Today is a good day. Today is the day I learned my birthmom’s first name. It’s not much, but I feel like I just found a corner piece for the puzzle of me.

I actually had it for almost one year, but I wasn’t positive about it. Now I am. Now I know. I can’t stop grinning like a fool.

On the flip side, I am annoyed that I had to be sneaky to get this small tidbit, but that can’t overshadow the joy of information.

She is a mystery, a shadow of memory, a part of who I am, a part of my son, a wish.

Now she has a name and my cheeks are sore. ;)

I really hate the term “someothercountry/race/creed/religion-American” as in African-American. Now before I start getting hate comments, I didn’t say I hate African-Americans, I hate the term. To me it says that a person is African first then American which is just a politically correct way to be racial, to segregate our community. If you salute the flag and call yourself a citizen (notice I didn’t say you had to agree with the government or be a political stooge,) then you are an American; no matter what color, creed, religion. If it is important to a person to also signify where there ancestry or they personally came from before they became a citizen, then it should be after the American part. Let’s face it we should all think of ourselves as Americans first and foremost rather than seperate ourselves into little racial groups.

Don’t believe it’s racial? Then watch the news shows, they always make a point of mentioning the term Asian-American, African-American, Muslim-American, or Whatever-American or when it involves someone who may have an ancestry from somewhere other than here. (Reality check: we ALL have an ancestry from somehwere other than here.) Second, have you ever heard them talk about an English American? I think once I heard them talk about a German-American, but rarely if the person is of light skin do they comment on the difference. It is basically marking someone as different based on their race and setting aside a special category for them. Hence me saying its racial. (One of my friends in the Navy was of darker skin and he too hated the phrase. At one point he stood up and said he wasn’t African American because his parents were actually from Jamaca not Africa. I had to laugh at that.)

Granted, much easier to say than do, but aren’t a lot of things worth doing hard?

Recently, I have been noticing another trend. It’s probably been there for years however I only started noticing it in the last few years but I call it birthism. (I’m sure there is an actual, Webster accepted, name out there so if you know, feel free to let me know in the comments.) It’s a prejudice or discrimination based on your birth. For example, as you watch the news, keep an ear out for adoptees. When a person gets in an accident, it’s just a person getting in an accident, but when it’s an adoptee, they act like they are getting paid for each time they use the word. Case in point: there was an accident involving a couple of kids who were driving a car and crashed into a bus back in January. The article made a point of saying the kids were adopted and how the parents biological kids weren’t in the car and on and on and on. They never did explain what adoption had to do with it, other than a neat twist to throw in. Why the special seperation? Case 2: Former President Reagan’s funeral. Attended by his wife, their children and his adopted son. He was attending his freakin Dad’s funeral and yes I know they had their differences, but it was still his Dad. Why the declaration of difference? Case 3: TV shows, it’s either how wonderful that you are giving up your child OR it’s about the crazy adoptee who went on a killing spree.

Our first story tonight is about those crazy and angry adoptees. Then at 11, we will tell you where you can deposit your newborns so we have future material to write about.

Now guess what I’m wishing.

I came across this post from Bob Perks that struck a nerve a while back. I have shared the poem with friends and family and decided to post it here. You can read the entire story behind it here.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough “Hellos” to get you through the final “Good-bye”

To everyone, I wish you enough…

As I sit listening to the rare Southern California storms, I am reminded of the home I grew up in. I was born and raised in Florida, where you can almost set your watch to the rain, or at least the 1:00 sun showers. I miss sun showers, where the rain is so light and the sun is still shining causing rainbows everywhere you look. I used to watch the rain slowly drift across the lake behind my house. Even the driving rain of the hurricanes was pretty cool, much better than the cold dreary rain that we have here.

