Lost in the Grocery Store

I always knew I was adopted although I can’t remember ever being told. My adoptive mom and dad were wonderful parents, and however they informed me I wasn’t their natural child, it registered of little import, a simple fact which sat quietly wrapped on the shelf.

That is, until my adoptive mom died, and a friend gave me the book, The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. It captured the scenarios of many women’s unplanned pregnancies, and what it was like to hide your child’s gestation and surrender him or her for adoption during the 50’s when I was born. Reading these traumatic accounts, I was able to imagine what my birth mom must have gone through while pregnant with me, and I wondered if, as a fetus, I could feel the storm of her emotions. Before birth, did I record, or react to the turbulence of her inner sea?

According to Fessler’s book, I was probably four days old when surrendered to a foster home. Adoption records show my foster mom was visibly upset when she had to let me go after nurturing me for nine months. In fact, I learned much later, she was the one who bought the little pink dress I wore when I met my adoptive parents. I always thought that dress, which they kept in a cedar chest, was the one tangible link between me and my birth mom. Rather, the adoption agency suggested my foster mom buy me a new outfit, to help her release me to my permanent parents.

I was an only child until I was six when my parents were able to adopt my brother, so I was never exposed to a tiny baby close-up until I became a mother myself. I never witnessed the intimate affection between a mother and her baby, nor the endearing qualities of a vulnerable little one.  

I recall a single incident with my infant cousin at my grandmother’s farm when I was five. An aunt handed me her brand-new baby who promptly squirted a poop right through his diaper and covered me in a seedy, orange guck that resembled what I clawed out of a Halloween pumpkin, except it STUNK! That’s all I knew or wanted to know about babies for years.

All to say, I had little experience with which to imagine myself as a babe during my exile in a kind of foster purgatory while my destiny was decided outside my control. That earliest era is a bright blank in my brain, a mystery I never thought to solve.

Then one day, holding my own nine-month-old daughter on my lap, I realized she was the same age I was when transferred to my new home. I’d always imagined myself a pooping larval blob like my infant cousin, but no. If I was anything like my daughter, I was a lively, cognizant human being babbling my first language. If I lost her in the grocery store, she’d cry her heart out until I reappeared. No one else would be able to comfort her. No one else would do but her true parent.

I assume the mid-century adoption model of immediately separating the baby and the birth mom was to nip that kind of imprint in the bud. Obviously to prevent heartbreak. But how could the fact of me sit quietly on my birth mother’s shelf?  At the time, I was prompted to find her. To tell her it’s all right. I’m fine—as far as I know.

My brother, adopted at age four and placed in two separate foster homes before adoption, searched for his birth parents, and found nothing but tragedy which put a damper on my thoughts of finding my bio. mom. Besides who would she be if I found her? A stranger? And who would I be to her? A living scar? And where would I fit in her life? She probably had another family by then. What would happen if I were to burst out of my wrapping paper into her life?

Spoiler, I finally found my birth mom and my birth dad, but that’s another whole story.

Insight, perhaps the circumstances of my birth and adoption had a far greater impact than I realized. Perhaps it imprinted me with insecurity. Perhaps that’s what launched my longing to belong. Perhaps that’s what led me to look for affirmation and worth in illegitimate ways.

Then again, you can’t blame everything on your parents. These tendencies are common to man. Perhaps that’s why separation and adoption are central metaphors for all that’s lost and found in becoming a child of God.

Because you are now part of God’s family, He sent the spirit of His son into our hearts; and the Spirit calls out, “Abba, Father.”

Galatians 4: 6-7 (VOICE)

Abba means daddy. The kind of daddy who will come back if you’re lost and crying in the grocery store. The daddy God who revealed himself when I was lost in the world and crying my heart out.

Photo by Jomjakkapat Parrueng on Unsplash

Copyright 2022 Ann C. Averill