I've written about my lack of a "birth story" before. I don't know if this is something that is generally seen as a big deal to people, but in my circle of friends and acquaintances I was the only one that didn't have one and it bothered me a lot. I never spoke to anyone about it bothering me of course. Adopted kids know not to rock the boat they have been hauled aboard. I didn't know not to rock the boat because anyone told me that the subject of my adoption was off limits, I just knew it wasn't something to draw attention to. So, whenever stories about my friends' births came up I listened and wondered about my own. If these stories were told in the presence of my adoptive mother they usually resulted in her telling my "adoption story". I think this story was supposed to make me feel like I had a story like everyone else, others seemed to like it, but it always made me uncomfortable.
It went something like this: My soon to be "as if born to" parents were on some kind of trip. A social worker attempted to contact them about having a baby boy available if they were "still interested" (you know, kind of like when a salesman calls to see if you are still interested in that used Honda you test drove last week). The social worker, not being able to contact them, made contact with a co-worker/friend of my "mother to be". That woman drove to their house and left a note in their mailbox with the information on it. They got home from their trip and found the note, called the social worker, apparently were still interested, liked the financing terms and remaining balance of the warranty, and arranged to take title of their new "as if born to" slightly used 3 1/2 month old baby boy. My adoptive mother was always really proud of the fact that they only had to pay $15 for me. That always made it into the story somewhere. Adoptions these days cost people thousands of dollars, tens of thousands usually. In the 1980s when I heard this story the most they also cost substantially more than $15. Apparently my mother felt that she got quite the bargain and wanted people to know it. They took delivery of me in late May of 1973. Everyone looks very happy about it in the pictures, except me.
I admit that I may have embellished this story a bit from the original version my adoptive mother likes to tell. However, the basic story is the same and the embellishments are all the things she left unsaid that I heard in my head each time the story was told. All of my friends had stories that involved the number of hours of labor their mothers endured, sometimes a harrowing trip to the hospital, some amusing pregnancy related anecdotes, an exact time they were born, and their weight at birth.
By contrast the story of my beginning, which suspiciously started when I was 3 1/2 months old, began with a note in a mailbox asking if my parents were still interested, a payment of a trivial amount of money (for which my mother was very proud, and still is), and taking possession at some point later. It sounded very much like a story about buying a used car, perhaps not the exact model you were looking for, but for the right price, and close enough to settle for. In a way I suppose that is exactly what happened. They couldn't get the new car they wanted (a biological child of their own), so they settled for a value priced one that was available, only slightly used, and had most of the features they were looking for (healthy, male, white-just not the same blood or DNA).
Of course when I was a kid I didn't think of this story in this way, I just knew it made me uncomfortable and somehow made me feel like I was less valuable than people who knew their actual birth story. When I was older and able to really think about it, this is how I worked out what it all meant. My adoptive mother still insists on telling it when she gets the opportunity, and that is exactly how it makes me feel, like a bargain priced used car that was almost what my adoptive parents were looking for.
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