Where I Belong

*The following story is editorialized by Courtney Frey, as told by Mark, reunited adoptee, at the Adoption Forum Conference in Philadelphia in 2001.

"If I wasn't sticking out like a sore thumb, my Irish red hair, green eyes, loud laugh, against my family full of Protestant blond hair, blue eyed, conservatives, you would find me hiding in my closet. Don't get me wrong, I had a great child-hood. I love my adoptive family and I always knew they loved me, never doubted that. But I also knew growing up that I didn't quite belong. At dinner I'd fling a green pea across the table at my sister, or I'd embarrass my dad in a public bathroom by making obscene noises.

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I'd pick my mother up and swing her around in front of her bridge mates, and then give her a tickle that would turn her pinks red. I questioned religion, I fought with my teachers, and needless to say, I was the class clown. My parents are math scholars, but I struggled through pre-algebra. My sisters were gentle, quiet, obedient little girls who would never give in to my teasing. So I'd go into my closet in my room and I'd give myself a crowd and I'd entertain the possibilities of my fitting in somewhere.

In my early thirties Catholic Services finally obliged years of seeking and volunteered information that had been available far too long. I was going to meet my birthfamily. My birthmother and birthfather had ended up getting married and had gone on to have three daughters. I am the only son. At first it was a whirlwind of big hugs and introductions, and then we sat down to dinner.

Everything was coming at me at once, and I was trying to soak it all in. I was overwhelmed. I forced myself to lift the fork to my mouth; just about the time the green pea hit me in the nose. My half sister laughed out loud, "I've always wanted to do that to my brother!" she said. Without hesitation I loaded up my spoon and flicked a pile of peas right back at her ... but there were tears in my eyes when I did it. For the first time in my life I finally felt like I belonged."

As a birthmother I made a choice that at the time was what I believed to be the best for my son. I handed him over into the arms of his adoptive mother and hoped that she would be the mother I felt that I could not be. By my doing what I thought was best for my son, I only expected the same from her. She could give him what I could not.

Now, as I edge closer and closer to a possible reunion I begin to wonder if she will have the courage to do the same thing that I did long ago. Allow me to give him what she cannot. The answers to where he's come from, the evidence of his genetics, and quite possibly a sense of familiarity. I have not been able to stop wondering if he is like me or anyone else in my family. I cannot help but laugh to think of his conservative blue-collar family attempting to handle his genetic make-up of non-conformist, bi-polar, philosophy. At the age of seven I looked my father in the eye and said, "Dad, it's not my fault that if everybody else sees the sky and thinks it's blue, that I see it and know that it's purple with yellow dots." Just last week my daughter looked me in the eye and said, "Mom, it's not my fault that I see things a different way than everybody else." She just turned eight.

I want to tell my son that I am here. I want him to know that we continue to set a place at the table for him in our hearts and we have never stopped believing that one day he will physically take that place at our table. I want him to hear my whisper ... if he looks into the sky and cannot figure out how it is that he sees purple with yellow dots when the world around him continues to adamantly believe it's blue.

I can only pray that one day his adoptive mother will honor all that my son is, and support him if he chooses to seek it out. She could give him what I could not at the time that I surrendered him. One day soon I pray to do the same. Not to love him more than she, or to challenge her role in his life. I could not ever be his child-hood memories, or his example through struggles in life. I will never be the night-time savior who chases ghosts away, or the notes inside his lunch box at school. I will never be his teacher, the hand that guides and molds him. I will not be the reason for his foundations of faith. I will not be the woman he owes it all to, or the one he's always run to.

But I can be the green peas on his nose.

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