On adoption

Mel was asking me to share my story - my adoption story. It's not all that long or complicated, really. I was born in Edmonton, adopted at 6 months and moved to Calgary. My adoptive parents had my sister two years prior and my mom - having been an only child - vowed her daughter wouldn't experience not having a sibling. It's sure nice to be needed, hey! What was rather unique about the situation is that these people who adopted me were 44 and 45 by the time I came along. Rather unheard of, I believe. None the less, here I am - 36 years later. My sister now has a family of 3 kids (she started at 29. not 44) and all is well.

My parents sold their house last year and moved to a senior's care facility. In the process of clearing out their house, I came across my adoption records. What a neat read. My birth mom was 20, my father 24. She worked as a secretary, he was a farmer. Under the section that lists health history it reads "It is BELIEVED that the father is in good health, having had all the normal childhood diseases - chickenpox, mumps..." This leads me to believe he probably skipped out on my mother. Maybe not, I wasn't there, I can't say for sure.

Have I thought about tracking them down? Thought about it, yes, acted on it, no. Will I? I'm not feeling a burning desire to. I have parents who chose me, and for what it's worth I've had a pretty good life. For that I owe them a big thank-you.

I knew from day one that I was adopted - this was never any secret. On some level I've noticed differences in the way I do things V.S. "the family way", but for all intents and purposes I have a wonderful, loving, supportive family.

Back in 1991 I was visiting a long-time school friend of mine who at the time was living in Markham, Ontario. He had a friend who was adopted and once she discovered I was as well, she couldn't figure out WHY I had no desire to track down my birth mother. She was almost angry at me for not having tried. This didn't make sense to me, because she too had older adoptive folks, fairly well off and she didn't seem to want for anything - including love and support. She had run away from home a couple times - which I never felt compelled to do - and I wonder if it was in some way her cry to find her mom. I visited a couple years later to discover that she had in fact met her mom and that seemed to be all she needed. She had yelled at her something like "how could you!" and once the reconciliation of the feelings had been accomplished, they became good friends.

Funny... I never did ask why.