Barnmaven

Being real

I always thought that Gepetto loved Pinocchio just as he was.  I believe that the ending of the story, where Pinocchio becomes real, is more of a metaphor than anything else.   I think Pinocchio became a real boy not because of the fairy but because he finally believed that he really was Gepetto's son.  I stick to this version because if the ending really means that belief isn't what creates reality then the story invalidates my self-perception.

Bastard Moments have been very few in my life.  My family never shied away from the topic, but even though being an adoptee had enormous impact on me emotionally, but it wasn't something we needed to constantly discuss.  As my Dad often remarks, our family has a wrong kind of humor.  We have been known to mess around with people who didn't realize my brother and I weren't our parents' biological spawn.  We'd go to some event or family thing, some new person would remark on how much I looked like my parents and we'd start laughing like wild hyenas.  Fun times.

Never have I felt like I was anything less than my parents' child.  My brother and I were - are - loved just as deeply as any child has ever been.  

I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday the sense of indignation and burning shame I felt when I realized that even though we weren't somehow less real in the eyes of our parents, we were decidedly so in the eyes of others.  Mom had a copy of the Bardwell family genealogy book - a big hardbound monster of a thing - that listed all the Bardwell descendants, living or deceased.  Right there in print next to my name and my brother's name:  ADOPTED.  I couldn't understand - then or now - why such a distinction even needed to be made.   Whenever I read an obituary that pointedly refers to the deceased's surviving child as adopted I immediately assume the obituary's author is an asshole.

Not once did I ever think that any of my close relatives thought of us as less real than biological progeny, even if some  nameless, faceless genealogy junkie did.

 

It wasn't until my uncle passed away that we learned otherwise.  

 

Of all of the relatives I knew growing up, this aunt and uncle were the closest to us both in proximity and in heart.  They were my godparents, and I was my aunt's namesake.  When my uncle passed away I had not seen them in almost ten years, having just moved back from the other side of the country.  I had just started my new job that week and the dinner would be a midweek affair over on the other side of the mountains.  I could not go, but my brother and parents could.  When my mother requested that the gathering be held on a night my brother wasn't working, my oldest cousin's wife balked.  "Why should it matter if Ken or Mary can come? Its not like they're actually related or anything."

 

I think I could smell my mother's hair burning from half a state away.  

 

That was - oh, gosh - more than seven years ago.  In the time that has since passed, I assumed maybe things had softened, settled.  Maybe it had just been a careless remark - the kind you say but don't really mean.  We've all done that a time or two, right?  I have.  And we've had at least one family reunion and had a wonderful time.

 

And then  - the wedding.  My cousin's youngest daughter.  We'd been hearing and talking about it for months and since my Dad's health precluded my parents' attendance, I planned to attend.  It would be wonderful to see all of my cousins and my aunts.  

 

And of all of the relatives on this coast and elsewhere, guess which cousin was the only one not invited?

 

My parents got an invitation.  Since I'm nearly 50 I think I can safely assume that the invitation addressed only to them did not include their children.  I waited for my invitation to arrive.  And waited.  After more than a week I had to admit that it wasn't ever going to be in my mailbox.  It had never been sent and never would.

 

I will be the first to admit that my hurt and dismay are likely exacerbated by my current health issues.  I know I'm a miserable person these days.  But that ... being left out like that ... was more than a slight.  It was more than an insult.  

 

When other relatives started posting pictures last weekend of the fabulous reception and talking about how much fun they were having hanging out with their family I felt almost sick to my stomach.  

 

In one of those typically dramatic reactions I tend to have I deactivated my Facebook account.  I'm sure that showed them!  Almost as much as being taken off my Christmas card list will SHOW THEM!

 

I reactivated Facebook yesterday, but I really mean what I said about the Christmas cards.

 

I know that "feeling" like I'm the real daughter of my parents doesn't change the reality of our biological disconnect.  But I will go toe to toe - and I'd probably have to get in line behind Mom and Dad -  with anyone who thinks that my parents and I are anything other than family.  

