When I found out I was adopted
It was on a Sunday afternoon when she told me. I remember because the whole thing started when I was with my father, and I only get to see him on Sundays.
“What did you do today Susie-Q?” my mother would always ask when I got home just in time for dinner. I went and sat on the white leather chair and listened to the rain collide with the window.
“Not much. We went to the soccer store and I climbed all the way to the bell again.” I said nonchalantly. She immediately knew something was wrong, I never said a word with less than a shout; I was a very excited child.
“Well, didn’t you have fun?” she pushed after she swallowed her chicken.
“Sure I did Mama, who doesn’t like rock climbing?” I retorted.
“Alright alright, sorry for worrying about my baby girl!” she tried to sound hurt. I went along with it.
“When the lady gave me my ropes she said it was funny how I didn’t look like Papa or Brooke or Yoni. Why don’t I look like anybody Mama? It’s weird.” In my mind I sounded like Sherlock Holmes, but now that I’m thinking back to it, I sounded more like what I was; a child attempting to prove her mother wrong. I heard her chair scoot back. She wedged herself between me and the arm of the chair. I pretended to be intrigued by the trees dancing in the wind and didn’t notice. She scooped me up into her arms and kissed my head and I gave up my act.
“Give it up Mama, what’s my super power? Just tell me all about my alien parents and my purpose on this world, and we can deal with this like mature adults (or as I liked to say; ‘matoore ahdults’). It’s okay, I caught you in a lie, we all do it Sweetie.” I knew I had her under my thumb. She would tell me anything now. “I always knew I was different.” I finished.
“You are different Baby doll; you’re special in your own special way. Now, you don’t have to be related to Superman to be important, everyone is their own original person Susie-Q. You’re right Honey, there is a reason that you don’t look like me or your Papa or any of your brothers and sisters, but it’s not because you’re a superhero. Just try to listen and understand what I’m about to tell you, okay Sweetheart? Your Papa and I love you more than anything Susie-Q; you have given us so much that no one else could have offered. Not Brett, Jenny, Yoni or Brooke.” I thought she was about to tell me that I had some genetic disease that made me look like a total stranger and maybe even kills me before I turn seventy five. As a child, I loved old people more than anything. They were to me like Jesus was to the Christians. The possibility of missing my senior life would been the most traumatic thought I could have imagined.
“Do you know what it means to be adopted Sweetie? It means that your mama wasn’t ready for you, so she had to give you to a mommy that would be able to care for you. That doesn’t mean she didn’t love you, because you want to know something Love? What if you had a pet cat, and then someone gave you a fish too. Like Tom and Jerry, but pretend that Jerry was a fishy. If you knew that Tom was going to try to eat Jerry, what would you do?” she was proud of how well she was doing with this, you could see it in her eyes. She knew that this was going to be a piece of cake.
“Well Mama, if there was no way to keep Jerry safe from Tom, which we all know is the case. If Jerry could be safe, what would be the point of the show? Well, then I guess I would have to give Jerry to somebody who could keep him safe and love him.” I was upset I would have to give away my fish, but I wanted Mama to get on with her point, so I just left it at that.
“That’s right Honey. And just because you gave Jerry away doesn’t mean you don’t love him, right? You gave him away because you loved him, yes?” I nodded in agreement.
“What’s your point Mama?” I was craving T.V. now, no thanks to her.
“Well, that’s what happened to your mommy Susie. She knew that if she kept you, you wouldn’t have as good of a life that you could, and she simply loved you too much to do that to you. Did I ever tell you that your brother, Yoni, is adopted too? His mommy found out that she was going to have a baby boy when she was just a young girl. She understood that if she had a baby, his life was going to be very hard because she still had to go to school. She didn’t want him to grow up without a daddy, so she asked me and your Papa if we would take care of him and make sure that he would have the best time he could. I don’t know about you Susie-Q, but I think Yonis’ life has been pretty decent, yeah? And what about yours? Have you had a good life so far?”
