I mean, you remember what it was like to be eighteen years old, don’t you?”

February 16, 2012 · by smidge · in

I am letting Thursday pass for once without Wine and Love being my main offering – apologies to those who like lists and bullet points as much as I do.

To those who have been following my adoption journey up to now you will know that a month ago I went to view my adoption file (the record of my adoption at 7 weeks old) to those who need to catch up you can do. Might be useful, just saying…

Opening my adoption file threw so many things at me at once I didn’t know how to react. It was my mother on a page – her age, her date of birth, her sisters and brothers, what she was good at school, her likes, her height…

I found myself grasping at straws as I read that file – she was small (5, 2) I am small, she was dark, I am dark, she likes dancing, I like dancing, she played badminton, I played badminton – like this person wasn’t related to me, like I was still trying to find a way of making her be my mother, like really all that file held was facts about a 19 year old girl that once gave birth.

It all reminded me of that Friend’s episode where Phoebe meets her real mum:
Phoebe Mum: “Well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like we don’t have anything in common. I mean, I like, uh, pizza”.
Phoebe: “I like pizza!”

Apart from the girl in the file really was my mother. These weren’t straws. They were a mother, grandparents, aunties and uncles, a whole family I had only thought about in an abstract way before.

I once wrote that the one thing an adopted child never has is a real connection, a real blood connection. Opening up that file opened up a world of possibilities. They are out there, the file made them all so real. They have all lived their lives for 33 years without me, just as I have them.

He though, my Father, sadly is only referred to in the abstract, 19, a warehouse clerk from Liverpool. There is no name on the papers. It was ‘not given for a reason’. Who was he? Does he know about me? I doubt it. In fact I am pretty sure he doesn’t know I exsit. That shook me up – how would you feel now going through your whole life not knowing you have a daughter?

I wouldn’t know whether to risk shattering his whole life.

But my mother, my family, well, they know about me. I know about them.There is a chance we might be able to get to know each other. On the file there was an address. I looked it up in the phone book, by coincidence or design it looks like the family is still there. Could it all be this easy?

The letter goes out next Friday; the next step is to wait.

Miss S x

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