Yahoo answers is a stimulating source of posts. Today I read about a woman going to meet her son and his adoptive parents for the first time. She was asking for advice from aparents. All the ones that answered her were very supportive and saying how they’d welcome their adoptees natural parents into their lives. One adoptee mentioned
“one thing that bugged my amother though- my bmother kept telling her how grateful she was.
bleeeech.”
I’ve met my daughter’s adoptive parents once, about 16 years ago. It did not occur to me to ask anyone for advice. Joy and I were seeing each other for the second or third time and all of a sudden she was giving me driving directions to her house. There we were! I don’t know if her adoptive parents had any idea we were coming. They were both home. They were very polite.
Our only previous contact was a thank you note I’d written when Joy found me. I was gushing with gratitude. Maybe that was the honeymoon period of Joy’s and my reunion, me gushing. All the shame, guilt, grief was swept away for a spell of profound delerium. The mysterious and superior beings that had rescued my child from my over imagined inadequacies had an address. They had raised her as far as her own motherhood. She was alive. She was healthy. She had found me. My prayers were answered.
I was living in a new/strange community and had no girl friends to celebrate my discovery. My husband seemed wary of my new obsession. But surely her parents, who had the honor of sharing her life, would be pleased to know how much I appreciated Joy’s fabulousity.
So I took out a notecard and expressed my gratitude for their love and care. She was able to find me because her amom had given her my identifying information. I thought that was terrifically open minded.
Um, not exactly reciprocated. Um, not seen as appropriate. Basically NOT appropriate. I was thanking them for keeping her alive basically, because I was SO GLAD she contacted me.
Joy let me know how inappropriate it was right away. But I didn’t understand that for years. In my rosy fog I had no idea that her parents had ever spoken ill of me or her father. I had no idea there was a downside to adoption for anyone but me.
singout 