Welcome to 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days, hosted by Portrait of an Adoption. This series will feature guest posts by people with widely varying adoption experiences and perspectives.
Lessons Learned
By Jessica O’Dwyer
Shortly before Covid shut down the world, I was checking out at Costco, my cart piled high with hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken apple sausages—the menu for the annual barbeque we host for our large group of adoptive families—when the woman behind me said, “That’s a lot of hamburger buns.”
She was middle-aged, white, and harried-looking, which is exactly how a stranger might describe me.
Maybe I was feeling energized by noshing on too many samples of jalapeno dip, chips, and sliced tri-tip beef, but for whatever reason, I found myself explaining that I was shopping for our party, the party that our group had anticipated since last year’s event, and that we’d been hosting the shindig since our kids were little.
I finished my spiel by explaining, “The way we know each other is we’re families through adoption. The kids were all born in Guatemala.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “They know they’re adopted?”
Her question stopped me short. Was it possible that some children—in this age of full disclosure of any and every shred of information—might not be aware of how they came to their families? I thought of the adoptive parents in my circle, the dialogue we started the moment we first held our babies, about their other, first mothers; the books and posts we read; the workshops, seminars, and heritage camps we attend. The meetings with birth families we arrange, the relationships to foster families we maintain, the Spanish classes, the life books, the trips to Guatemala.
And yet. Here stood a woman before me, oblivious to any of it. Here stood a woman who thought it could be possible our children might not know their early stories. I was reminded that not everyone views adoption through my lens. Not everyone is fully immersed in this world.
Realizing that, I said, “Yes, they know they’re adopted. They’ve always known.”
My kids are now teenagers—ages eighteen and sixteen. You learn a few things after nearly two decades of parenting. My understanding of the subject has been hard won. Truth be told, I entered the role of adoptive mother woefully under-prepared. Even if someone had tried to tell me what to expect—and no one did—I would not have understood adoption’s complexity until I was inside it, and inside it for many years.
Adoption is the most complicated relationship I’ve ever been involved in. As my children grow and move into the world more independently, it becomes more complicated: about race, and the way they are treated as people of color. About standing out because they’re brown and I’m white. About who they are and where they fit in.
My daughter often says, on visits to her home country, “When I’m in Guatemala, I’m American. In California, I’m Guatemalan.” My kids often are viewed as both and neither: not Guatemalan enough for some, not American enough for others.
Then there’s the loss. Even in the happiest, healthiest, most well-adjusted families, loss is within, behind, and beneath everything in adoption. It never goes away. Understanding that at a bone-deep level has helped me evolve as mother to my children. Acknowledging such loss exists has allowed my kids to grapple with it and begin to heal.
Adoption is also trust, hope, effort, and steadfastness. Adoption is family, close and distant. Adoption is love.
People sometimes ask if I feel like an ambassador for adoption, because I’ve written two books and countless articles and posts on the subject. The answer is I do. Even when I’m standing in the check-out line at Costco with a full cart. Even when strangers comment on our family for the millionth time. As I reached to place my items on the conveyor belt, I said to the woman behind me, “We’ve learned that communication is key in adoption. Keep the channels open.”
http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2016/11/anas-daughter-had-come-home/
Below is an excerpt from Jessica O’Dwyer’s new novel, Mother Mother; reprinted with permission from Apprentice House Press.
With her three lost pregnancies, Julie had felt changes in her body, kicks and turns, her belly getting bigger with new life. With adoption, she felt nothing physical. No moving, no kicking, no tightening of the waistband to announce, Hey, Mom! Here I am, don’t forget me!
What she fixated on, instead, were her copies of their one photograph of their son. One copy hung on the refrigerator door, where it greeted her every morning. Another lived in a Ziploc bag in her purse. A dozen times a day in her office she peeked at the Ziploc to study the details—his curly black hair, his round cheeks. What was Felix doing now? she wondered. Newborns slept and they ate and they slept and ate some more.
A co-worker back from maternity leave informed everyone about her breast milk: pumping it, banking it, its vitamin and mineral content. How much healthier breast milk was for babies than God-forbid formula. Julie had to walk away whenever the conversation started or else she’d hyperventilate. With no breast for Felix to nurse, did he get enough nutrition?
Daily, Julie emailed her agency for updates. “He’s thriving,” Kate wrote. “Don’t worry!”
But Julie did worry and couldn’t wait to visit so she could hold him herself and never put him down. Kate forbade the first meeting until after the test to ensure a DNA match. That was when birth mother and relinquished child were reunited in an office in Guatemala City, a photo was taken of the pair, and the inside of their cheeks were swabbed for tissue samples.
After DNA, everything was simple. The review by the Guatemalan attorney general’s office, the rubber stamp by the U.S. Embassy—none of it was going to present a problem. Until they got a positive DNA match, Julie should hold off booking any flights.
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Fifteen days later, Julie’s husband, Mark, stood at the kitchen counter in front of two bowls of homemade granola. “Bananas or blueberries?”
“Blueberries,” Julie mumbled from her chair at the table, opening her laptop screen as she waited for messages to appear. “Interview and DNA,” read the subject line from Kate. “About time she got it done,” Julie said.
“That’s why we pay her the big bucks.” Mark set down Julie’s bowl of granola and walked over to the sink while she skimmed the page.
“This is impossible.” She sat up straighter as Mark read over her shoulder. A red flag by the U.S. Embassy. Based on the agent’s observations during an interview, DNA was not done. The agent believed the woman was not Felix’s birth mother.
Julie read the sentences over and over, but the words didn’t change. “Now what do we do?”
Mark shrugged. “We walk away. It’s over, Julie.”
“It’s not over. Felix is our son.”
“He’s not our son. He’s a baby we saw in a jpeg. We never even held him. For all we know, he’s not even real.”
“Felix is real, Mark. Trust me, Felix is real.”
Jessica O’Dwyer is the author of Mother Mother, a novel, and Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Adoptive Families, and elsewhere. Jessica lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, son, and daughter. Jessica’s previous piece for the Portrait of an Adoption series was in 2016: http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2016/11/anas-daughter-had-come-home/
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Carrie Goldman is the host of Portrait of an Adoption. She is an award-winning author, speaker, and bullying prevention educator. Follow Carrie’s blog Portrait of an Adoption on Facebook and Twitter
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