White, a blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.
-- Sunday in the Park with George
Child. A blank soul or spirit. So many possibilities. When does conscious thought begin? As an embryo locked away in the bubbly fluid of a mother’s womb a heart and brain are literally formed, but what about a soul? When can an unborn child think and feel? How does a personality and a soul form? Every mother with more than one child can tell you that every baby has it’s own personality it was born with. So how do the events leading up to birth shape the personality of child? Can an unborn child sense their mother’s feelings?
What is a nineteen-year-old girl thinking when she gives up her child for adoption? I would assume that for most girls it is not an easy decision. In fact, it may be the hardest one they will ever make in their life. How much suffering does a girl go through to arrive at the decision to give her own flesh and blood away?
I’d start this out saying that my heart is breaking,
but that wouldn’t truly convey the depth of my feeling.
My fear was that it wasn’t clear to me giving you up was really giving you more ‘cuz anyone loving you more than I already do was hard to believe.
It’s a hard test when what’s really best for you is hardest for me.
- Michael Mclean “Hardest for Me”
I would have to believe that for a girl to make the hardest decision in her life to carry a baby to term to then put it up for adoption, she would have to believe with all her heart that she was doing the right thing. She was giving her baby more.
Even though every adoptive circumstance is different, the thoughts that run through the minds of most children given up in a closed adoption are the same. Why did she chose to give me up? Was it her choice? Was she forced to give me up? Did my mother really love me? Did she want to give me a better life, or did she give me up to protect her own selfish existence? Then you move on to, who am I? How does this other family help define me? Who are my ancestors? Where am I from? Who was my mother? Who was my father? Did they love each other? What were they like? What did they like to do? Do I look like them? Do I act like them? Do I have the same likes and dislikes? Where are they? Do they live near me? Are they still alive? Are they healthy? Are they still together? Do I have brothers and sisters? Will I ever know my real family? The questions seem endless.
And when you have no answers, even though you are an adult, you can still feel like that child floating alone in that embryonic fluid in your own world that no one can share with you. As an adopted child, I was told to celebrate my uniqueness because no one else is like me. I didn’t want to be unique. I wanted to belong. Don’t most people try to spend most of their life trying to belong to some group or another: a work group, a church group, a political group, a family. They are the things that define you.
I could never easily or completely define myself.
I heard my birth mother held me once. A new soul looking up at her with nothing but hope and trust. She stared at her creation, her tiny infant staring up at her through the innocent, pure, untouched eyes of a blank soul waiting to be filled. Was it hard for her to let go? What was going through her mind at that very moment? Was it a heart wrenching moment she would never forget or a moment as mundane as eating? Something that just had to be done. How can anyone spend nine months with their own flesh and blood developing inside, then gaze into their tiny innocent eyes and let them go? Any adopted person I have met who has listened to Michael Mclean’s, “From God’s Arms, To My Arms, To Yours,” cannot get through it without a handful of Kleenex. When you don’t know the answers, you pray that this song represents your mother.
So many wrong decisions in my past, I'm not quite sure
If I can ever hope to trust my judgment anymore.
But lately I've been thinking,
Cause it's all I've had to do.
And in my heart I feel that I
Should give this child to you.
And maybe, you could tell your baby,
When you love him so, that he's been loved before, By someone, who delivered your son,
From God's arms, to my arms, to yours.
If you choose to tell him,
If he wants to know,
How the one who gave him life
Could bear to let him go.
Just tell him there were sleepless nights,
I prayed and paced the floors,
And knew the only peace I'd find,
Was if this child was yours.
And maybe, you could tell your baby,
When you love him so, that he's been loved before,
By someone, who delivered your son,
From God's arms, to my arms, to yours.
This may not be the answer,
For another girl like me.
But I'm not on a soapbox,
Saying how we all should be.
And I'm trusting God above,
And I'm trusting you can give this baby
Both his mothers' love.
And maybe, you could tell your baby,
When you love him so, that he's been loved before,
By someone, who delivered your son,
From God's arms, to my arms, to yours.
Every child regardless of whether or not they were adopted wants to know, more than anything else, that they are loved. A birth mother signs her rights away and trusts in the will of God that her child will be loved and cared for in his or her new home. No one can predict the future. I am pretty sure if birth mother or the agency knew what was going to befall me in my future neither one would have given me to my new family, but alas no one can predict the future.
Glowing new parents would come to the nursery window to proudly peer in at their little angels. I lay in hospital crib amongst them, alone. Nurses whizzing in and out taking the little angles back and forth to their parents. I lay there watching the nurses pass me by. I was a ward of the state. There was no family to cuddle and goo over me. Nine days later, a representative from the Children’s Aide Society came to get me because they’d found me a home.
From what I understand, finding a home for a healthy baby girl is not that hard. There are hundreds of couples who are desperate to have children and cannot, most of them would prefer to adopt a newborn baby. The problem is there are not enough babies to go to all the families that want them. The wait is often long and arduous and can last for many years. Many families will choose to adopt children from another ethnicity or country just to have baby.
So to be selected by a birth mother, or agency or however a family is selected to receive a newborn baby that shares similar traits is an incredible honor. After the incredible heart wrenching process of letting the adoption agency into your life as they take thousands of dollars, complete interviews, require autobiographies and recommendations, home inspections and everything else wouldn’t most families be thankful to finally receive the call that says, “We have found the perfect match for you, Mrs. Lewis. Would you like to come down and take a look?”
But what am I a new car? If Mrs. Lewis doesn’t like this year’s model she’ll wait until a new comes out? How does anyone know if the car and the driver are a perfect match until after they have gone for a test drive? Who are these people to think they know what a perfect match is anyway? All the agency really knows about me is that I come from European decent and appear to be healthy. I am healthy, European, girl newborn, that makes me a perfect match? Wouldn’t just the fact that I am healthy make me a perfect match for most families? How do they decide? Is there something they know about my birth parents that helps to make me a more perfect match?
The baby that would become known as Elizabeth was picked from the used child lot on April 21st, 1972 and was legally adopted by the Lewis family one year later. (Apparently the state gives you a whole year to test drive a newborn.) According to some psychologists the next two years that follow are the most important formative years, when the largest part of a child’s personality is formed. But like most people, these years are a blank to me.
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