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• Wednesday, March 8, 2006 10:09 PM

  An old adoptee speaks

  I am 60. My birth mother was 20 when I was born, and my adoptive mother 30 when she took me home 5 days later. My adoptive mother could not carry babies to term and my birthmother had had a one-night fling with a Coast Guardsman outside the USO. She and my birth father were both married which made me, in 1945, a bastard. When I met my birthmother 30 years ago, she said I could have been an abortion. (Yes, although they were illegal, one could get an abortion in 1945.) But she decided to give me up for adoption. She opted to be asleep and refused to hold or see me.

  My adoptive mother was over-protective and expected me to be perfect. It was the least I could do after being "saved" from being raised by a slut. Being adopted was hard for me and was an important issue for most of my life.

  I became pro-active while I was pregnant with my second child and came to believe that it is an adoptee's right to meet his birth parents regardless of how they feel. We didn't have a choice in the matter and through our birthparent's indescretion, they surrender the right to say no to us. I was discrete and I didn't threaten but I did persist and I finally met my birthmother. Oh, how nice it would have been to even have been able to write to her through those long years.

  Those so-called pro-lifers who offer pregnant women adoption as the perfect answer to their problem, haven't a clue. Open adoption is just as hard. The two mothers have to work hard to establish how their child will see them in their lives.

  Adoption works most of the time, but everyone involved has to work at it.

  —Mimi Read Mimi's other letters
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