 

My Dad loves his family and he loves me.  I always thought they were my family too.  Does it require their belief that I am also theirs to make me real?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soapbox: Preserving Adoptee Rights in Oregon

 

 

 

A brief history:

In 1864, the state of Oregon enacted its first adoption law.  This law severed the ties of birth parents to a child,  declaring selfsame child to belong to the adoptive parents.  Until 1921, though, all name changes - for adoption or otherwise - were published annually and made available to the general public.  In essence, an adopted person - or anyone else, for that matter, had access to adoption records.

In 1921 the practice of publishing name changes ended in Oregon, but it wasn't until 1939 when Oregon followed many other states in actually sealing some of paperwork involved in the adoption process, though those records could be accessed by court order.  In 1941, the Oregon legislature provided for an altered birth certificate to be issued upon the adoption.  The 1941 laws did not, however, provide for secrecy or identity protection for birthparents.

In 1957, the original birth certificate became a sealed record in Oregon, available only by court order. It was in 1979 that all adoption - related records, including agency files, were sealed as well.

Until 1957, the state of Oregon provided an original birth certificate to every citizen who requested one.   There was nothing in any Oregon law which prevented an adult adoptee from asking for and obtaining her birth certificate.  After 1957, however, adoptees in Oregon had a most basic right taken away, the right to view official documents recording their birth.

In 1998 I had the immense privilege to support Helen Hill, Oregon adoptees and birthparents, and Bastard Nation in the campaign to gather enough signatures to place Measure 58 on the Oregon ballot that year.

We wrote letters to the editor.  We collected signatures.  We did interviews and outreach.  We spoke out and acted out and marched ourselves bloody. 

On November 3, 1998, Oregon voters agreed that adult adoptees in Oregon should be able to access their own birth certificate.  It took two more years of wrangling in court, however, for the Measure to finally take effect.  On May 30, 2000, the stalling and the appeals (remember the Jane Doe's?) and the drama were finally put to rest,and Oregon adoptees were finally able to go to their Department of Records and request a copy of their original birth certificate, just like any other non-adopted citizen in Oregon.

This brief narrative does NO JUSTICE to the amount of money, time, effort, sweat-equity and dedication that went in to making Measure 58 a reality. 

Now someone wants to change that.

Representative Dave Hunt (D) has introduced 2843, a law that would repeal Measure 58.  Under HB 2843, adoptees would only be able to access their birth certificate if a birth mother provided written consent.

I don't want to rehash hours and pages of birthmother testimony here, but its out there and its compelling.  Over 500 birthmothers paid for a full page ad in the Oregonian in support of Measure 58. 

No other citizen requires the permission of another adult to access the original record of their birth.  A birth certificate records the birth of a person and unless all birth certificates become accessible only under parental permission, the birth certificate of an adopted person should by the same token be available to the person whose birth it records.  Period.

I pay the same taxes as you do.  I vote.  I drive.  I am old enough to drink.  I have two children and a full time job.  Why on earth should my birthmother dictate whether or not I have the right to the document that records MY OWN BIRTH?

Ron Morgan will be chronicling the fight against HB2843 here.

Join us.

Don't let this happen.

 

 

 

Being an Us

I love the show RENT.  I saw it on Broadway with my mom about 10 years ago and have loved it ever since.  The movie was just as phenomenal - wise move, that, using pretty much all of the original cast.  I've watched it countless times and I have no less than three CD's of both the Broadway recordings and the tracks from the movie.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend either watching the movie or seeing it live (I believe its still running at the Nederlander Theatre and also on tour in the U.S.).  One person who saw it for the very first time ever with me said that it was the first time they had ever *really* understood that there was no difference between being gay and straight, that "love is love, no matter who it is you love."  Its not that this friend was prejudiced before that point, but I think that they may have lacked understanding, not having had spent a tremendous amount of time around gay or lesbian couples.  I think there are a lot of things that you can walk away from RENT feeling or understanding more clearly, but what a powerful statement that was on how true and clear the characters that the sadly late and very great Jonathan Larson brought to life in his script.  Oh, crap, I'm digressing AGAIN. 