The house wasn’t a mansion, although when I tell people I grew up in West Palm Beach, they always get this funny look in their eyes and say something like “oh Palm Beach.” Sorry, we lived on the other side of the intercoastal. It was a good house with a big yard and lots of trees. We had a huge tree in the front yard that I loved to climb. I could pretend I was flying in outerspace in that tree or exploring a jungle, or make believe I was Bilbo Baggins, climbing to the top of Murkwood forest. When I was in my teens, I bought a new pair of topsiders, but as I stepped out of the car, a berry fell from that tree and stained them. The next day, I began tearing that tree down. Granted, my Dad had wanted it out for a while, but it was a big tree, it took a bit longer. When I was last there the main stump was still in the ground. Childhood must end sometime.

The lake behind the house had originally been a woody marsh. I used to love going exploring, even when they cut down all the trees, dredged the marsh, and put in a jogging path, it was still kind of fun to hang out in. I don’t really explore anymore. I have become too afraid of what is going on in our world, which is really strange considering not so long ago, I didn’t fear anything. I would go hiking in the park and catch snakes, whether they were poisonous or not. I even walked up to an alligator who was sunning himself once and just stopped and stared at him until he decided to crawl back in the water. I have traveled to probably two thirds of the states in the union, visited almost every country in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and a few of the Gulf countries as well. I served in theatre during Desert Shield, and walked the back streets of Thailand and the Philippines, alone and at night. I have been held at gunpoint by a Seal team and cracked a joke as well as transported military prisoners and detainees across California without batting an eye.

Now, I prefer to come home and explore/escape with a book or TV show, rather than go outside or hang out with my son. I don’t like to go places where there are crowds, like a theatre on a weekend or a ball game. I have become a couch potato and a homebody, and I really am starting to hate it. The storm has come and I have been found wanting. I need to stop letting this adoption stuff shut me down. I need to stop being a victim of it, which right now, is what I feel like. I need to shake this depression I am in, and wipe the fake smile I have been giving everyone and replace it with a genuine one. My counselor always knows when I am talking about a subject that causes me pain because my smile gets bigger. Right now, I am grinning like a madman.

“Life is a storm my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout, as you did in Rome, ‘Do your worst…for I will do mine.’”
~Count of Monte Christo

I have been listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on unabridged audio while driving back and forth to work and today was the chapter about the Mirror of Erised. If you haven’t read the Harry Potter series nor seen the movie, it’s a mirror that shows a person’s deepest wants or wishes. When Harry looks into the mirror, he sees his mother, father, and other relatives he never knew. (In the movie, I think he only sees his mom and dad.) Prof. Dumbledore tells him that the happiest man in the world would only see himself.

For me, I think I would see my blood-family and my adoptive family standing together with me, along with my sister’s blood-family as well. Oh and with me holding my original birth certificate.

It pains me to feel so beholden to the agency. To feel that I must walk on eggshells with them so that I may glean some small tidbit of information. Or wait long weeks to ask for an update, so it doesn’t bother them too much and they just tell me to take a hike.

Meanwhile, I read posts from people who say to just get over it, or comment on how in the minority we are to want to search. It’s so depressing in a lot of ways. Just give me my @#%$@#$% records.

For example, there was an article from Maine about open records that my mom shared with me. The article has quotes from an adoptee asking for his records and then goes on with several from “the church” (yeah, that one) and adoption agencies. It then closes with another adoptee who, lo and behold, has already been able to find her medical records so she doesn’t feel the records should be opened either. Well thank you. Glad you got what you wanted and to heck with the rest of us, right? Also, stop with the whole “right to privacy” thing. There are laws already out there preventing me from contact, which I have discussed before, but are people hiding behind it to prevent access? Or the whole abortion/abandoned thing. Show me numbers. I haven’t been able to find numbers. Well that’s not true, I found one Safe Haven site who claimed that the abandoned babies had dropped last year in one state, (although they only had one child placed in the safe haven, in this case I think it was a fire station. My question though is how many children were left at a fire station in the previous years before Safe Haven?)

I changed my mind, in the mirror I would see all adoptees having free access to their adoption file and original birth certificate at age 18, and earlier with adoptive parent consent. If they want it, it’s there, if not, that’s fine too. I would see expecting mother’s offered real choices and if they choose adoption to have the option of law enforced open adoption.

What would you see if you looked into the mirror?