• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1074 0

into the steam of her coffee, “I know that I made the right choice. But it was heartbreaking.” Understandably, his birthday has always been rough for her, as are the four days that follow it, the span between the delivery date and the finalized adoption. Her son may feel something similar. Psychologist Nancy Newton Verrier, in her book The Primal Wound, explains that this is a recognized phenomenon among children adopted at birth or shortly after: “There seems to be a memory built into the psyche and cells, an anniversary reaction (also felt by the birth mother), which sends many adoptees into despair around their birthdays.” Rather than celebrating a birthday like other kids, they may experience for several days the pain of having been relinquished, feelings formed long before their capacity to remember or understand them. Furthermore, Verrier notes, the emotions that well up on a birthday will often lead an older adoptee to wonder about his or her birth mother: Is she thinking about me today?

In years past, Shannon never “sensed” her son thinking about her, but that’s changed dramatically, as if a psychic intercom has been switched on. “Now that he’s a teenager, I’m sure he has an awareness of me. I’m sure his mom has told him about me, and I just feel him out there—here—someplace. I’m much more aware of his presence as he becomes more aware of mine.”

Her talking so openly about her child is new. Only in recent years has she given herself permission to do so. The buffers around her emotions have eroded, it seems to me, as she’s watched her nephews—our two sisters’ sons in particular—going through puberty. Every time she sees Sam and Dylan, they appear to be an inch taller, a little huskier, more mature. Naturally, she can’t help thinking, What kind of man is my boy becoming?

Shannon would welcome meeting him one day, as she indicated on the final adoption papers. However, she would never initiate a search for him, and if he chooses never to seek her out, she can accept that. Intuition tells her that he will, though, when the time is right for him. I hope it happens. I would love to meet him, too.

“I’m really curious about his voice, about hearing his voice,” she admitted to me, smiling.

“It’s probably deepening right about now,” I pointed out. “Or cracking.”

We both laughed, and I couldn’t help but think of Shannon at that transitional age. When she was a scared young girl, whispering her secrets to me as we hid in the yellow bathroom, blood was so frightening to her. But today it carries such a different meaning. Now blood is a knock at the door, her son coming back to find her.

SIX

Vital Staining

WHETHER OR NOT THE NEED IS GENUINE, TRACKING down medical history is often an adult adoptee’s stated rationale for instigating a search for his or her biological parents. This explanation provides an intellectual context for what’s likely to be an emotionally raw experience for all involved. A woman considering having a child may first wish to learn if serious illness runs in her family—instances of childhood cancers, for example, or blood disorders such as hemophilia. Is there need to worry? In another case the search may be vital but unwanted: A middle-aged man, content to leave the past alone, must nevertheless locate a compatible organ or bone marrow donor. For others, the reason to search may seem silly when put into words—to find a relative who has, say, the same catsup-colored hair; finally, what made you stand out all these years helps you fit in. Despite the spoken purpose, however, adoption experts say that a search is usually driven by a deeper yearning. No matter how good one’s health, how blissful one’s upbringing, nothing may quiet the desire to know the people to whom you’re related by birth, your true blood.

As I see it, the successful mapping of the human genome has done horrendous harm to the romantic notion of blood kin, a phrase that first entered the English language during the early Middle Ages. Medieval doctors believed that the act of conception was a mixing of “pure blood” from both