There Was a Secret

I thought the writing prompt “There Was A Secret” sounded good when I first heard it. I could easily imagine writing about it. However, I’ve changed my mind as I sit here around 4 pm, finally drinking my morning coffee.   

When I first woke up this morning, I started writing this piece in my head, as that’s my process. The more I wrote, the angrier I got. The anger may have been smoldering in the deep abyss of every brain cell since last night. I think I was triggered by something in the adoption community, reminding me I don’t fit in.   

Sometimes it’s tough being the late discovery in a sea of people who’ve always known they were adopted. I can’t relate to the life experience of always knowing. I can barely relate to being adopted because my brain still wants to toss that little fact aside. No, that never happened because if it did, my inner critic would tell me, “Your first 49 years were wrong.”  The years before a free trip to Mexico and the need for a passport outed my adoption. This led me to search for the answer to why my birth certificate was filed 14 months after my birth. The answer was I was adopted at 43 days old from a maternity home in Vermont to a family in New Hampshire.  

I want to throw up because I didn’t even know my kids were the first biological family to me, the first people I met with my DNA. Somehow, that makes me feel unworthy and not to be trusted with anything because I couldn’t be trusted with my own true story. I was simply not someone important enough to know the secret.  

I realized in my late teens that my body type and problem-solving skills differed significantly from those of the family who raised me. I know now I was invalidated when I asked all the adults in my family the dreaded question, “Was I adopted?” I took on the “you’re crazy” response and made it my truth, as no other truth from the adults in my world was forthcoming to change the narrative. Again, I am not worthy of honest and truthful information. A secret must remain a secret at all costs.   

I pay the costs daily in various ways. It might be a trauma response here and there. It might be in the form of a non-adoptive friend at Mahjong talking about how great adoption is and how it’s a great gift. I stay silent as I have learned the price I pay when I try to educate these individuals on another point of view. My words of education only lead to my getting a backlash of all the ways I am wrong. “You didn’t have to grow up in an orphanage.” They have no clue that my first 43 days of life were spent in that orphanage they speak about. If I push the issue, I will leave the game feeling inadequate and unimportant, and my feelings of worthlessness reinforced once again because they can’t hear the truth of this adoptee’s life experience.   

The stories I hear are based on the memories of others from both the paternal and maternal sides. I know only what they decided they should say to me. I’m stuck in a relationship with one foot in and one foot out, as too much time has elapsed to integrate fully. I learned that recently after the death of my first cousin Bette. I feel her loss every morning when I use our shared start word to play Wordle. Here’s a funny side note: I was driving to her funeral, an hour south of my house. For the first time I heard the song by Ed Sheeran, “Visiting Hours.” While not all the lyrics apply, it will forever be our song, like Maroon 5’s song “Memories” is my adopted Dad’s post-death song. I look at these songs as little moments of cosmic connection. At the reception after Bette’s funeral, I sat at a table of second cousins, their spouses, and their kids. I was in awe sitting here at this table surrounded by my DNA. It was also clear how lonely It feels not knowing the family history or the inside jokes… I witnessed the beauty of a close-knit family. I felt the disconnect of 50 years between them and me. I simply can’t catch up. I know that now—it’s time to stop playing that game.   

I hate all the missed opportunities. For example, my family celebrations at the Old Mill in Westminster, Massachusetts, the same restaurant where my maternal aunt, uncle, and my cousins known to the family as The Girls (Bette, Barbara, and Beverly) stopped on the way home from visiting Gramma and Grampa in Vermont. My cousin’s reunion was at that restaurant on April 28 in 2007. I wore the same shirt to my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary that year on June 28. I have the photos to prove it. It’s the same restaurant where two different families celebrate. Sort of a crazy joining of my worlds because I had a favorite shirt. I don’t think we ended up being seated at the same table, but that did happen in Vermont at The Windjammer in South Burlington with my maternal reunion and later with my paternal reunion. This Vermont restaurant was a favorite of both my biological families.   

At the cousin reunion, I heard all the stories of the kids running around on the porch of that old white farmhouse in Essex Junction, Vermont. The farmhouse was the gathering place. My mom was number nine in a birth order of 10. This was a large and profoundly loving family where humor was first and foremost. That’s where I would have fit in. I have the personality of my biological mom; my inner critic might have called this path the right path.   

The dance of reunion is a funny thing. It’s another place where a price can be paid if I do it wrong. Although it’s a little easier with the maternal family as we reunited 19 years and five days ago; I know who tangos and who prefers a waltz or a quick step. I’ve only been with the paternal family for three years and am struggling to feel my role. I have no clue yet what the preferred dance steps are, except that my brother-in-law likes rude and lurid jokes about being with sisters. A spicy salsa might be his dance. I need to think faster on my feet for a quick, up-to-par response. Instead, I sit, not knowing what to say. My initial deer in the headlights look made my sister laugh. My sister takes in all strays. She has adopted three stray dogs since I found her. So it was a given she would accept me—a stray human.   

Yes, there was a secret kept from all the members of two different families. Oddly enough, the families lived an 18-minute, 6.5-mile drive from each other. The secret was stashed in a pink house on a little hill 157 miles south in New Hampshire. The answer as to why my birth certificate was filed fourteen months after my birth had been sitting in my medical record. It’s amazing that for 21 years, I had been sitting in my office chair two floors directly above Medical Records, unaware of a progress note dated March 27th of the year I was born contained the words adopted baby. Just waiting for me to find them. I live and breathe the secret daily. My cells are the secret. Nobody gave any thought to me. They simply pretended and probably over time convinced themselves or forgot that the secret was a human…the 4lb, 4oz baby girl from Vermont.