How do you Make a Child Your Own?

In Shelley Burtt's "Lives'" essay in the New York Times Magaine on Feb 15, 2008, she writes, "Your birth children aren't offered to someone else first. As contingent as their existence is on particular circumstances, once they're on their way, there's only one place they can end up. To be confronted, 10 years later, with the physical evidence that my son, this generous soul I loved so deeply, almost belonged to someone else, and almost was someone else, brought tears to my eyes and a knot to my stomach. Ryan was ours not only because we had wanted him but also because another American family had not. How do you make a child your own?"

There are a couple of things that struck me about this passage. First, let me say that I understand what Burtt is getting at. But, I take issue with her first sentence; if you're a birthmother, your birth children ARE offered to someone else first. Second, I think it's strange that after living with her son for almost a decade, she suddenly realizes that he had "almost belonged to someone else, and almost was someone else." She adopted him. Did she completely disregard the fact that he had birthparents and a point of origin before she came along? Why does it bring "tears to [her] eyes and a knot to [her] stomach" only that another American family had not adopted adopted him, not that he was taken away from his original family?

Finished Running

Well, I finished reading Ann Patchett's Run a few days ago. I really enjoyed it, but I did wonder what Ann Patchett's relationship to adoption is. In the interview with Patchett at the back of my book, she says nothing about adoption, but emphasizes that in all her books she writes about people who don't know each other being thrown together in a situation, which would definitely describe the setting of both Patchett's Bel Canto and the maternity home situation in her Patron Saint of Liars. Still, I can't help wondering what her fascination with adoption is...

Did anyone sleuth anything out about this?

Literature

I just started reading Ann Patchett's Run. It's about a white family who adopts two African-American boys after having one biological son. I am hooked, but I'm only on page 80 or so. Thus far, it's about the unplanned reunion with the boys' birthmother when they are 20 and 21 years old.

Have you read it? What do you think?