ADOPTION EMOTIONS

I have been hiding for several days because I did not want to write this blog. To write about the story of my adoption is one thing, but to speak about my deepest emotions about the subject is to have to reface those feelings. I find it difficult to begin to put my feelings down on paper, but I know that if I do write what I am really feeling, that it might help out someone else who is struggling with the many mixed emotions. I must trust that you will read this blog with an open heart.

If you were not adopted you may be wondering several questions: 1) How does it feel to be adopted; as a child and as an adult? 2) How do I feel about my birth mother? birth father? 3) What are my inner thoughts about being adopted and that experience in my life? 4) Do I have resentments about my raising? or about my birth mother abandoning me? 5) What were some of my brother, Charley's, thoughts?

Everyone felt that Charley had been dealt a horrible hand in life. He was the son of old Boston shipmakers who lived (live) down the street from the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor. His mother had disappeared from her family's home and ended up married to a young man who was overseas in the Navy and stationed in San Diego. She became pregnant shortly after he left for overseas duty, the father of the baby would not have anything to do with him, and so she ended up naming the baby boy, Robert Eugene, after her husband. When her husband returned home she tried to convince him that the baby was his and had been named for him, but senior Robert could not be fooled that easily; the time didn't match up. So little Robert's mother gave him to the County and signed him over for adoption.

Enter Ralph and Lucile and Lucile's quest for a son for Ralph. Then add Lucile's desire to push Charley (who was a definite, opinionated, square peg) into a tight, constricting, round mold, and you come up with a high level of punishment and torture that he endured almost every day of his life. As an adult, Charley was an outlaw motorcyclist and built a righteous chopper. He suffered a severe accident on his chopper-racing down a city street at 100 mph until he was stopped suddenly by a car who was backing out of his driveway in front of Charley-that broke his kidneys and ruptured his spleen, had numerous scrapes and contusions, and had a compound fracture of his right arm in three places. He was in County Hospital for over a year, trying to heal. He was then unable to join the Service during the Vietnam War and worked sporadically in several jobs over the years. He was so intelligent and he was gifted on the piano; he could have been a concert pianist-he had been tested-but he could never settle down to practice. I loved Charley very much, but sometimes-when he would stir up my mother by rebelling and she would go into attack mode-I also hated him. I tried so hard to be good and perfect to please mother, but Charley seemed to love getting the best of my mother and he would never let her see him cry or call out even when she was stabbing him; or the steel buckle of the belt cut into his back. Then she would turn on me in her frustration and I would cry heartily and beg her to stop.

Both Charley and I loved our father, Ralph, with all of our hearts and souls. His was the position of love and affection in our lives. He loved everyone he met, no matter the race, culture, or religion. I also loved mother and strove to please her by trying so hard to be perfect, doing my best in school, and believing the same thoughts that she taught us to think. I waited to rebel until the night I turned 18 and crawled out my bedroom window, with all of my stuffed animals, and ran away to my best friend's house. As you can tell, in some areas I was very child-like and naive, I only took one change of clothes. Two weeks later, Charles Hirsch and I got married when he returned from the war.

I became a mother at 19, when my little girl was born. One of the hardest parts of adoption was waiting for my first child to be born. I was so afraid that my child might be another race than myself, and Mr. Hirsch was such a bigot, that I was afraid that if that should happen that he might kill me and our baby. No one, up to that time, had been able to tell me anything about either of my birth parents. I had no idea of their race or their religion, or what country they had immigrated from.  That was the scariest time of my life. Mother could not bring herself to come and be with me when I had my baby; she had never experienced pregnancy and she felt very uncomfortable about the whole subject. She also was not comfortable with babies that were less than six weeks old, so her first visit was when the baby was about two months old. She was an excellent grandmother and turned out to be warm and generous with the grandchildren. Charley and I were both surprised. Daddy, of course, was a very expansive grandfather, adored the children unconditionally, and made every one of them feel very special and unique.

Charley never felt a bond with my mother's relatives, but my father's relatives he dearly loved because they accepted us so totally as family. My grandmother on my mother's side once told me and Charley that, "I wish my grandchildren would be as good to me as you and Charley are." Which was meant as a compliment, but which sentence hurt us deeply because she spoke as if Charley and I were not her "real" grandchildren. Our other aunts and uncles were very accepting, some of the cousins were very accepting, but once our parents and aunts and uncles passed away, both sides of the family forgot about our existence. I dearly love many of those cousins, and I was definitely glad to be a part of their families.

I mourned for my birth mother all of my life, but I gave very little thought and almost no emotion to my birth father. I felt that my birth mother would love me and accept me as I was and I yearned for acceptance and validation as a person. I dreamed almost every night about a meeting between my mother and me. I wrote my mother poems and little songs and hid them until I was an adult. I wanted to be prepared for the day, that I was sure would come, when my birth mother would appear miraculously and take me home to a better life.

Tomorrow, I will give you my "bottom line" emotions regarding my adoption, and the affect on me of being rejected by my birth mother for a second time, in 1979. Also, the tragic loss of my brother in 1991.