I thought about this really hard. I could tell she was trying really hard to help me understand and I didn’t want her to think that her efforts were going to waste. The truth was, what she was saying was really confusing me. It’s not that I didn’t understand what she was saying to me, but I was seven years old, I didn’t know how she wanted me to react to all this. I pushed the thought away. I had plenty of friends who were very imaginative who would be able to explain the whole situation to me using fewer metaphors.
“Amazing. My life’s amazing Mama. Never been better, really!” in my head I sounded much more confident. Out loud I just sounded like I was trying to convince the FBI that I didn’t put sand in Mr. Next Doors’ mailbox. My mom hesitated before continuing, as if she was pondering whether to ask me a second time if I was okay.
“Well, I’m glad Susie! Now your mother was a very good person, just like you in many ways. You’re both extremely loving, charming, compelling women. She wanted to keep you with all her heart Sweetie, but she loved you more than that, and she did the right thing. I’m so happy that I got to keep you Susie-Q, you’re just as much my daughter as Brooke and Jenny. I’m so, so thankful that God sent you into my life, I love you so, so, so much Baby girl.”
As I put my ear to her chest I could hear her heartbeat, and I felt like Tarzan. If Tarzan can be raised by a gorilla, I think I could be raised by the most caring, thoughtful, warm woman I’d ever met, even if we didn’t share the same genes. Plus; considering I wasn’t a superhero and all (which I decided based on the fact that our heartbeat were considerably alike), I figured I could forgive her for not telling me until now.
“I love you too Mama, I’m happy you’re my mommy.”
With a kiss on the head, this time from me, my mother went back to her now room temperature chicken and I returned to watching the world as it showered itself of its impurities.
Such an event would be important in any person’s life. From experience I know that it is very, very difficult to go on with everyday life once someone tells you you’re not who you thought you were. I may have a physical home, but my mind is left alone. You have your parents, your siblings, and your history, everything to base yourself on. You’re supposed not to have any friends; you’re supposed to be ADHD, because that’s just how your family is. I love them more than anything, but sometimes I feel like they’re more my friends than my family. It does not make sense to them why I constantly need to be entertained, or why I continue to struggle with Judaism. They have journals of all the stupid things I’ve said throughout my life, and they love to reference back to them when we have company. They love to tell stories of how I would sneak out of the house, or dress the dogs up in overalls and sunglasses. They don’t get why I have to work so hard towards what I want, they don’t know that side of me. That’s what kills me the most about being adopted; none of my family really gets the half of me that I am the most proud of.
Despite all of that, being adopted has always been a positive addition to my life. Yes, I don’t always have someone to relate to. But with every negative comes a positive, even in this case. I am more independent because of this. It makes me more confident in myself and the things I do. It gives me a reason to carry on, something to work for. There is no bigger goal than to prove them wrong.
I always hear people saying that once they found out they were adopted they didn’t feel like they belonged in their family. Their adoptive parents didn’t love them, they didn’t want them. When my mother told me I was adopted, I felt more loved than ever before. Who would take on such a task if they weren’t ready for it? My mother now is the mother I was meant to have. I wasn’t born from Pam (my biological mother) for myself. That’s her story; God had her become pregnant with me to benefit her. In all honesty, being adopted does not change who or what I am in any way, shape, or form. If anything, it affects my life in a positive way, not negative. It makes me stronger, gives me a story. It is who I am, who I am meant to be. I wasn’t a mistake; I was supposed to happen. It’s been part of my story since the beginning.
I was only a little girl when my mother told me and even then I viewed it as a positive. I thought it made me special; I loved to tell people all about it. But I was merely a child; I didn’t understand what it really meant. It confused me; I didn’t understand why my mom was being so careful. My friends thought I was crazy. They kept on trying to explain to me why it was such a big deal that my mommy didn’t give birth to me. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about; I mean it’s not like I lived in an adoption center or anything, right? So why should I stop my life just because of this? Being adopted doesn’t change who I am or who I was meant to be, it simply adds a slightly more challenging affect to how I‘m going to get there.
