On Being Told I was Adopted
At some point (usually) in
their life, adoptees are told they are adopted. I've seen much debate on many
adoption related websites and in chat rooms, about the best time for the
telling. I don't know when Mam and Dad had planned to tell me, but I'm sure the
timing of the telling was due to the fact that I was born with cerebral palsy.
I was 6 days old when I was
brought home to the Catbow, Buckie, from the place where I was born, Cuparstone
Nursing Home in Aberdeen. Mam said
I was covered in bruises and my left eye was swollen shut, hardly a bonnie
baby. My right shoulder had been torn from its socket during the birth process,
perhaps by the cruel forceps, which had also been applied to my head to drag me
out of my mother, who was unconscious and hemorrhaging. But none of my injuries
were noticed in the flurry to remove me as quickly as possible from my
biological mother, so that I could be made legitimate by adoption.
In time, my bruises healed
and I was thriving on bottles and the breezes from the Moray Firth, but Mam
thought there was something not quite right about me. I flopped like a rag doll
when she bathed me and my right hand jerked constantly. So, I was taken to the Family Doctor,
Dr. Cameron.
Much later in my life, I
learned that Dr. Cameron, besides practicing medicine, also played God. He was
also the family Doctor of Agnes, my biological mother, who had gone to him when
she found herself to be pregnant with an "out-of-wedlock" child. At the same time, Mam was consulting
Dr. Cameron about her infertility and he decided that he a solution for them
both.
Although I was obviously not
aware of my first visit to Dr. Cameron, that was the first of many visits to a
variety of doctors and specialists. They often asked Mam if my birth was difficult
and that was a question she was unable to answer. As I grew older I became
aware of what was happening. I remember Mam blushing and twisting a nervous
hankie as she tried to explain that she had not given birth to me, all the
while looking at me sideways to see how much I understood. She knew I was a
precocious child.
Growing up in a fishing
community, I spent many hours in the company of adults. While the men were at
sea, the women in the neighbourhood gathered in someone's house, in the
evenings, for company and gossip. I sat on my creepie stool by the fire, in the
midst of the group of women whose tongues clicked as fast as their knitting
needles. They assumed I was busy with my book or game and talked freely about
anyone who was not present. Their gossip was not deliberately malicious, but it
was full of the intimate details of the lives of their neighbours.
I soaked it all up and could
recognize a particularly juicy piece by the way it was told in hushed tones and
the wise nodding of collective heads. I learned the gruesome intimacies of
female ailments, which often resulted in a woman having it "a' ta'en awa."
("All taken away," or "total hysterectomy.") I stopped turning the pages of my book when they
whispered. Whispers meant they
were talking about "some man" and "some woman" and "not being married." I sat in
their midst, a spy.
So Mam knew that I would
quickly catch on to her hesitant, stammered explanation to the doctors that I
was adopted, and when I was 4 years old, she told me.
She told me as a bedtime story, in a way that I understood
immediately that I had been born to another mother who chose to give me to Mam
and Dad. When I was much older, I
learned the reasons why this choice was made. An illegitimate child was a disgrace to a respectable family
and had to given away and never mentioned. I grew up in a community, which could
be both, supportive of its fishing families and at the same time, harshly
judgmental. It was a community that did not lock its doors and where neighbours
entered without knocking and were made welcome. But, I also remember the
twitching lace curtains that hung at the windows and the nods and winks of
disapproval reflected in the brass plant pots, which stood on the window
ledges. If Mam hadn't told me, I might have learned about my adoption from my
overhearing careless gossip.
Soon afterwards, I had another appointment with a
specialist and he asked Mam about the circumstances of my birth. I remember
sitting on the examination table, swinging my legs and before Mam could say a
word, I cheerily said, "Och Doctor! She disna ken! She wisna there!"
4:13:51 PM 
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