Perhaps my favorite song from RENT is "La Vie Boheme."  It evokes a fierce response in me, from the feeling of being on the fringes as a kid to clinging to music and experiences and ideas that were somewhat out of the mainstream.  As much as I have one foot firmly in the buttoned-down, a huge part of me simply doesn't belong there and wishes she could just fly away and be free all over again in another world, another life. 

In part B of the song, after the Roger/Mimi Interlude and toward the very end, there is a line that grabs me by the heart: 

"To being an "US" for once, instead of a "THEM!"

Last weekend I got to be an "us" again and it was so wonderful.

My experiences with Bastard Nation were among the most powerful of my life.  Never had I connected in such an enormous way with others.  Despite different circumstances - Late Discovery adoptees, adoptees who had found, adoptees who would never find, adoptees who hated their adoptive families, adoptees who loved theirs, the members of this group shared something special and unique.  Some of the friendships I formed with my fellow Bastards will last my whole life.  Conferences, protests, rallies - every event brought with it not only the opportunity to learn, educate others, raise our voices and be heard, but to connect and share with people who felt like family.  I suppose that's incredibly odd, considering that if you put ten adoptees in a room you're looking at twenty family trees.  Hell, you want confusing?  I married another adoptee.  Our children would have six sets of grandparents were everyone involved still living, speaking to each other, or known.   And only another adoptee would really understand how normal that truly was. 

Being a Bastard was the first time in my life that I knew unequivocally that I was part of an "us."  It wasn't only the experience of growing up adopted, but the shared passion for reforming a system that treats adoptees as a suspect class, denies us the same information that is available to anyone else, and for loving the gallows humor that everyone else appears to find tasteless but from which we derived the deepest, truest laughter.

Friday night, after an incredible dinner with a couple of my favorite Bastards under the sun, we sat up late in a hotel room drinking too much wine and laughing and talking about everything.  I felt as if I had been transported to another hotel room in another time and place at one of our many conferences or rallies.  Every good thing I have ever felt about being a Bastard just welled up inside me and filled my heart and my soul.  We talked of the old days, old friends. We mourned those we have lost.  We meandered through laughter and a thousand "Oh, yeah, I remember that!"'s down the warmly-lit paths of memory and shared experience.  We looked at where our lives had come since those days.  We caught up, bonded, reconnected.

To my Bastards who were present, and to the other Bastards, wherever you are, thank you.  Thank you for being my people.  Thank you for being a place where I belong, where I don't feel like I'm different.  I love you guys.

And if you're ever in Troutdale, OR, go have dinner at Tab's Chicken and Dumplings.  Make sure you get a window seat.

Mrs. ______ is a Bastard.

I have been struggling with blogging this week.  I had something I really wanted to write about but it was remotely related to someone I work with and since I have work friends who are FB friends who therefore probably see the link for my blog from time to time and may be tempted to read it (DON'T!  DON'T PUSH THE "My Blog" BUTTON!) I had to hold off and think of something else to write about.

So I tried to think of something interesting in my life that didn't involve anyone who might be reading this, and since I have the most boring life ever and my kids have neither said nor done anything remotely funny this week, that doesn't leave me a lot of options.  And when I say "anything remotely funny" what I mean is that the two of them have fought so incessantly this week that there have been times when I have wanted to leave them in the middle of the grocery store and pretend that they were somebody else's lost children.  The nights that they have stayed at their fathers and engendered similar feelings in HIM have been profoundly relieving to me. So that's that.

