I've Always Known

When I was very young, my two best friends were Stephanie and Chris. In fact, we knew each other before we could walk. Chris lived next door to me and Stephanie lived on the other side of me, just two doors down. We played together always, whether we were playing Batman and Robin with bath towels as capes and pinned in the front with a safety pin or playing Stickball in Stephanie's from yard with her sister. Tall, old oaks and pecan trees filled the neighborhood, creating a canopy of shade throughout. There were many places that grass wouldn't grow due to the lack of sunlight.

I never really noticed that Stephanie looked like her parents and older sister and Chris looked like his parents and little brother. I remember one day, Stephanie said that she was going to get a new baby brother and her Mother told her how happy she was when Stephanie was born. As a child has no knowledge that one's own birth isn't remembered, Stephanie asked me if I remembered when I was born. "I don't know, I'm adopted." I replied. Chris stopped fidgeting with his army man and they both fell silent. With a surprised look, Stephanie asked more questions, "When did you find out?, Do you know about your 'real' mom and dad?", Chris, being totally clueless about it, asked, "Does it hurt?"

I had nothing to hide, nor be ashamed. I told them what I knew.

"I always knew.", perhaps my parents told me very, very early and acted like it was no big deal.

"All I know is that my real mom was 44 and she died, and she had red hair. My dad was a college professor and died too." Truly, this was what my Mother had told me and I saw no reason to withhold the information from my two best friends. At that point, Stephanie, let out an understanding, "Ohhhhh". Chris had already lost interest and was arranging his green plastic troops for their assault. I shrugged my shoulders and that was that. It never came up again. We went back to playing.

I remember several times in the future, with others, when the point would come up. I answered questions and I really think most people had a natural curiosity about "being adopted" , like it's similar to Foster children or refugee's from a war. No, "Being adopted" does not mean you were ripped from your family and walked a thousand miles to the border in hopes of freedom, of one day to meet a nice family and they love you like their own. It literally feels, like I wasn't adopted.
Most people, when they inquire, ask me if I know who my Natural parents are or if I would look for them. The answer is and always will be an emphatic, no. I might have thought about it before, mostly for familial medical history, but not now.

Like I had said earlier, all my Mother had told me was that my Natural Mother had red hair, she was 44 when I was born and died from complications of Caesarian section. My Father was a college professor and he was terminal with cancer. That's all I knew. After my real Mother, (my adoptive Mother), died of cancer in 1994, my Father and I began to get closer. He told me stories of relatives I never knew existed. They had died, but I never knew that my Father had an older brother.
To end any further confusion, from this point on, my Mother refers to my Adoptive Mother and my Natural Mother refers to the woman who gave birth to me. Same with my paternal participants. As I was saying, my Father and I had gotten closer. Over the next ten years, I learned so much about Mom and who she really was and his past as well.

One day, while having a cup of coffee, I asked my Father about how they adopted me. I told him what I knew. He gave me a puzzled look on his face and asked, "Who the hell told you that?"

"Mom told me." I replied.

"I don't know why she would have told you something like that, but then knowing your Mother..." He stated.

"What is the real story?", I asked him with a deep feeling of anguish and anger for my Mother, lying to me and in turn, I lied to others.

My Father began his story and I knew that he would tell me the truth. He was not proud or ashamed of the truth, unlike my Mother. He was a realist and always told it so.

My Mother and Father had tried to conceive several times when they first got married. After several miscarriages, they were losing hope. My parents married late in life and now, in their 40's knew the window was closing. My Father's territory took him to the northwest portions of the state and towns along the Red River. He would be away from home during the week, visiting customers and taking their orders. He would come home on the weekends and go back out on Monday mornings. He did this all through my growing up years until he retired. One evening, he was eating dinner in a diner and talking with another salesman, the topic of children came up. When my Father told the man how discouraging their attempts were, the man said he had heard of a doctor in a nearby town that helped with adoption.

When my Father got back, he and my Mother discussed it and decided to inquire with this doctor about adopting a child. He found that this doctor would deliver the children born to women that did not want to keep their babies and he would find homes for them. The town was far enough away from the city that no one back home would know that "Suzie was in trouble" and therefore not shame the family.
He told me that they made all of the arrangements with the doctor and on one Saturday, while they were cleaning house, the telephone rang. The doctor had just delivered a blond hair, blue eyed, baby boy. They immediately drove to the hospital and took me home. The same day I was born. Even my original birth certificate bares their names as my parents. He had no knowledge of my Natural parents identity, background or anything. The law back then was to prevent any contact or exchange of information to protect the child and the adoptive parents, should the natural parents change their minds later.

I was in shock, but relieved. I knew the truth. My mind raced. I wondered if my Natural Mother was a young girl who'd lowered her guard and succumbed to the forbidden fruit? Was my Natural Mother a wife of a soldier overseas and had gotten too lonely one night? I tried to imagine who, what, how, why. There was one thing I knew. I was consciously and purposefully, abandoned.
I have no animosity or anger toward my Natural Mother. She did what she did because she thought it was the only option she had, for whatever reason. It doesn't matter. Actually, I had more remorse for my own Mother for allowing me to believe in the lie of my past.

Now, when people ask, I just tell them, I don't know and I really don't care. I'll joke with and tell them, I was found on the side of the road or that I was given up by the Indians.
My Real parents raised me in a loving and nurturing home, teaching me how to love and bare compassion toward my fellow man.

It was like, "I've always known, because it never mattered."