Lyn, Daughter of an Adopted Mother

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This is my mother’s adoption story as seen through my eyes. I’m her middle child.

Adoption was a bomb for my mother – one that was dropped in her lap in 1939, on her tenth birthday. I do not know why my Granny told my mother at age ten that she was adopted; Granny adored my mother and would never try to hurt her. She might have been trying to protect her from someone who had gained that knowledge and was going to use it against her. The shame that befell my mother in that moment with those words, that disgrace, was a trauma from which she never recovered. It remained an open wound her entire life.

My mother first told me she was adopted when I was fourteen. I was still surprised, even though she bore no resemblance to her parents, my Granny and Papaw, yet I thought it was very cool that she was adopted. I rattled off a million questions: who are your birth parents, what are their names? I also asked if we could find them.

She told me her adoption story: she was born in a hospital in Memphis on May 10, 1929 and adopted as an infant. Her birth grandmother was tall and well-dressed, had a commanding presence, and wanted to pay for her college education. The story also included her teenage birth mother who was born into an affluent family and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

She did not want to make any attempt to contact these people. She did not know their names, and she did not want to meet them or know anything about them. She was adamant. She told me there would be no more talk of finding them. Her birth parents abandoned her, she said. Granny and Papaw were her parents, and that was that.

It turned out my mother’s true adoption story was slightly different from the story she told me in my teens. Some of the altered details were of no consequence. Granny probably changed some dates and places to cover my mother’s trail so her birth family could never find her if they ever tried. Other details, however, were critical to my mother’s early development: She was born in the Florence Crittenton House in Chattanooga, Tennessee. At birth, she was surrendered for adoption. Her birth parents were very young and unmarried, so she was “illegitimate,” and in 1929, that meant something–it reflected poorly even on the baby who played no role in her illegitimacy and was simply the product of young love.

Probably the greatest injury inflicted upon her was that she was not adopted as a newborn. By eighteen months old, she had been with four sets of parents, four sets of strangers. Where were the other ones? She had no idea. She just knew they were gone, temporary stops, and now there were new ones.

Fortunately, the fourth set was permanent, and they showered her with love, attention, and protection. They made sure she was well-educated. They did everything right.

But it was already too late. The damage was done. Except for three rare cases, she was already detached. Rare case #1: she deeply loved her mother. Other than that, she did not allow anyone to get close to her. From age ten, when she found out she was adopted, until the day she died, she was icy, standoffish, and self-isolated.

By the time I was a teenager, I knew not to cross my mother. Ours was a tense household. No matter how cross-wired things were on the inside, my parents’ sole concern was how we looked on the outside. We passed that test: Clean, well-behaved children, tall, handsome father, and the perfect mother–perfect. She was a tall, slender beauty with a perfect figure, face, hair, smile, and wardrobe. She had perfect manners, a perfect Southern lady. Our father had jobs that kept him away from home all week, which was fine with them both. Our mother ran her home as she wished, and he lived a separate life as he wished. My father deferred to my mother on every family matter. They were two separate people who had three separate children together.

Amazingly, I was the one who ended up breaking the thin façade of perfection. I had always been the easy one, the agreeable one. But then, at age 23, in 1977, I fell in love and moved far away. My mother was all shades of fury. She berated me, shamed me. Yet I was determined to have the life I wanted, especially considering her recurring affirmations that she would “always love me” no matter what I did.

But by leaving her that way, I did the one thing that would make her stop loving me, and her rage knew no bounds for the rest of her life. We never reconciled. It tore the family apart. I contacted her on occasion to no avail. I did not get the chance to talk to any of my family members until the year before her death, when my sister ventured across that hard line by answering an email I sent. They had all seen what happened to me, and they wanted no part of it, including my father.

My mother was spiteful when provoked, and she was provoked by my audacity to attend my father’s funeral in 1999. She took measures so there would be no repeat of that at her funeral; she banned me from visiting the memory care facility where she lived at the end of her life. She held a profoundly energized grudge, the likes of which I have never seen before or after her.

Where did all that fire-fueled energy and vengeance come from, how did she sustain it for all those years, and why did she sustain it? Why did she unleash it on me?--I just wanted a normal life with her in it. What happened?

Adoption happened.

In high school, she was known by some as the “Ice Princess.” She believed she was alone in the world. She had friends, but she made sure that they did not get emotionally close to her. Yet she wanted to marry because she wanted children. Briefly, she opened herself up to the man who would become my father (rare case #2), but he betrayed her. And in betraying her, he effectively abandoned her, although they remained married until his death in 1999. My sister said our mother never cried about his death.

My mother was unable to trust or empathize with others. She was manipulative. She lied about important things. She was a narcissist, valuing others only when they could do something for her. She used each of us.

I think she loved me in her mind but not in her heart. Early on in life, I was her confidante, her protégé, her best friend after Granny died. We talked about parts of her life that I thought my siblings also knew, but they did not. I became rare case #3.

Abandonment was her worst enemy, her greatest fear. It dominated her life. She was brittle and unyielding because of a fear that started at birth and was brutally reinforced at age ten when she learned she had been adopted.

However, she had some noteworthy qualities. She ran an extremely organized home. Her children were always clean, well-dressed, well fed, homework done. She taught us to follow the rules, be polite, and not to use Granny’s off-color language (which made us giggle). She made sure the bills were paid, even if that meant she had to go back to work, which she did on numerous occasions, and she was excellent in her work, becoming the executive secretary for the regional manager of a large national business. She was hardworking, thorough, and exacting in every facet of her life. She smiled but never laughed.

With the gift of age, I have come to understand that my mother was a frightened child her entire life. In her deepest expression of self, she was all alone, she was sure of that. She felt she could count on only herself. She drew hard lines to protect herself because no one was permanent.

But she was not a harmless person. Frightened, yes; harmless, no. She became more dangerous as she grew into adulthood and learned new tactics. She perfected old ones, and she used them all.

For some, adoption is much easier than it was for my mother. The stigma once attached to it has rightly been removed from our culture. Now, it is not a secret. Adopted children know their entire childhoods that they are adopted.

I suspect, at a very core level, some level of fear exists for all adoptees, but most fears do not rise to the level my mother experienced, which was extreme.

As an adult, I find myself wishing I could rewrite history. I wish I had the knowledge and wisdom to understand what she faced every day. I wish I could have soothed the shame she hid behind that hard, impenetrable veneer. I wish we could have talked with her about her fears. But she would not let me in.

She did the best she could. I understand now. I forgive her.