I had a massage yesterday before my chiropractic adjustment, something I have not had in more than a year. (New resolution:  get a massage EVERY MONTH!) Whenever I meet a new massage therapist I am always a little apprehensive, because if they don't say anything about all of the tattoos I feel that I have somehow shocked them.  So I always have to gear myself up to explaining the meanings behind my tats, since all of them are there for a reason.  The one that seems to give people the most pause is the celtic knot on my calf.  Its not the knot itself, but what is written around it:

I have written about Bastard Nation before.  Being a bastard was a big part of my life for a very long time.  Still is, really.  But I am reminded of an incident years ago, when I was in 5th grade, before BN meliorated the word "Bastard" for me and all I understood was the pejorative sense. 

I was a pretty smart little kid in my day (never mind the dumbass I've become).  I learned to read very early and had a struggle in public school because I picked up what was being taught in the classroom too quickly and got bored waiting for everyone else to catch on.  This was of course not exacerbated in any way, shape or form by my yet-to-be diagnosed ADHD.  Of course not.

There was a small group of us at my elementary school who were selected by the administration to be in a sort of "honors" group.  We would go do special projects, we tutored (tortured) other students with reading and math, we got to have "free periods" where we would play endless games of 20 Questions.  I supposed in the 1970's this was what passed for an "advanced" program in the Seattle public schools; nonetheless, we all knew we were smart and special.

When I hit fifth grade the district hired a new teacher.  One of the other honors kids and I both ended up in her classroom.  It was in one of the portables, I remember that.   This teacher had a very strong personality, and I think right off the bat we didn't really like each other.  But what really frosted my cookies about her is that she didn't like the fact that Owen and I got excused every day to go to our group work while the other kids had to stay and do the regular classroom work.  There were couple of times she actually refused to let us go because she wanted us to stay and work on whatever particular lesson she was teaching.  I grew to actively hate her and pretty much stopped trying to do anything she wanted.  As a result, my straight A+'s began to slide.  When the first marking period came around and my mother received a report card with C's and D's on it, she freaked right the fuck out.  She marched right down to the school principal's office and DEMANDED A RECOUNT!  I think I was allowed to do some makeup testing, I'm not sure - but its possible that those grades remained forever on my permanent record.   At any rate, the final straw was the day I got in trouble for writing a bad word on the bathroom stall.  I had been excused from class for a bathroom break, and while in the stall I dug a nickel out of my pocket and scraped the words "Mrs. ___________ is a Bastard" with it.

Some other girls were in the bathroom, saw what I did and promptly turned me in.  The funny thing was that I was not even the least bit remorseful about it.  I hated that teacher.  My mom of course was called down to the school and she went behind the doors with the principal for a good long time.  After what seemed like years, she marched out and took me home.  The next week I was moved to another school in the district.  Mom never said much to me about what I did, just that she was disappointed in my choice to use a naughty word, but I think she must have hated that teacher as much as I did because she refused to put me back in that woman's class. 

I finished my fifth grade year at a different school with a really stern but very kind teacher, and it was hard adjusting to new kids, but I coped.

Its kind of ironic, don't you think, that the very word that I wrote about that awful teacher, the worst word I could think of as a fifth grader, was actually WHAT I AM?  And to think that someday I would be incredibly proud to BE a Bastard and to know other Bastards. 

The tat...there is a story there.  In 1998 I was newly divorced the Seattle WA-Open group, which was mostly comprised of Bastard Nationals, was having a monthly "meeting" to plan our presentations at the upcoming Bastard Nation conference in San Francisco.  Bastards By the Bay it was, that year.   I say "meeting" because we usually met at Azteca on Lake Union, and during the course of our plotting would generally consume a pitcher or two of beer or occasionally margaritas.  I had picked out the celtic knot design for my tat already, and had an appointment at the tattoo shop for after the meeting.  Well, take a group of Bastard women, fill them up with alcohol and then mention casually "I have an appointment for a tattoo" and see what happens.  Just try it!  That poor shop was converged on by five drunken women demanding tattoos.  The artist was in the middle of filling in the lines on my tat when someone (Julie or Shea or maybe both, I don't remember) said they thought I should put "Bastard Nation" around it because it would be SO COOL for the conference.  And so I did.  We all left with ink that night - it was my third tat, so no big deal to me, but for a couple of us it was the first time under the needle.  At least one of us (and no, I'm not going to say who, you know who you are!) passed out.  Totally awesome times, yo. 

