Assimilate.

Birth Father

A pregnant girlfriend, reason enough to get out of town.

As he drove, he tried to push away the thought of his girlfriend being sent away to Florida. How had they gotten to this point?

The plan was to pick up his friend Ray at the naval base in Boston and head directly over to the enlisted men’s club a few blocks away. Ray was a friend from high school who joined the military shortly after graduation. When Ray called out of the blue earlier that week, he wasn’t surprised. Their girlfriends were best friends, and he figured that Ray had heard about the pregnancy. Ray must have known that he needed a good distraction and called to invite him down for the weekend.

As he pulled up to the base’s dormitory quarters, he noticed Ray already walking toward him. He was late, and he knew his friend must be eager to get to the club because Ray opened the passenger door to get in before the car was out of gear. Ray directed him to the club and into the already packed parking lot. It was Friday, the night when the locals came in, so he slid his two-door coupe into a space as close to the club’s entrance as possible.

Before heading inside, they sat in the car, getting caught up over a shared joint that had traveled with him in the coupe’s ashtray. It didn’t take too long for Ray to ask the question that he knew was on the tip of his friend’s tongue since he got into the car, “What’s going to happen with the baby?”

Birth Mother

Auntie Tilly met her at the airport. It was still cold when she left Logan Airport, and the warm, humid air felt good as she stepped off the plane. Picking up her small suitcase, she suddenly realized how little she brought for an extended stay. She had struggled to pack for the radical change in weather and her expanding waistline.

Before leaving the airport, Tilly mentioned that she had found a private adoption agency. “Call them,” she said. “You should make an informed decision about the baby, and meeting with an adoption agency can help.”

Auntie Tilly wasn’t her actual aunt by blood. She was the beloved second wife of her uncle, and she had always considered Tilly her aunt—her favorite aunt. Her compassion wasn’t surprising. Tilly was a nurse. When she pleaded with her mom before her departure to let her keep the baby, it was made clear that adoption was her only choice. She spent the entire flight thinking about her baby’s father. Without him, adoption was the only option. Wasn’t it?

She arrived in Florida feeling dejected, and in two words, Auntie Tilly managed to change all that. Informed decision.

When they pulled out of the airport, she felt the intense sun hit her face. She dug through her pocketbook for her sunglasses. As she put them on, she thought about the possibilities. Maybe she could keep her baby. Perhaps Auntie Tilly would help her.

ONE 

I was born when I was nine days old.

Looking down at the piece of paper that stated almost as much, I stepped up to the worn brown laminate counter and slid my application across to the woman with the no-nonsense face. “You forgot something,” she said almost immediately, pointing to the line that said: Place of Birth. “What city were you born in?”

I came armed with a stock answer, but the words wouldn’t leave my lips. My body wouldn’t cooperate. Like a dog’s tail, my face was my tell, and just then, all my blood rushed my face. No-nonsense face tapped the omission a couple of times with her finger. Embarrassed, I finally said, “I don’t know where I was born. I was adopted.”

Twenty minutes earlier, I’d arrived at the county courthouse to apply for my first passport. The entrance of the 1918 Neoclassical building—designed with four massive columns, each topped with Ionic capitals supporting one large stone pediment chiseled with the court’s name—had been imposing. For me, this court building was the place where my familial ties were both severed and formed, the place where my true identity was locked away and replaced with a new one, the place where my adoption was finalized sixteen years earlier, and the place where, years later, I asked a judge to unseal my adoption records. But at that moment, it stood as the place that prevented the certification of my identity so that I could leave the country. How can one building have so much power?

 ~

I was four when my parents first told me I was adopted.

“Kacie,” my dad said, “we have something very important to tell you.” My brother and I were summoned to the living room moments earlier, and we were now sitting on the dull green shag carpeting, looking up at our parents as they sat on the slate stairs leading into the sunken room. I thought I was in trouble for some act I couldn’t remember committing—the living room, usually off-limits, except for special occasions. Maybe, I thought, they’re using it as a place to give out punishments now too. My brother put a reassuring arm around me.

