(This was my first post on our China adoption blog)
One reason this very, very fertile family is adopting is, simply stated:
TRADITION
To be short, my children are the ONLY blood-relatives I have in my entire family.
My maternal grandparents could not have children the traditional way (grandpa became sterile after having the mumps) so they adopted my mother and her two sisters in 1952, 1960 and 1964 respectively. Grandma and Grandpa were quite unusual and forward-thinking for 50s parents of adopted children: they actually TOLD their daughters that they were adopted! My grandparents took a lot of flak for that. Back in those days, adoption was not nearly as well-accepted as it is today - it was nearly a scandal to admit that a child was not your flesh-and-blood - and most adopted children found out the "family secret" by accident or on their parents' deathbeds. My mother, on the other hand, always knew where she came from and that her family was her family no matter how she came to be in it.
20 years later... My parents married in 1974 assuming, as most people do, that they would not have any barriers to childbearing. They came to find out, though, that Mom had reproductive problems serious enough to prevent any chance of becoming pregnant. Today, she probably would have been diagnosed with PCOS and a couple other things, and may have been able to overcome those and bear children herself with the help of a few modern medical miracles. However, medicine being what it was in the 70s and 80s, these advances had yet to come to pass, so my parents could not have children the home-made way either.
Not to be deterred from their dream of having four children, they adopted me through LDS Social Services (now LDS Family Services) as a 13-day old infant in 1980. My adoption was contested by my birth father and after a court battle it was finalized in 1981 when I was more than a year old. Two years later, I became a big sister when we adopted my first brother - also an infant - through LDS Social Services. I had the privilege of being the first person to enter the conference room with the little crib where my new baby brother was waiting for us to meet him. He was the most beautiful, fat little thing I’d ever seen, and he was ALL MINE! My parents had special baby books for my brother and I that were designed for LDS adopted children. Instead of having pages for “labor and delivery” or “coming home from the hospital”, there were pages for “my first home”, “at the agency” and “my day at court”, as well as several pages for writing about the adoption process.
I enjoyed being adopted. Not that I had anything to compare it to, but it was something special about me, something different about my family. To me, it was an important part of my identity. It was also fun. I could claim not to be related to my brother when he did something embarrassing. We joked with my Daddy, telling him that we were all “chosen”, but his parents
had to take him! Dad, as the only home-baked person in the family, was the “different one”. At school, I had mixed experiences. Other children were curious about my being adopted. They would ask me things like, “How did you find out?”, “Were you in an orphanage?” and “Do you know who your
real parents are?” Nothing riled me like that last question. Of course I knew my real parents! They were raising me! It doesn’t get more
real than sitting up with a sick, puking child, driving hours every week for piano, softball and karate, as well as teaching, disciplining, sacrificing in every way that a parent does! I was quite defensive of my family, and militant about people using “correct” terminology when discussing my origins. “Birth mother” and “biological mother” were allowable terms for the woman who bore me, “real mom” was fiercely forbidden.
Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I had ill feelings for my birth mother. Quite the contrary, my parents taught me from the earliest age that the irrefutable evidence of my birth mother’s love for me was the fact that allowed me to have a family with a father
and mother, happily married to each other, by placing me for adoption. My mother told me,
“The greatest act of love ever performed for you outside of the Atonement of Jesus Christ was your birth mother placing you for adoption.”
I believed that. I still do, and my experiences and acquaintances since then have been further evidence to me that what my mother told me is true. My birth mother is my angel; a guiding star and inspiration. My mother, however, is my pillar; my sunlight, and my hand to hold.
For a long time, it was just the two of us children and our parents; a cute, little Father-Mother-Sister-Brother family just like the Berenstein Bears. Can’t ask for more than that, right? Well, Mom and Dad had always wanted a somewhat larger family than that. It just wasn’t panning out. While we still lived in Oregon, there was a brief time when they thought another adoption would come to be, but that situation fell through. We moved to New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, and got a very harsh response to inquiries in those states. It was not to be.
We lived 12 years in the east, and it appeared that we would always be “just the four of us”. Then, when I was 15 we moved to Colorado. My mother became friends with a wonderful lady, Kathleen, who had adopted a daughter. She and her husband already had 3 home-baked sons and since that time they have adopted three more children. That friendship led to an acquaintance with local foster families, one of which happened to be fostering a 4-year old boy who became my brother. The first time he came to our home for a day visit, we all knew that he was meant to be with us. He was adopted through Adams County, Colorado when he was 5 and I was 16. Going from the 14-year old being the “baby of the family” to a kindergartener was quite a transition, especially since this particular kindergartener was not yet potty trained, had the language of an 18-month old, and even lower processing skills. His sweet disposition won us all over, and we determined to help him achieve whatever he was capable of.
My parents still wanted to bring one more child into the family, so they set about again to adopt someone close to my little brother’s age. Working with Adams County for my brother’s adoption had been beastly, so my parents sought out different options for the last go-round and finally found my sister through Denver County when I was 18 and a senior in High School. She was a tiny little 4-year old Hispanic girl with bright, warm brown eyes and an enormous smile. It was love at first sight. Something amazing happened the first time she spent the night at our home. After tucking the little ones into their beds, my mother came into my room. We both had felt the same thing: the family was now complete. A hole had been there, imperceptible until it was filled. My sister did not have the mental challenges that my little brother did, but she had plenty of her own struggles to overcome because of her turbulent past.
While her adoption was in process, I graduated from High School (class of 1999) and met a wonderful young man that summer. We decided (very quickly) to get married. Prior to our wedding in December 1999 I was told by my doctor that because of my endometriosis, I was unlikely to ever have children, or at the least would have great difficulty maintaining a pregnancy.
Well, I told myself,
that’s just how things work in this family. Women in my family don’t have babies! I resigned myself to that fate and had a lengthy discussion with my fiancé, making sure that he was really alright with the concept and reality of adoption. I figured that was the only way we were going to have a family of our own. After a lot of pondering, he agreed, although I don’t think he fully “got it” yet. He hadn’t seen the miracle of our family in action yet. That’s where God’s timing proved so perfect.
In December, my sister’s adoption was finalized. My beloved came with the family to court and got to witness first-hand how my family legally comes to be. Then, just one week before our wedding, we sat together in the Denver LDS Temple as my sister was sealed to my parents and given beautiful blessings and promises just as if she had been born to them. He felt the power of the bond that an adopted family can have. It is something not taken for granted, because one isn’t just “born with it”, it has to be forged, actively cultivated, proven and ratified before God and the law. He decided then that adoption was part of our future,
his future, as a member of this family. One week later, on December 17, 1999, we were married and sealed in that same room in the temple, beginning our own journey as a family unit.
Well, fast-forward 11 years… All of my doctor’s predictions about difficulty in childbirth have come to naught. We have (with no difficulty) baked-and-birthed five beautiful, healthy, brilliant little people.
One thing is lacking:
We want to pass on this legacy of adoption to the third generation.