(And in another odd twist of Universal Randomness, when I met J at the conference, he was wearing a necklace with the exact same Celtic knot on it as I had just had inked onto my leg.)
 

Well, now, I guess I said I wasn't going to blog about people who might read this, but since there aren't any Bastard Nationals at my place of work, I think I'm safe. 

Have a nice day, y'all.

Orphan

I realize that it's ironic.  Dichotomous.  Odd, at the very least.  That a die-hard Christmas addict would feel so incongruously bereft at the holidays.

Millions of people suffer from depression over the holidays, due to family conflict, loss, unrealized hopes & expectations.  Mine?  Its my damn birthday.

As a kid, my mom always made an enormous deal of Christmas and Birthdays.  In our family, these were capital-H HOLIDAYS.  My birthday falls just after Christmas, and while my party was often held in November or January, the day of my birthday there would be a candle in my waffle and a special gift and "Happy Birthday" sung.  My mother has always made me feel like I am special, even more so on my birthday.  I have so many good memories tied around this, and its one of the many reason I adore my mother.  She treats my brother and I as if we are the most precious, important people in the world.

The other side of birthdays and Christmas, the side that I feel kind of guilty sometimes for even thinking about or mentioning (because, you know, I should be grateful), is my orphan status, my bastardy, the other side of my existence. 

I realize I am not unique in this.  I share ambiguous origins with approximately 6% of the population.  There are even some of us who are really famous:

 

 
OK, well we know who HIS dad was...

When I was a child, the sense of loss was something I didn't even know there were words for.  It was a simple sense of not being made the same way as other children, a sense of failure for somehow not being good enough to be kept.  A sense of being second best to my parents (as opposed to the lost biological babies, who were, of course, first choice).  For a long time the feeling of being celebrated helped keep those feelings small and quiet.  As I got older, questioned and wondered, the feelings took on a life of their own.  the more I understood about the complexity of human relationships, the more I understood that my birthday was also the anniversary of a tremendous loss.  The day I was not wanted.

I thought that finding my birth family would heal these feelings.  I searched and found, well over a decade ago now.  It took a few years for everything to shake out from that particular Life-quake, but over time things have a way of settling into patterns of understanding.  When I first met "S", my birth mother, I was overwhelmed by her.  Who wouldn't be?  Here was the woman from whose loins I sprung (sprang?).  She baked me and served me up to the world to be eaten alive.  I look like her (without the extra 150 pounds), I have her hair, eyes, bad hips, knees, other genetic propensities I don't care to mention, flair for drama (yeah, I know.  Bite me.)  Since she either can't or won't tell me who my birth father is (the jury is still out on that one), she is all I have as a reference point.  As God is my witness, this is NOT a good spot fo the starting push pin on the map of ones' life.

At some point, after years of conversations, arguments, questions and investigation, at some point I understood that my relinquishment wasn't a case of noble or pure motivations.  It wasn't as if she was coerced or forced to give away a child she really wanted.  The real reason, the level of state authority, was more along the lines of "We're not increasing your welfare check.  Sorry." 

It was a hell of a lot better than the alternative, just ask my birth siblings.  The Kept Ones.  The Unlucky.  S raised the other five of us, if you can call a lifetime of abuse "raising."  Oh, I know just how fortunate I am.  But there's the other side, the darker side.  If any of the stories that have passed S's lips are true, I'm either a child of rape, the result of a drunken one-night-er or a relationship so brief that the guys' name is lost to memory and/or drunkenness.  Regardless, I didn't matter enough for her to even gift me with a name.  "Baby Girl M_____" is what's written on the birth certificate, and even the last name has been crossed out and "O____" handwritten above it.  Whether she meant for me to have the last name of her imprisoned husband is moot, since without a first name a last means little.  And if I ask her what really happened I can guarantee you there will be no straight answer. 