I looked over my shoulder at the large piece of art on the dark paneled wall to see if it was out of place. It was a bunch of colorful squares and lines that my mom said had been painted by her artist friend Judy who had also painted a picture of my brother on the wall in our dining room. Earlier, the brightly colored painting and the even brighter couch had called to me like beacons of adventure. They were hard to resist as I walked by on my way to my bedroom, and I’d had a little jump session on the couch even though I knew I shouldn’t have. Maybe I bumped the painting? Maybe she found out about that one time I’d licked the couch, thinking it would taste as good as it looked? Lost in thought, I heard my dad say, “You were adopted.”

I turned and stared at him wide-eyed and asked, “What does that mean?”

He said, “It means that you didn’t grow inside mommy’s belly.”

My mom then placed her hand on her stomach and added, “You didn’t grow inside here like your brother Danny.”

My dad went on to say, “You grew inside of another lady’s belly. She loved you very much but couldn’t take care of you because she was too young.”

That’s when Jeff chimed in, “I was adopted too. It makes us very special.” And at that moment, I felt very special.

My dad is a great storyteller. His lead-in of “stop me if you heard this before” is usually met with silence by me. Not because he hadn’t told the story. I have heard all of his stories many times over, and I always want to listen to them again. His subtle changes in character expressions or the order of events always breathe new life into his old tales. And only my dad could survive the incidents he describes—being shot in the back with an arrow while target shooting with his friend Ralph, having a friend accidentally drop an ax on his head while climbing up into a treehouse, or playing chicken with a train.

The fact that I remember my adoption story the way I do makes me not trust the memory. It doesn’t seem possible to be that young and recall something so vivid. In my version of events, I remember my dad being matter-of-fact. There were no exciting character expressions. There was no storytelling. When I asked him about that time in the living room later as I grew up, he said he didn’t remember my version or anything specific about that day. It was a life-altering moment for me, and yet my dad seemed out of character. He craved a good story to tell. But he was not the star in this tale, and I later learned that my parents didn’t have much of anything to disclose. I had to script my own narrative, filling in a void so large it seemed to swallow my identity wholesale—from nothing, I had to craft something, and that something happened to be all of me.

 ~

My parents met in college and moved from the Midwest to Florida in 1965, shortly after they married. They settled into their new suburban lives and tried to start a family without much success. Doctors didn’t know why my parents couldn’t conceive, and in the 1960s, there wasn’t much anyone could do to help the natural process. Their attempts at artificial insemination had failed, and the first baby to be born through in vitro fertilization was still more than a decade away. They were surrounded by family and friends starting to have children, and their desire to build a family grew. Parenthood, after all, was seen as a requirement for a successful marriage.[i]

In 1968, good friends of my parents were in the process of completing their second adoption. Seeing adoption as a possible way to build their family, my parents asked them about their experiences. Adoption was not a new concept. The dawn of modern adoption in the United States began in 1851 when Massachusetts passed the Adoption of Children Act,and the period between 1945 and 1973 signified a record number of babies surrendered by unmarried white women for adoption. My parents became one of many infertile couples who turned to adoption.[ii]

While adoption was becoming a more acceptable form of building a family, my parents chose to tell only a few trusted friends and family members about their decision. My mom wanted her adopted child to be accepted as if she gave birth to him herself, and she requested a blue-eyed, blond-haired baby boy that would look like her. The adoption agency granted her wish, and in May 1969, they brought home my brother Jeff.

In August 1970, my parents returned to the adoption agency to apply for their second adoption, this time a baby girl. They were assigned the same social worker as their first adoption. Charlotte was a single, middle-aged woman who was always impeccably dressed. Her smile matched her optimism, and her soothing nature made for a good adoption social worker.

