Reality?

Check out what Heather over at Production not Reproduction's got to say about a new "reality" show, Adoption stories.
She's a smart mama, that Heather.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Picture this: the first time you ever see your birth mother's face is when she was in a casket at the morgue.

So goes one of the true stories in Jean Strauss's beautiful documentary about middle-aged and older Americans searching for their birthparents called "For the Life of Me".
(She also wrote the fine adoption memoir, Beneath a Tall Tree, shown at right.)

It's heartwrenching and frank, and talks a lot about the toxicity of secrets.

Additionally, it made me wonder how the fact of my adoption will affect my son and his descendents? Anyone want to weigh in on this idea?--how one adoption in the family orchard affects the leaves and fruit that are borne thereafter?

The parting quote:

"For adoptees, the light at the end of the tunnel is illumination, and any school kid can tell you that all living things need light to survive."

Thoughts?

Plus, anyone want to fill me in on the protest in Philly on July 21st about adoptee rights to birth certificates?

Conference Tidbit

It's been a whole week since I returned from the adoption conference in Provincetown, and my life has been too busy to blog about it yet. But here's a little taste:

On Sunday, July 12, I got to meet the fabled adoption writer, Betty Jean Lifton (of Twice Born, Journey of the Adopted Self, and Lost And Found fame). She gave a great keynote address, and afterward, a friend of mine introduced me to her. I asked her about living in reunion--when it feels like you've finally arrived because you've found the sought-after person (in this case, my birth mother), but even though you've finally "arrived," you don't know where you are. (That's how it feels for me. I'm so happy to know Carol and to have her in my life, but I have a hard time connecting with her.)

When I asked Betty Jean Lifton what I should do about this, she asked me, "What do you want from your birth mother?"

I had to think quickly--I realized I don't really know what I want from my birthmom. I said "I want to know what happened!"

"Aaah!" Said BJL, "That's what all adoptees want--to go back in time to the 'then-and-there,' to the point of connection, to the point of conception, to the Navel of the World! But the birth mother doesn't want to go there, she wants to move on. She doesn't want to stay in that place; she wants to run away from it like it's a house on fire. She wants to be with you in the 'here-and-now.'"

Yes, I suppose that does create a conflict. And a bit of an impasse.

Thinking about it more, I realized that what I want from my birth mother is to know everything. To know her. And it seems so impossible.

On another note, BJL's reference to the "Navel of the World" stunned me. I have long had an obsession with the mythic idea of the navel of the world--I've written about it, researched how this notion is expressed in various cultures around the world, and, most importantly, have identified it as an important centerpiece in my understanding of myself as an adopted person.

I would love to post a few pieces of my writing here that refer to the navel of the world to show you what I mean, but alas, I am away from home and thus away from all my computer files. I'll post them later, when I return home.

Which brings me to my final point: I'm going on vacation--the kind where there are no computers (hard to believe such places exist anymore), so I'll be on hiatus from posting until August 1.

Catch you then!

I'm off to Read at and Enjoy a Conference

The Adoption Resource Center and The Center for Family Connections is sponsoring a special conference in Provincetown, MA this weekend, and I'm lucky enough to be able to go! I even wiggled my way into giving a little reading of my adoption-related poems and essays, and I'm so excited. I'm looking forward to telling you all about it, but in the meantime, check it out via the link above; maybe you can drop in for part of it. I would especially recommend the performance, which is open to the public, btw, by actor, comedian, and writer Alison Larkin. I recently read her novel, The English American, and I loved it. I highly recommend it--it's written from an adoptee's perspective (she's an adult adoptee), and it chronicles her search and reunion experience with her birth families.

Here's the official blurb:

"When Pippa Dunn, adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that “culture clash” has layers of meaning she’d never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant debut novel that sprang from Larkin’s autobiographical one-woman show of the same name."

Have a great weekend!

Adoptees' Rights--Protest Coming Up Soon!!

Check out this adoptees' rights site!! I'm so excited--just found it. There is going to be a march/protest in Philadelphia on July 21st to demonstrate our rights to open records of our birth. The site tells you more. I hope you can attend--I can't; I'll be out of state, but I'll sure be there in spirit!!

What about you?


(More soon, I've been busy, busy, busy running a day camp for my six year old son and ten of his dude-friends. Man, do I feel old and tired!)