So each year as my birthday approaches, I try to find the right state of mind to navigate the dark twisted miasma as my favorite holiday, my childhood memories and the truth and lies about my origins morph into one big ugly motherfucker.  I'm so lucky to have had a reasonably sane, healthy family.  Yeah, no silver spoon there, but better than the alternative.

I mourn the loss of the dream of the kind of person I had imagined my birth mother to be.  I seek meaning in my origins, and hope someday to have enough peace about the entire sordid mess that I can finally forgive the woman who brought me into the world.  Or maybe she doesn't need forgiving.  Maybe my expectation that she somehow live up to my fantasies is unrealistic.

Bastard Nostalgia

I miss the days of bastardy.

I found Bastard Nation in 1992.  I had just found Usenet.  I'm not sure whether I'm surprised that the first search word I typed into the Usenet Newsgroups search box was "adoption."  That fateful, desperate reaching out toward the cloudy mystery of my birth led me to alt.adoption.  When I say I cut my internet teeth on alt.adoption, I'm not shittin' you.  Alt.adoption was a crazy landscape littered with the corpses of the weak, the teary adoptees, the oh-so-sensitive adoptive mothers and the fragile birthmothers.  You either grew a full-set of flame-proof underwear or you got sizzled.   From the cacophony of alt.adoption rose the strong and vibrant voice of Bastard Nation.  Well, along with a crazy few others. 

I'd never attended an adoption support group, never done much beyond reach out to the agency which handled my adoption at six weeks of age to get yet more useless non-identifying information about my birthmother.  But tangled in the mess of wires and connections that hold my brain and body together, adoption was always there.  I just wanted to KNOW.  I concocted endless fantasy Mothers, waited breathlessly for them to come and rescue me -- from what, I have no idea, its not as if my life has ever been that horrible or difficult.  But it was always there. 

And alt.adoption...not for the weak.  Sifted through the tear-stained kleenex boxes of those who would have been better off seeking real-life therapy rather than seeking help for their adoption angst on the internet, a few voices rose loud and clear.  They didn't talk about wounds and pain, struggle and abandonment except in the most passing of terms.  What they did talk about was empowering and uplifting.  They talked about the rights of adoptees to have the most basic information about themselves.  They identified the enemy, the people who would perpetually infantilize us, who give lip service to "protecting" the selfsame birthmothers from whom they used any pretext to obtain children, the people who were reaping endless profits on the backs of babies, birthmoms and barren couples.  They outlined a plan to take back what was rightfully ours.  We claimed our bastardy as our own and made it the platform on which we stood, made it IN YOUR FACE.

Those were heady days, of activism, of gut-wrenching conviction, of in-your-face rabble rousing.  The Bastards organized pickets and protests.  We changed laws in Oregon, in Alabama, in New Hampshire.  We educated the public and lawmakers.  We founded an organization to help the dying find their birthfamily before it was too late.  We argued, we debated, we hammered out a strategy and we implemented.  It was one of the best times of my life.

In the years between I found and lost my birthmother, found my siblings, met the father of my children, move cross-country and became a mother.  A lot of big moments - and yet some of the biggest of all were Bastard Moments. 

Somewhere along the way, we petered out, we lost momentum.  Some of us moved on, some of us had life crises, I had babies and 'retired' from being a day-to-day activist.  I couldn't have kids, work full time, organize conferences, hold support groups and run a nonprofit all at the same time.  God, I miss it, though. Those were some damn fine times.  Best of my life.

Check 'em out, though:  Bastard Nation

That's what I used to do before I became a respectable citizen.