Through all of that, there is one main lesson that I have learned from all this. Someone, somewhere, wants me alive, and they don’t want me with my biological mother. Why do I know this? My mother told me a story about how Pam tried to get an abortion while she was pregnant with me. On her way to the woman’s center, she got stopped by the police for driving without a license.
Every person needs something to live for in life. One of my goals in life is to find her and tell her what an amazing thing she did for me. Giving me away is truly the best thing she could have ever given me. That’s one of my goals, but not the most important one. I vowed, from the moment I was old enough to understand what it is that my mother did, that I would not turn out like her. I was not going to throw my life away with one stupid mistake, and I was not going to give up on myself when I broke that promise. It’s the one thing I tell myself every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. It’s what I live for; it generates the rules by which I live my life. If I wasn’t so serious about this, I wouldn’t be here today. And if my mother didn’t screw up and make the hardest choice she ever had to, and gave me away, I wouldn’t have been adopted. Then I definitely wouldn’t be here today. I owe her huge thanks. She may not have any involvement in my life, but she sure has affected it.
Being adopted has contributed greatly to my life, but not in one specific way. Not knowing anything about myself and my history has helped me to understand that I am not my mother. When we are born, it is our beginning. We don’t come into the world with our lives already set in stone. God gives us choices in life to enable us to choose who we want to be. Who says that the child of a professional basketball player has to play basketball, or a pit-bull has to be a killer? It simply isn’t possible. That doesn’t mean that aspects of your life aren’t chosen for you, but they’re not the ones that matter. Sure, I have straight hair because my biological father was an Eskimo. Yes I do have brown eyes because my mother had brown eyes too. But just because my mother was an alcoholic and my father was a drug addict I have to be one as well? If that were the case then everything we are ever taught would be a total contradiction in itself. We grow up with people telling us that the killers we hear about on T.V. are bad people; that they can’t help but be who the people around them are. But if we all have to be who our parents are, then why is it okay for us to call them bad people? If that is so, then isn’t it also true that they had no choice; God made them that way because that’s just who they are? No, the truth is that those people chose to live that life. My mother made the choice to throw her life away with booze. She chose to trade a wonderful life with her five other children for a life filled with emptiness. But she will always have the choice to fix her life. God never gives up on us; he will always give you an opportunity to change. From the beginning he gives us the chance to be different, and mine was when I was adopted. In a way, my being adopted was also a chance for my mother to change, and this time, she took it. I am being given the chance to be different, the chance to live life the way I deserve to live it, and I intend to take it and follow through with it until the end.
With every positive comes a negative. That is the one thing that life has been consistent with; you can’t have one without the other. Just like being adopted has taught me to appreciate myself and have faith in myself, it has also left me with holes in my life. I will never be able to talk to my sister about why I am ADHD. There are things about me that my family will simply never understand, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Yes, it makes me special and unique, but usually the idea is to be unique around your friends and your social life. Your family is your backboard because you know they will always be there and they will always be just like you. My family will always love me and I will always love them, but I can’t help but be upset by the fact that sometimes I do have to explain myself to them, because I know they just won’t get it if I don’t.
When it comes down to it, my family has been there for me through thick and thin, and I hope they feel the same way about me. They are my true family, we are the Kaplan’s. I am a Kaplan, and nothing will ever change that. From when my mother told me that I was adopted until now I have felt many different things from confusion to intrigue, but that’s just how it’s meant to be for me. I cannot wait to meet my biological mother, because I want her to know what an incredible thing she did for me. Everyone has their story with its ups and its downs, and this is mine. You may feel pity, or you may think I’m crazy, but I’m happy I was adopted. I don’t think I was a mistake, I think that God did this for me on purpose, and I’m grateful that he did, because I think that this story fits best with me. I am Susie Kaplan, and I’m adopted.
