Don't You Want to Know?

That's another question I get a lot.  I was adopted as an eight-week-old baby.  People want to know about my biological parents and then they want to know why I never looked for them or information about them.  "Don't you want to know?"  "Not really, no."  "Why not?  "Well...why?"

People magazine, a celebrity gossip and entertainment news mag,  used to, when I was growing up, do a fairly regular feature article, maybe once a year or so, for no apparent reason, on adopted kids.  The articles were always blatantly biased in favor of biological families.  The adopted children interviewed were always ones in extreme circumstances, abusive relationships, various and sundry trauma.  They would describe feeling a disconnect from their adoptive parents and would go on some quest to find their "real" parents.  These articles never included interviews with the MANY adopted children who grew up in happy homes feeling a true and deep connection to their parents, or even the many children who grew up in unhappy biological-family homes and felt no connection to their biological parents.

The nuclear family is a relatively, in human history, recent societal construct, but boy we sure do romanticize it, market and protect it, don't we?

I grew up in a nuclear family, but it was one created by my parents and marriage and adoption.  I was eight weeks old when it came together.  I never knew any other family.

My mother created a warm and wonderful home.  Kids from the neighborhood wanted to come to my house after school.  She greeted me with home-baked after-school snacks and a genuine interest in my day and the most marvelous stories, some from the history of her country (England) and some just totally made up and full of fantasy.  She sat up with me when I was sick, she applauded at my school plays, she helped me make Halloween costumes, she shopped for back-to-school clothes and prom dresses with me and thought I was beautiful.  She took me to Australia when I turned 18 and to Italy when I turned 30.

My father did hokey magic tricks for me and the neighborhood kids.  He bought me a science kit and went on nature walks with me and pointed out plants and rocks and winds and the sun and stars.  He swam in the pool with me and horsed around and threw catch and later taught me to play golf.  One Halloween I was wearing a full leg cast, which had not been anticipated, as such things usually aren't, so the situation made wearing my planned Halloween costume impossible.  My parents jury-rigged a last minute costume out of stuff around the house.  I couldn't walk from house to house to trick-or-treat, so my Dad carried me, cast-and-all, to each door so I wouldn't miss out on my favorite holiday.

People would ask me if I knew where my "real" parents were.  My answer was always, "yes."