Brain, Child Magazine: Trying on a Different Birth Order, and Imagining a Life Not Adopted
Note from Carrie: Brain, Child Magazine is featuring my newest piece on adoption. “I tell her, ‘Very few people get such a concrete glimpse into an alternate life that they could be living. But you do, and I’m sure that it makes you have many different feelings. Sometimes you probably wish you could live here.'”
Each summer, I take K to visit her birth family for a weekend. My husband stays home with our younger girls. K is the baby in her birth family. She has a sister who is eighteen and a brother who is fifteen. K slips into the role of the youngest with relish. She sandwiches herself between her older siblings and clings to their hands as we walk around museums and parks, her body looking like that of a small child next to the teenagers. When K roughhouses with her brother, her birthmother scolds him, “Watch out for K! She’s littler than you!” If we all go to see a movie, it is K’s age that determines what is appropriate, and her older siblings accommodate her taste. At home, our family movie night choices default to the lowest common denominator of our preschooler.
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