Missing the Birth Parents

This is a tough post to write, but I've been inspired by posts from Adoption Journey and Always and Forever Family about the strong desire to know the birth mothers. They both write about it differently, but it gave me the courage to write my own post about it from the other side, from a closed adoption.

As I've mentioned before, Andrew's birth mom chose a completely closed adoption. We know her name, and a few details that she wrote for us, but we've never been given a photo or gotten to meet her. After the birth, she moved on out of our lives.

Before I go on, since this might sound negative, let me be very clear that I respect her right to move on as she has. Open adoption is only the right choice if it works for all parties. She is a grown woman who made a choice and has stuck with it. She was a mother in the way that worked for her, and she made sure that Andrew was well taken care of. She gave him life, and kept him healthy, despite the sacrifice it was for her. Even though I'm tempted to seek her out, I will not do that because letting her decide is the respectful thing to do. I have to let her seek us out, or not, depending on what she feels is right.

Also, there was a time when I was angry at her for some things, but not anymore. Now, I just feel like I love her, the same way I love my aunts and my cousins. That may sound weird, since I've never met her. It's just the feelings I have. You can't think about someone so much, and spend so much time with the baby they gave birth to, and be so grateful to someone, without it turning into a kind of love. That's just the way the heart works. She loved my son enough to give him parents, and I love him to, so her and I are connected forever despite never meeting.

As for my feelings, though, I still crave meeting her. I kept thinking this feeling would go away, but it's turned into a dull itch that I can't scratch. After almost a year, I figure this feeling will probably always be there. I feel like Andrew is completely my son, and I love him more than I could have imagined. I have fallen in love with him as my own, so that isn't an issue. Meeting them won't affect my love for him or our sense of family. It's more that I crave some context. I deeply want to see the faces of his birth parents, their gestures, their eyes. I want to see their sense of humor, their quirks, and hear their laughs. I want to see what their hobbies and talents are, and imagine how they may play out in Andrew.

Since I choose to look on the bright side, there is an advantage to not meeting them in that we won't have any obvious preconceived notions on how he will turn out. We won't be looking for problems or pegging him into a hole that he isn't destined to fit. However, the advantages of meeting them would likely win out if we had the opportunity. If we could meet them, even once, we could work that into the context of our lives. People are hard-wired to see where we come from. As it is, I find myself saying, "he has grandma's eyes", or "he has his mom's stubborn spirit," and it rings flat. I can teach him attitude, and see basic similarities, but I would rather just see where the genetic stuff comes from myself. I love that sense of genetic similarity with my mom and with my dad, and I wish that I could give him that with his birth parents. I can see myself making casual comments about similarities with his birth parents, little things that reflect their place in our lives, as family. As it is now, I can do that with the paperwork she gave us, but only to a point. Reading about someone on paper just isn't the same.

As it stands now, though, we're going to do our part for an open adoption. We've been praying for the birth parents for almost two years now. We started praying for them every night from the time we started the adoption process, and we still pray for them every night now. I'm also going to order a set of photos and hand-deliver them to the adoption agency in time for his birthday, as well as write her a letter. I'd do the same for the birth father, but just trust me when I say there is no point, and it's not because we don't want to, but because it won't ever get to him. I doubt that the birth mother will ever go collect those photos and letters, but I can still dream. It gives me hope to imagine her, someday, going to the agency and seeing letters and photos for every year he's a child, and knowing that we never forgot her and that we still want to meet her.