At their intake meeting, Charlotte gently informed my parents that fewer available children meant a longer waiting period for this adoption. She also told them that the agency no longer matched babies with their adoptive parents based on physical attributes and birth parent interests. Charlotte didn’t elaborate on the agency’s new thinking and philosophy; she only emphasized that they would not be sharing background information except for pertinent medical issues. These new policies were a drastic change from the adoption experience they’d had only two years earlier and one that caught my mom off guard. Charlotte noted in her record that my dad was in immediate agreement with the agency policy changes but that my mom needed reassurance and agreed only after a lengthy discussion.

While the entire process for my brother took nine months from application to baby, my parents waited a little over two years for me. In September 1972, they brought home a very cute, chubby-cheeked, baby girl with brownish-red hair, who they named Katherine and called Kacie—a baby that looked nothing like them.

Seven months after my parents brought me home, my mom was pregnant with my little brother Danny—her conception aligning with a recent trip to Spain with my dad. Her doctor surmised that reduced worry and stress around whether she could or would conceive may have contributed to her pregnancy. My theory, and the story I like to tell, is that Danny was my parent’s tax for leaving their infant girl and young son behind while they traveled carefree in Europe.

~ 

My older brother and I were adopted during the tail end of what is referred to as the Baby Scoop Era.[iii] This roughly thirty-year period between the end of World War II and the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973 marked a period of deliberate adoption secrecy. Prior to World War II, every effort was made to retain ties with the child’s birth family. This philosophy was affirmed in the first set of adoption standards, Minimum Safeguards in Adoption, published by the Child Welfare League in 1938.[iv]

The period after World War II marked a shift from traditional confidentiality, protecting records from the prying eyes of the public, to sealed secrecy by preventing members of the adoption triad (adoptee, birth parents, and adoptive parents) from accessing their adoption records and severing all biological ties. There are a few theories behind this move. Secrecy, social workers theorized, protected the adoptive family unit from a birth parent’s change of heart. Secrecy also sought to protect the birth mother’s privacy so she could better move on with her life and the childless couple from the shame of infertility.[v] My brother and I became part of the post-war closed adoption system, and the legal system permanently severed our biological connections.

When I went to the courthouse to apply for my passport, I brought the required birth certificate needed for identification. The United States began the formal process of issuing birth certificates at the turn of the twentieth century. When I was born in 1972, my birth was documented just like every other baby born that year. But I never left with that record of my birth because the hospital flagged me for adoption, and the courts sealed my original birth certificate along with my other adoption records. My birth certificate, the one that the passport clerk scrutinized to prove I was the person on the application form, was an amended version—an invention created to protect adopted children from the stigma of illegitimacy.[vi] My amended birth certificate had blank spaces under the city and hospital of birth. The mother and father sections included my adoptive parent’s information, and under the child’s name was the name they gave me. It wasn’t so much a record of my birth as a record of my adoptive identity—an identity I assumed nine days after being born.

 ~

My parents didn’t leave the adoption agency with a how-to manual on raising adopted kids. Whenever they had questions, they turned to the family pediatrician for advice. Dr. Bennett was the one to tell them that my brother and I be told about our adoption sooner rather than later. She cautioned them that keeping our adoption status a secret would not lead to healthy outcomes. I couldn’t grasp adoption secrecy’s broader significance as a young child, but my pediatrician knew that keeping secrets from children was unhealthy. Still, the practice of severing all biological ties and concealing all evidence of an adopted child’s former identity was the standard practice in the field of social work at that time. How were the two professionals tasked with my wellbeing seemingly siloed?

The answer may best be summarized by Karen Wilson Buterbaugh when she describes one of many defining conditions of the Baby Scoop Era:

The creation of a new professionalism in social work in the United States allowed workers to define and operate in the specialized field of infant adoption, regardless of their previous experience or training, and to declare themselves experts in unwed motherhood.[vii]

 Charlotte was well-credentialed with a college degree in social work and a membership in the Academy of Certified Social Workers. But research and advocacy in actual adoptee outcomes didn’t start until the 1970s, when adoptees and birth mothers began speaking out about their experiences. At the time of my adoption, nobody had checked in with adult adoptees to ask, “How do you feel about your adoption?” or “Based on your experience, how could the adoption process be improved?” Theories drove adoption policy, not outcomes.

 ~

My brother Jeff and I were the only adopted children in our extended family, and as a young child, I started to notice the similarities between family members. My younger brother, my parent’s biological child, looked like them. My dad was an identical twin. My mom looked like her dad. My cousin Michelle, my maternal aunt’s child, could have been my mom’s biological daughter. It is human nature to talk about family resemblances, and our family was no different. But because I didn’t look or act like anyone in our family, these discussions about resemblances always excluded me. I so desperately wanted to look like someone; I obsessed over it. When I couldn’t see any similarities within my own family, I looked for my face in others—strangers out in public, teachers, friends, friends of friends. And yet, I was never made to feel adopted. My parents went out of their way to make sure they treated all their kids fairly; some might say, to a fault. We each got the same number of Christmas gifts each year. My parents equally divided their time between us and our activities. When one of us begged for a hamster, we all got hamsters. But there would always be a part of me missing, what my parents could never give me—the part of my identity I came by biologically.

Someone once told me that my biology doesn’t need to dictate my biography, and I suppose it is easy to take for granted something you already have—knowledge of biological roots. How do you write a biography with an incomplete history? I didn’t know where I got my curly hair, deep-set dimples, or natural athletic abilities. I couldn’t complete the typical family tree school project. Am I considered English, like my dad, or Polish, like my mom, if I don’t have their blood running through my veins? How does a severed branch of an unknown kind successfully graft itself onto a new tree?

The importance of biological ties is emphasized in the way adoptees are asked to affirm their place within a family—an affirmation not required of birth children.[viii] Adoptees are treated as curiosities, and it is sometimes easier to avoid the topic of adoption altogether. If I let slip the fact that I was adopted, what I heard was, “Wow, I didn’t know that you were adopted!” followed by all of the questions:

“Why did your real mom give you away?”

“How old were you when you were adopted?”

“Have you met your real parents?”

“Are you interested in finding your real parents?”

“Do you know anything about where you came from?”

“So, is that your real brother?”

“Couldn’t your parents have children of their own?”

“When did your parents tell you that you were adopted?”

“Do you really feel like your adopted parents are your real parents?”

As intrusive as the questions felt, the use of the words “real” and “own” cut like a knife plunged deep into my heart. I have only physically known one set of parents. I can see them and touch them. If real implies “not artificial, fraudulent or illusory,” then what are my parents to me?[ix] My parents have three children, me and my two brothers. We have a “direct kinship,” as the definition of own implies.[x] What other type of child could I be to my parents if not their own?

My experience getting grilled over my adoptee status is why I avoid asking strangers or new acquaintances probing questions. Admittedly, it’s hard to suppress the urge to turn the proverbial tables and ask my series of questions.

“When your mom found out she was pregnant, or at any point since you’ve been born, did she think about giving you away?”

“Are you sure your parents are your real parents?”

“When did your parents tell you that you were their birth child?”

“Do you wish you were adopted?”

I eventually learned to accept my adoptee status as something I cannot change. If given the opportunity now, I will talk openly about my adoption experience, using it to educate others. But when tested, there is still a snarky reply at the ready—like when a stranger once approached me at a children’s museum assuming that my daughter was adopted from a foreign country and asked how much she cost. My response: “Probably the same as it did to give birth to your daughter, except medical insurance didn’t cover my experience.”

My family is as real to me as yours is to you. I am my parent’s own child. Many parts and experiences make me—some of which I know and others that I am not allowed to know because of adoption laws that make little sense to me. Why don’t I have information regarding my real birth history? Because it is against the law for me to know my own birth history.