A Father's Day Post Script

Pictured here: my awesome dad, Bob, carrying my little son in an ad for Nike. (No not really--not the Nike part, I mean.)

I have known my dad, Bob, since I was three weeks old, and he has always been amazing to both my brothers and me. He is so excellent that I long ago dubbed him SuperBob, in celebration of his Super Dadly powers.

SuperBob has helped me out of sticky situations so many times, I can't remember them all. Some of them I wish I could forget, because I'm embarrassed to have gotten into them in the first place, but SuperBob was always there to show me how to pick up the pieces and go home. (Like the winter I decided to move to Flagstaff, Arizona to live with my boyfriend, and I packed up all my stuff in the back of a big old white pickup truck and the boyfriend and I drove all the way from northern California to northern Arizona. Correction: my boyfriend drove us all the way because, having been in a bad car accident less than a year before while attempting to drive home from Alaska, I was too scared to drive the humongous truck that was not only full of stuff, it had the stiffest clutch I've ever tried to engage. You can probably see this coming, but on we go: I had only been in Flagstaff a few days before I knew it wasn't going to work for me to stay there. Not a healthy relationship. I knew I had to get back home to California, but I was trapped--I couldn't drive that truck back across the desert by myself, no way, no how. So who came to my rescue? SuperBob, of course. He got on a flight to Flagstaff, picked me up, and drove me the 850 miles back to California in the big, white pickup truck, never once berating me or making me feel like a total loser for not looking before I leapt, or anything. He just treated me to dinner at the Sizzler in Barstow [that's about as good as it gets in Barstow, by the way], and hugged me while I cried about my broken relationship with the boyfriend.) SuperBob is a really good guy.

Fast forward a couple of decades to last summer, yes, less than a year ago, when I first met my birthfather, Francis. I contacted Francis via the good old US Postal Service in 2007. When he got he letter, he was shocked--he said he had no idea I existed, but in his hands, he held a long treatise from me, telling him about myself and my family, and a big 8-12" x 11" inkjet-printed color picture of me with my little son , smiling out at him from the abyss. He called me on the phone as soon as he got the letter, and said "I thought I had four children, but now I have five!!" He couldn't have been more welcoming, despite his claim of not knowing I roamed the Earth.(Someone's memory isn't serving him/her: my birthmother claims he knew...but anyway.)

A few weeks later, he sent pictures of himself and his family, and wouldn't you know it, in his high school graduation picture, he looks very, very much like SuperBob. What do you make of that?

So now I have two dads, one who has dealt with me and all my neediness and warts for 42 years, and one who I am just beginning to know.

And both of them are very kind men.

I feel lucky.

Happy Father's Day, Dad and Francis!

A Poem A Day...

Why Wilderness?

Because the truth
about origins
is built on pillars

of dreams and lies,
and family is built
upon wooden planks

of blind hope, the way
a nest is built in its tree
of presumed potential.

Because a forest is the one
who teaches how to question,

a desert is the one
who embraces,

and a canyon is the one
who knows how to keep.

--Andrea Ross, 2001

A little poetry explication:

The ten years I spent searching for my birth parents coincided with the ten years I spent as a wilderness guide, living outdoors or in wild places most of the time. I'm working with this idea (and as you can see by the date on the poem, I've been working with it for quite awhile,) that this coincidence has a deeper meaning--that the need to search and the need to be in the wilderness are intertwined, and that they each inform the other in an important way. The wilderness was my "home base" while I did this scary, nebulous thing called searching for my origins. I found a lot of solace in wilderness, and the poem explores some of the reasons why.

Recently, my smart and lovely friend Tamar directed me to Gerald G. May's book, The Wisdom of Wilderness, in which he writes, " ...The primary meaning of wild is 'natural.' In turn, natural comes from the Latin nasci, meaning 'to be born.' Wilderness, then, is not only the nature you find outdoors. It can also refer to your own true Nature--the You that is closest to your birth. This inner wilderness is the untamed truth of who you really are."

Well, there you have it. Thanks, Gerald G. Mays; you've put elegantly into words what I've been inexpertly gnawing on for a decade.

I'm interested to hear from you, readers, about what wilderness does for you--are you scared of it? Do you love it? Do you feel at peace in it, or nervous? Do you avoid it, or are you drawn to it?
Does it feed you in a deep and synergistic way? If so, please try to tell us about it.
Thanks!