ADOPTION - McGee or not

 

I knew I was really a McGee.

I kept the secret from the grownups and they didn’t speak of it either.

But they knew. 

Of course they knew. They had shown me the papers in which my REAL name was written.

I thought about my real parents a lot. My adoptive parents would’ve been surprised, I think, if they knew how often I thought about them.

They were so proud of how they had told me and my 3 siblings – about being adopted. 

How we were special cuz we were chosen unlike other parents who stuck with whatever they got.

They had this book that explained it all. How when grownups want a baby they to the adoption place where there are rows and rows of babies in bassinets. And they look at each baby in turn until they see the one that’s just right. Kind of like Goldilocks with the porridge being a baby, right?

Then they take the baby to the cashier to buy it and they take it home. They take it home and come up with a name and BAM instant family. 

Nice story.

EACH OF us in turn was read this story, over and over, of course, as it is with children. They like to hear a story many, many times until they know it by heart. And still they want to hear it again. It’s somehow comforting to hear a story you already know. It becomes an old familiar friend.

Except – it was all a lite. There was no picking out your baby, Nothing special that made them want you. It was the opposite. Someone else did not want you, so you were thrown out and some poor schmuck who couldn’t have their own children went to the adoption people to ask for a baby. Hopefully one with similar skin color and hair color as the parents so no one would suspect they had a thrown-out baby – a reject – less then stellar – of no known pedigree or stature – with parents of dubious character.  Men were expected to get sex wherever and from whomever they could so his status wasn’t as low But her? She was a slut – easy – no morals at all, etc., etc., etc.

The grownups didn’t say that out loud when we were young. No we didn’t hear about our slut mothers until adolescence when every perceived wrong was suddenly attributed to our shady parentage. “Blood will tell, Barbara, blood will tell,” said my pretend father to my pretend mother when they discovered I was sexually active at 16 with my 17 year old boyfriend.

I was so shocked when he said that. We had only mentioned my parentage once when I was about 7. The piano incident. 

That’s the day I found out all along he expected I would one day disappoint him. My blood would tell. I was not as good as other people’s children. I was fundamentally flawed, lesser than, a reject, no good at my core.

I wondered if they thought the same about my siblings.

I get kind of depressed trying to write about this. They elevated Mark so I knew it was different for a boy. His mother hadn’t wanted him either but somehow her shame did not ruin his life.

Later in life when Mark met his birth family he thought they were just white trash and he didn’t want to know them.

My birth father’s family contained two doctors and a lovely middle class family of 5. 

My birth mom was white trash, too, though. Uneducated, married and divorced 3 times with 5 children from 4 different fathers. Angry, depressed and very sad and confused, in my opinion. I was glad she had not raised me. 

My McGee Dad and his wife, my McGee siblings, and their spouses and my nephews: