I'll make you such a deal...

I decided to go back to school.  Classes start soon and I discovered recently that despite the fact all my classes are online and I live about 50 miles from the campus I still am expected to submit evidence I was vaccinated as a child.  I'm 43 years old, my doctor from 1973/1974 is long since retired and probably dead, and I don't have those records.  So, I sent my mother an email asking if she had any of the records still hanging around.  It turns out she did, they were in a bunch of stuff she pulled out of her safe deposit box recently.  Below is a direct quote from her email to me (I just copy/pasted it):

The immunization records are in the mail to you.  They were the bottom thing in the bag of safe deposit box stuff.  The other old thing was Sultan's AKC registration papers.  Plus the official document of adoption, indicating we indeed paid a whopping $15.00 for you!  What a good deal that was!  💕🎶🎶💕

I included the hearts and musical notes she added to the end even though I have no idea what they are supposed to mean.  Celebration that I was so cheap perhaps?  Of course we had to make sure and mention a dog that his been dead since 1985 in the email.

I have no idea why she thinks it is OK to talk about me as if she and my adoptive father purchased me from a supermarket.  Further, I have heard this great story, which was the substitute I had for a birth story, hundreds of times over the years.  I didn't need to hear it again, nor did it need to be expressed to me in a way that implied I was both purchased and at a bargain basement discount to boot.  It is not lost on me that they paid a lot more than $15 for every dog they have ever owned. 

There are a lot of people in the adoptee community who think of adoption as human trafficking with a pretty name.  At first I thought this position was a little extreme, but what else would one call this?  Clearly my adoptive mother thinks she bought me.  I certainly felt like I was a purchase when I was growing up and that feeling continues. 

One of the reasons my mom let me go was that she didn't have any way to support me and didn't think she would even have anywhere for us to live since her mother told her she couldn't bring me back there [to her mother's house].  I know my mom was trying to do what was best for me and I don't fault her for it.  Even so, living under a bridge with her I wouldn't have felt like a purchase and I have no doubt I would have felt loved no matter what.  I had the exact opposite in the "better life" I got through adoption.