They were both keen on the vanilla ice cream/mango sorbet cake with a gingersnap/coconut/almond crust. It makes a great milestone birthday cake.
What is a milestone birthday if you have a relinquished child you’re reunited with? I think it’s the year where the scales tip in favor of the birthdays spent together as opposed to those spent apart. I think it’s every birthday you celebrate post-reunion.
This month my son celebrates his 43rd birthday. The scales have now most definitely tipped in the direction of knowing him for more years than not knowing him. We’ve already celebrated since he and his family are here for a visit.
20 birthdays uncelebrated
My son and I met just a few days before his 21st birthday. Two decades of birthdays went uncelebrated. They were cause for mourning, not celebration. Where is he? Is he healthy? Is he happy? Is he alive?
A double celebration
We made it a double celebration since my younger daughter just had her birthday 10 days ago and my birthday dinner for her was derailed my a short hospital stay for my mom.
M does not remember a time before her brother was part of her life since she was only two when they met. When I told her and her sister that they had a big brother, they both looked at me as if I’d just presented them with a pony. The age gap seemed huge between them then. Now that they’re both adults, it seems so much less.
I love you, Iowa. But I’m distressed that you want to have this birth certificate thing both ways. collage by author
Children of same-sex couples
I recently I read this. It has to do with the birth certificates of children of same-sex couples. The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that both parents in a married same-sex couple must be on a child’s birth certificate.In the past, Iowa’s Department of Public Health has insisted on listing a biological parent on these birth certificates. The court now says that practice is unconstitutional.
Adoptees
I have some personal experience with Iowa’s bureaucracy regarding birth certificates. In 1990 I began to search for the son I had placed for adoption 20 years earlier. I wrote several letters to the Iowa Department of Human services, asking them to provide me with the original birth certificate for my son.I knew this birth certificate would provide no identifying information that would aid in my search for him. However, I viewed it as an empowerment exercise. My son had been taken from me. And they erased the evidence. I wanted someone to acknowledge the wrong. And the erasure of it.
Silenced for two decades by shame, I came out of my closet after the birth of my third child. I wanted the state of Iowa, at the very least, to acknowledge that the birth of my son had taken place. I had my daughters’ birth certificates. And now I wanted my son’s. My name was on it. A legal document. Wasn’t I entitled to it?
The interesting thing here–the thing that relates to the court decision above— is that my son’s biological father’s name did not appear on the birth certificate. The social worker advised me not to name the father of my baby—to protect his reputation. My name, however, would most definitely be on the birth certificate. And so, there you have it. A birth certificate without the names of both parents.
Birth certificate identity crisis
What is a birth certificate exactly? Is it a certificate of ownership? Is it a legal record of birth? A documentation of parentage? What kind of parentage? How many birth certificates can a person have? Can the people whose names are on it have a copy of it?
I did not succeed in obtaining a copy of my son’s original birth certificate even though it has my name on it. Even with the intercession of my doctor and a verifiable need to pass on medical information to my son, the only response from the Iowa Department of Human Services was that “there were no records pertaining to my inquiries.”
And what about these children of same-sex couples? What are their rights regarding knowledge of their biological parentage?
Adoption registry
And….there is this: Effective July 1, 1999, Iowa law enables adoptees, their “birth parents,” and their blood-related brothers and sisters to find each other if the birth is registered with the State of Iowa. The “Mutual Consent Voluntary Adoption Registry” was established in order to match those persons requesting that their identity be revealed to registrants “matching” information concerning an adult adoptee. All information provided to the registry is confidential and revealed only in the event that an appropriate match is made and the parties have been notified of the match. A $25 fee in U.S. funds and a certified copy of the applicant’s (?!) birth certificate must be submitted with each consent application. I’m trusting the instructions are a bit oversimplified. Because surely they don’t expect birthparents to supply a birth certificate. We know that’s impossible.
When I first hear the term birthmother it was like breaking through the surface of a dark secret. I knew what to call myself.
