Dear Birth Mother,
How are you? I am fine. No thanks to you, of course. I am fine due to years of hard work, therapy, and medication. I've overcome all kinds of excessive behavior designed to hide me from myself. This sort of thing happens to people raised by the folks who created them, I realize that, but in my case I got an extra dosage of worthlessness, abandonment, and fear. Did you imagine this sort of thing when you gave me up for adoption? I doubt it. You were probably trying to do the right thing long after doing the wrong thing. What a shame you didn't think of that when you didn't use any protection. How do I know you didn't? Oh, please. You were 18. I've never met an 18 year old who didn't feel absolutely sure she would die rather than ask her boyfriend to use a condom, or thought she couldn't get pregnant, or wouldn't if she just didn't have sex except during her period or some other fallacious theory.
But let's give you full credit for attempting to give me the best possible life you could. You got pregnant, and cried, and told your parents, and you told the man, and you decided to have the baby. It was the late 50's in San Francisco, and you might have lived here or you might have been sent out here to have the baby. Your family was middle class, after all, and it must have been shameful to them to have a youngster in trouble. Still, you made the hard decisions, or at least I'm guessing it was you and not your mom and dad. You opted not to let my birth father adopt me. That was wise of you. He was Irish, and Catholic, and married with kids. Instead, you let your doctor arrange for the adoption with another patient of his, a woman approaching 30 with a history of miscarriages and a deep longing for a baby. It must have seemed ideal. They could presumably offer me the things you couldn't. Yes, an acceptable solution to a bad situation. You signed me over at birth; I never knew you at all.
I take after you, though. Like you, I have blue-green eyes, and light brown hair, and fair skin, and a tendency to plumpness, and myopia. I know this because I have the non-identifying information on the adoption from the California State Department of Births, Deaths, and Adoptions. All public adoptions are required to file these things; the rest of it is sealed by court order and only available at vast effort and expense. What I have is essentially your interview with the social worker. It's brief, yet revealing. I sent off for it when I was 29 and thinking of marriage myself. I thought it was time, after all those years, to find out if I had any genetic flaws or medical anomolies that I ought to know about even though I had no plans to have children. So I mailed off a copy of my birth certificate along with a request, and got the information. It was, as I said, a revelation. For one thing, I discovered I'm Jewish.
Finding that out was a bonus, actually. I've always felt so isolated from the culture I grew up in, and distinctly alienated by my parents' religion. Something feels really right about being Jewish even though I don't know much about it. I have investigated it since finding this out, and though I have little interest in religion I have a genuine interest in Jewish culture. Besides, it's a fine thing to finally feel part of something as a birthright. I laughed aloud when I read the so called non-identifying information all the way through. Finding out I'm Jewish unquestionably gives me an identity.
I don't have a clear picture of my birth father based on what you said. You were pretty vague about him. Bitter, I suspect, and not really considering him as part of what was going on. It was all about you, I'm sure. 18 is like that, and so is pregnancy when you haven't planned it. But at least I know he wasn't some guy you met in a bar because you knew a lot about his family in Ireland, and where he was educated, and all about his wife and kids. It was the accent, wasn't it? I'm a sucker for a British accent myself, always have been. In fact, I've been quite the passionate Anglophile since I first started reading and discovered Beatrix Potter. I used to think my real parents must be English because I resonated so much with English history and culture. I find it delightfully ironic that he is, or was, Irish. Of course, I never thought about him at all, growing up, only about you and why you gave me away. I knew from a very young age that I was adopted. My brother is, too. We couldn't be more different now, but at one time we were as close as we could be, two lost children being raised by well-meaning but uncomprehending strangers.
The full credit you get for trying hard is diminished, I'm afraid, by what happened to me emotionally as a result of being given up for adoption. All my life I've felt bad about myself. I was convinced I must have done something terrible to make you give me away. Isn't that pathetic? It's like the children in a divorce case who think it's their fault; of course it isn't, but the pain and the guilt are sometimes crippling. A profound sense of worthlessness, an undertone of desperate unhappiness, has dogged me for more years than I care to think about. My thinking went like this: I was a mistake. My own mother didn't want me. She sent me away to live with people who couldn't possibly understand my unusual nature and consequently damaged me deeply. I was an accident, created not out of love but out of carelessness, and left behind. Small wonder I've never wanted to meet you. People often don't understand my negative response when they asked if I've ever tried to find my birth parents. Hell, no. You made your decision 40 years ago. I'm not going to drag all that up again. I hope you wonder about me and think of how I've turned out, and that it churns in your gut. You ought to suffer as much as I have.
You probably have. If we're really anything alike, you have been defined by that experience in ways no one who hasn't been through it can grasp. At this late date, after all the depression and the panic attacks and the medication to control them, after the therapy and hard work and learning to understand myself, I think I have a pretty good idea of what really happened back in the dark days of November, 1956. I've always been eager for love and admiration. I've always been interested in sex, as far back as kindergarten. I have always wanted to share myself with anyone who wanted me. I'd gladly give them my time, my friendship, my body if it would make them really happy and feel good about themselves, and in return I'd feel good, too. I want to hold back the heavy clouds long enough to show the blue sky always there above them. Under the right circumstances I'm a goddamned ray of sunshine, you know? I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I want love and sex and happiness, all in the same package if I can get it, and I'll take separate delivery if I can't. I bet you did, too.
Anyway, here I am. It took a long time but I'm finally all sorted out. I have my sanity, and my desired lifestyle, and my spouse, and my friends, and a lot of talent, and a fair amount of interesting experiences. I am surrounded by love. I have all the things I really wanted, including my self-respect and a sense of worth. I am not entirely free of old fears but they seem to fade much faster now when the full light of reason is turned on them. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to overcome the rough start. It could have turned out differently, but then, that's always true of everyone.
Sincerely, your first daughter, Lucy.
