone tighter to her ear. 

“Sorry to disturb your school day, Mrs. Ryan, but we had a question about your adoption paperwork.”

“Yes…” 

The corners of Mom’s mouth twisted into a frown. She wondered why the social worker had pulled her out of a busy classroom to ask a question that could have been posed in the evening hours.

“In your adoption paperwork, you checked the box next to ‘Twins.’ Did you mean to do that or was it an error?” 

Mom did remember putting a neat, little checkmark in the box next to “Twins,” but in all truthfulness she wasn’t sure why she had done so. The youngest of twelve, Mom yearned for a big family like the one in which she’d grown up. While declaring that she and Dad would welcome twins had been spontaneous, the decision still felt right. 

“Yes, I meant to check the box for twins. It was no mistake.” Mom shrugged her shoulders at the waiting Principal as if to apologize for the call delaying her return to class.

“Well, in that case we need to set up a time for you to come to St. Vincent’s and pick up your twins, your infant baby girls.”

After Mom hung up with the Catholic Charities social worker, the Principal and everyone within earshot swarmed around my sobbing mother and helped her dial Dad’s office number.

 Most adoptees, like me, from the closed adoption era have no idea what happened on the day we were born.  If we’re lucky, we’re able to connect with our birth relatives later in life and receive long-desired clues about our birth circumstances and the day we were born. In contrast, today’s open adoption experience immediately puts the adopted child in a more transparent situation. The adoption plan establishes a clear flow of information between the birth mother, the adoption agency, and the adoptive parents. Medical history and genealogy are passed on at the outset. If she chooses, the birth mother plays a role in selecting her child’s new parents. Often, the adoptive parents are present for the birth, so they’re able to convey firsthand knowledge of their child’s birthday as he/she develops. The adopted child in an open adoption benefits from all this knowing. Experts agree that by facilitating this knowledge from the outset a child is better able to form a strong identity and firm sense of belonging. 

Regardless of the type of adoption experience, Adoption Day is a special moment for both an adoptee and their adoptive parents. Much like a birthday, Adoption Day is about a child being welcomed to the world while commemorating the formation of family.  The important moments and events surrounding Adoption Day bear both celebration and remembering. By acknowledging this unique and precious experience, the adoptee feels important, validated and loved.

As an adoptee, one who is both in reunion with birth relatives and maintains a loving, respectful relationship with adoptive family, I believe that what we know about ourselves not only determines who we become, but who we are capable of being.

Available on Amazon!