Most births to women under 30 occur outside of marriage. THIS STORY from the New York Times is already a week old, but I can’t stop thinking about it. For birthmothers my age, just reading the phrase, “births outside of marriage” gives rise to the stigma we experienced. The contrast between the era in which we gave up our children and today’s regard for single mothers is profound. As far as I know the term, “single mother” did not exist in 1970.
The term birthmother did not exist either. There was no name for girls like me except for girl in trouble or unwed mother. Birthmother is a contested term now. Many prefer first mother or bio mother. I suppose I date myself by using the term birthmother. I like it because it was such a huge relief to hear a word that described me without sounding pejorative. Like I could finally break through the surface of a dark secret and know what to call myself.
I think nowadays women who give birth outside of marriage might not even call themselves single mothers. Maybe they simply call themselves mothers.
Reproductive rights seem to be growing smaller. Month by month. State by state. The Birth Control Panel recently hit women’s reproductive rights in its most vulnerable target. Pending legislation and the personhood movement will more than likely continue to snip away at what young women have come to think of as their unassailable rights over their own bodies.
When I was a pregnant teenager in a small Catholic town in 1970, men were in charge of women. Then, little by little, the constraints of this kind of old-school thinking gave way. But when I read my morning newspaper I see that we now need to fight the same battles again.
Sex was a taboo subject in my small town. I don’t think I was familiar with the term reproductive rights. But millions of American women living in more open-minded places were already using the birth control pill by the time I started high school in 1966.
In the preceding year of 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut had made information about birth control, and birth control itself, legal for married women. However, for Catholic girls like me, the subject of birth control was just as forbidden as the subject of sex. Pope Paul’s the VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae outlawed all types of birth control other than the rhythm method. Our fathers, our doctors, legislators, and the Pope dictated what we could do with our bodies.
In 1973 when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, it seemed carved in stone. But we are traveling back to the past. And we’re going to have to do some heavy lifting.
Adam and Eve Expelled from Eden by an Angel with a Flaming Sword, by R. Sadeler after M. de Vos, 1583 Our personal angels are not necessarily benevolent.
I was raised to believe I had a guardian angel. In my mind’s eye I can still see those religious portrayals of angels saving people from destruction. The large winged creature holding children back from the edge of a cliff, or guiding them as they cross a river on a rickety bridge. I took comfort in those images as child.
But now I know that accidents happen anyway.
I appreciate the poet Carl Dennis’s thoughts about accidents, luck, and our personal angels.
However busy you are, you should still reserve One evening a year for thinking about your double, The man who took the curve on Conway Road Too fast, given the icy patches that night, But no faster than you did; the man whose car When it slid through the shoulder Happened to strike a girl walking alone From a neighbor’s party to her parents’ farm, While your car struck nothing more notable Than a snowbank. One evening for recalling how soon you transformed Your accident into a comic tale Told first at a body shop, for comparing That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain At the house of the stricken parents, and his many Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard. If nobody blames you for assuming your luck Has something to do with your character, Don’t blame him for assuming that his misfortune Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone If his extra grief was balanced later By a portion of extra joy. Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened To include an angel assigned to protect you From the usual outcome of heedless moments. But this evening consider the angel he lives with, The stern enforcer who drives the sinners Out of the Garden with a flaming sword And locks the gate.
Your personal angel
Our personal angels might not be the same. What kind is yours?
Collage by author. How would I manage my first contact with my son? I’d said good-bye to him in Iowa 20 years earlier.
Post Adoption Contact
I was not entirely sure how to initiate my first contact with my son.
As a regular attendee of the monthly Concerned United Birthparents meetings, I picked up some tips there. How to have modest expectations. How to approach the situation with an open mind. How to put myself in the shoes of my son. I didn’t want to shock him or frighten him. Most importantly, I didn’t want to lay my grief on him.
And there’s also this more recent guidance from American Adoption Congress.
After a lot of thinking, I found my path.
