Adoption

It was interesting to read Petite Anglaise’s very touching account of how she felt as an adopted child and how she eventually contacted her biological parents. She wrote:

“……Being adopted made me feel a bit special. It was also full of dramatic potential. I had (I suspect very common) fantasies about my biological parents being fabulously wealthy and my one day inheriting a fortune. A favourite daydream was that I would see someone with my face walking towards me in the street and just know that we were related. A half brother or sister, or my mother herself. Or I imagined being attracted to a younger guy, only to find out that he was actually my half brother……”

I once had a patient (an adopted boy) whose very committed adoptive mother took her own initiative to find his biological parents. She met with resistance from many quarters, and the only information she had was that the parents were Canadian. Imagine the shock when she found that the biological mother died within the week of her son being handed over for adoption. She died in a motor vehicle accident near home. Her next task was to find the father. No one would talk. She travelled to some remote part of Canada where it was still considered a shame to have a child before marriage. She went to the library and looked at the archives. There were six pallbearers at the biological mother’s funeral, and her instinct told her that the father would be one of them. She located one of them and asked to see him. Alas, it was the wrong man. He was good humoured enough and told her he knew who the father might be – someone who had moved to work in a big city in Canada. She followed the trail there, made contact with the man and arranged to meet him at one of the famous shopping malls.

An hour went by and no one showed. She decided to see what the fuss was about this new shopping mall and walked to the other end. Then in the distance she thought she saw her son, who by then was twenty one. This man was pacing and walking just like her son. She went up to him and said, “Are you …….?”

Of course it was. The rest was history. She even bought a condo in the big city so that her adoptive son had somewhere to stay when he went visiting his biological father.

There are a few stories about adoption in my book “The Cockroach Catcher”.

Buy the book: The Cockroach Catcher

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