I don’t remember asking many questions when my parents told me I was adopted. What would a four-year-old ask about something so complex? But as the years progressed, I’d ask more questions. Where is my birth mother? What did she look like? Why was I given away? Why didn’t she want me? As hard as I pressed my parents for answers, they never had anything to offer. They left the adoption agency with their new baby girl and only three pieces of information about the birth mother. She was eighteen. She was not married. There was a family history of diabetes.

The not knowing only made me more curious and anxious about the story nobody could tell. Having an older brother who was adopted was comforting to me, but he didn’t share my need for answers. Maybe his lack of curiosity was because he knew more. The adoption agency gave my parents some information about his birth family and history. He knew the reason for his relinquishment—his birth parents were very young, at fifteen. They wanted to keep him but had no means to do so. They were in love. They were artistic. His paternal birth grandfather was a prominent realtor. My brother was also intentionally matched with my parents based on his birth parent’s physical attributes and interests. He looked like my mom with her blond hair, and his thin frame was like my dad. He shared their blue eyes. His artistic talent (to match our mom) and his love of sailing (to match our dad) emerged as a young child. His story seemed straightforward and overwhelmingly positive. These reasons, and countless others, could have played a hand in curbing his appetite for information.

It is hard to understand the adoption agency’s decision to place two children in one household in-between a significant shift in policy. And as a child, it was hard for me to understand why my brother came with a story and I did not. Maybe my story was one the social worker thought I’d be better off not knowing. I wonder if Charlotte thought much about the impact of one child having birth family information and parent similarities and the other one left to wonder.

 ~

Once asserting my adoption status across the counter that separated us, the clerk processed my application without further dialogue. I received a passport and chalked the experience up to one of many where I had to confront adoption identity head-on. But when I applied for my passport at age sixteen, this one experience coincided with a critical period of adolescence when teenagers attempt to resolve a fundamental question. Who am I?[xi] For me, the context of my adopted life could only answer the question—a life developed solely by social relationships. The question of who I was became impossible for me to answer (at least not entirely) because I was so different from everyone else in my life.

Adoption is complicated. This book’s cover is symbolic of what the closed adoption system was supposed to represent—the best solution to everyone’s problem: an unwed pregnant teen, a parentless baby, the infertile couple willing to parent a stranger’s child, and the sealing of all records so that everyone can just move on, always looking forward and never looking back. In the name of the child’s best interest, love will conquer all. But love, I would come to find out, wasn’t enough to answer one crucial question.

“Who am I?”

References

[i] Naomi Cahn and Jana Singer, “Adoption, Identity, and the Constitution: The Case for Opening Closed Records,” Journal of Constitutional Law 2, no. 1 (1999): 157.

[ii] Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender (Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, 2017), 35-41.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] E. Wayne Carp, “Introduction: A Historical Overview of American Adoption,” in Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, ed. E. Wayne Carp (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 1-26.

[v] Naomi Cahn and Jana Singer, “Adoption, Identity, and the Constitution: The Case for Opening Closed Records,” Journal of Constitutional Law 2, no. 1 (1999): 157.

[vi] E. Wayne Carp, “Introduction: A Historical Overview of American Adoption,” in Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, ed. E. Wayne Carp (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 1-26.

[vii] Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender (Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, 2017), 40.

[viii] Frances J. Latchford, Steeped in Blood: Adoption, Identity, and the meaning of Family (Canada: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2019), 7-8.

[ix] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “real,” last accessed June 1, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real.

[x] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “own,” last accessed June 1, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/own.

[xi] Harold D. Grotevant, Nora Dunbar, Julie K. Kohler, and Amy M. Lash Esau, “Adoptive Identity: How Contexts within and beyond the Family Shape Developmental Pathways,” Family Relations 49, no. 4 (2000): 379–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/585833. See also Kendra Cherry, “Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development,” last modified July 18, 2021, https://www.verywellmind.com/erik-eriksons-stages-of-psychosocial-development-2795740.