The letter
Not long before Christmas I decided I was ready to make my first post-adoption contact with my son. I wrote a letter to him, detailing who I was and how I’d come to place him for adoption. And I enclosed a faded color snapshot of his biological father and me dressed in our pastel evening finery at our senior prom. What would my son think when he saw those two innocent smiles? Would he realize that he was in the photo too?
Christmas was just a couple of weeks away, so I put the letter in a red envelope, hoping to pass it off as a Christmas card. If he doesn’t write me back in a couple of weeks, I thought, I’ll call him.
The mail fell in heaps through the slot in our front door during the week before Christmas. I’d hear our dog bark, and I’d race to the entry hall to contemplate the holiday envelopes strewn on the rug. Examining each one, I hoped for a return address from my son, but there was nothing. At the meetings I’d heard adoptees say that reuniting with a birthparent could make the adoptive parents feel abandoned or threatened. I told myself my son was just taking it slow out of consideration for his family. But even ten days later there was no response.
A phone call
When I first received information about my son, I learned some basic details. That he lived at home with his parents. That he had a sister. That he worked as an information operator for the phone company.
The searcher had given me my son’s phone number and pointed out that the line was separate from his parents’ line. Consequently, I began working up the nerve to call him. But first, I wanted to find out if my son shared his phone line with his sister. This would be important if I called and left a message.
One afternoon shortly after New Year’s, while my daughters were napping, I sat on my bedroom floor with the telephone in my lap. Because I knew his sister’s name, I could call information to get her number and see if it was the same as his. I dialed information for Mesa, Arizona with my pencil at the ready. “Hello, this is C***. May I help you?” said the operator. I gasped at hearing my son’s name and slammed down the phone. I lay flat on my back on the cool oak floor of my bedroom. Was it possible that I had just spoken to my son?
This weekend, in a special promotion, you can get a free book, “Saying Goodbye” ( Kindle edition) on Amazon. It’s a collection of true stories about how we say goodbye to the people, places & things in our lives with grace, dignity & good humor. http://amzn.to/tcU8PP
My essay about saying goodbye to my newborn son, “Holding Him Softly,” is in it.
Here are a few snippets of reviews about the collection: (and if you like the book, you might consider reviewing it on Amazon.)
Tender perspectives helping readers with their own goodbyes. If you have ever had to deal with loss, read this book. It will make you feel better. — Christina Johns, Midwest Book Review, Oct. 18, 2010 The stories are about love, really, not sadness. Despite all the sadness and grief that come with saying goodbye, there is love and joy and comedy on the Other Side. — Gretchen Little, Squidoo.com Lens, Oct. 29, 2010 This book gets to the heart of what I teach in my class on death and dying – that life is filled with loss of all kinds and we can learn from each one and ultimately experience life more fully. The stories in this book do a wonderful job of showing that out of loss there are new beginnings. I recommend it for any teacher of death and dying classes. I also recommend it for anyone who is struggling with a loss – no matter what kind. — Professor Jann Adams, Department of Psychology, College of Idaho, Aug. 25, 2011 Life is full of goodbyes. Some are painful, but some are downright humorous. Saying Goodbye is an anthology of short (true) stories about people saying goodbye to a variety of people, places and things. The authors vary as much as their subjects, and this collection does a nice job of showcasing how different people have so many different experiences with saying farewell. — Book Nook Club, Nov. 5, 2010 This is a great book. There are many anthologies out there, lots with great short stories, but Saying Goodbye is about much more. It’s about memories. There are heartfelt memories, humourous memories, some extremely personal memories. Some really made me smile. Others brought tears to my eyes. — UK author Melanie Sherratt, High Heels and Book Deals, Nov. 22, 2010
“Grandma, did you want to give my daddy away when he was a little baby?” I’m sweeping the floor in preparation for my eight-year-old granddaughter’s birthday party when she asks her question. In a couple of hours the house will be overflowing with pizza and kids and presents, but right now, an emptiness seizes me in the pit of my stomach. “No,” I say. “I didn’t. It was sad to give him up.” “Why did you do it then?” “It’s what girls had to do in those days if they had a baby too young.” “How old were you?” “I was sixteen when I got pregnant with him.” “That’s so old. That’s a good age to be a mommy.” She’s sitting at the table with a glass of milk and a cracker, her eyes wide as she watches me. I must seem ancient to her. “Not really, I say.” And then I explain about high school and college, and how a baby should probably have a grown-up mother. “Bompa and Grammy said that the first time they saw Daddy they knew he was the baby for them!” “I bet they did,” I said. “Your daddy was a really beautiful baby.”
Now a grandma
A couple hours later we’re all singing Happy Birthday together–Bompa, Grammy, and me–along with a the other guests. I’m wearing a black fringed shawl as a gypsy skirt, a scarf wrapped around my hair, borrowed bangles, and silver hoop earrings. It’s a costume birthday party. There are pirates, a witch, an old man, a couple of versions of bat girl, cat woman, and a knight.
I think of the first time I met my son’s adoptive parents twenty years earlier. I stood in my hotel room that evening changing into and out of every article of clothing I’d brought on the trip. A costume party might have assuaged some of that nervousness. I’d probably have chosen to be a saint or a nun. Maybe the first woman president or a high-powered executive to disguise the bewildered and shamed teen-age girl that lived inside me in those days, not far at all from the surface.
After the cake has been devoured, the games played, the princess unwraps her presents. She sits on her chair next to her mom, dutifully reading her birthday cards, one minute in the reality of party thank yous, the next in whatever fantasyland her new toy conveys her to.
At the end of the evening my son’s adoptive father comes up to me to say good-bye. “I’ll bet you haven’t had a hug yet today,” he says. “Not from a tall person,” I say. He laughs. My son’s mother and I hug, too.
In my perfect fantasy world, I would have kept my son. I would have decided that 17 was a good age to be a mother. But in the post-reunion reality that I live in, I can’t imagine things being any better.
According to the personhood movement, a zygote has the civil rights due all human beings. However, if this unplanned child is adopted, it’s quite likely that it won’t have the same rights as other humans and be able to get its original birth certificate. Not to mention, that the woman who houses this zygote won’t have basic reproductive rights .
The Personhood Movement and adoption might find themselves related in the not-too-distant future. But first, let’s look at how adoption sometimes works today.
Adoption
The American Adoption Congress publication, “The Beacon,” has published a piece of mine. It’s an interview with a 19-year-old adoptee who was adopted 1992. Gabrielle’s Story about open adoption is quite different from the way my son and I experienced adoption in 1970.
The personhood movement
There’s another story I highly recommend. A young woman I’ve know since she was a baby wrote it. Pema Levy is now an assistant editor at The American Prospect. Her most recent piece, Moment of Conception, conjures a future where abortion will be unavailable. A future when, I think, babies could be place. for adoption more frequently.
Imagine a future time when the personhood movement and its cronies have outlawed abortion. A future when the ranks of birthmothers increase ten-fold. In that future and terrible time, women will be forced to bear children they feel unequipped to raise. Poor health, poverty, rape. None of these will be a good enough reason to terminate a pregnancy.
I predict that as conservatives take over, any openness that has pried its way into the world of adoption will also disappear.
Targeted ads on your Facebook page may be letting you know that the fall boots at Zappos have arrived, or that the GOP is cutting funding for NPR. But Facebook has placed an ad on my sidebar from an attractive 30-something couple who want to adopt. It’s one thing to have a cushy little inner tube of middle-aged weight and be constantly barraged by “the three foods that kill belly fat.” But it’s quite another to be a birthmother and find prospective adoptive parents creeping on you in your side-bar.
Get a clue Facebook
I’m now past childbearing age, Facebook. While you may know that I have relinquished a child, Mother Nature has now insured that I cannot make the same mistake twice. You know my birthday, Facebook, but I guess you don’t know much about biology. You also don’t know much about me. Your targeted ads are missing their target.
And Facebook? Just to be clear, I think it would be a bad idea to advertise coffins to people who’ve recently lost a loved one.
