week 10 - beginning 5th February 2001

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saturday
It's Ken's (that's my older brother) birthday tomorrow and we're all at my dad's house. I stayed up late talking to him and Mary (his wife) about adoption. Ken thought when he was little that being adopted meant he didn't come out of someone's tummy - he was very relieved because he didn't like the thought of coming out of someone's body. He remembers us going to get my younger brother when it came to the time for him to be adopted. When we got to the adoption place a woman said she'd go and get Jamie. Ken asked her where she was getting him from - she glanced around the room turned back to him and said a cupboard, she was going to get him out of a cupboard. For a long time he believed that adopted children came from cupboards. There are stork babies, wanted babies, unwanted babies, real babies, chosen babies, special babies and cupboard babies. At last he knew his origins 'Hey my mum's a cupboard!'

I told them I'd found out where my birth mum lives and that I might tell dad. Ken thinks I shouldn't, that he would be hurt. He asks me what I would gain from it. I say stuff about wanting to break taboos, wanting to be honest and that although it might be painful for dad it would be good for our relationship. I tell him about how me being more honest with him recently has actually made my relationship with him better because I am more myself with him. Everyone in our family has always protected him. I'm sick of it. It's a hard habit to break after growing up wanting him to feel alright whatever the expense to myself.

I had one friend who searched for her mother but didn't reply to her letters after their initial meeting which had gone well. When I asked her why she said it was because she felt she was betraying her adopted family. I was shocked. That someone would deprive themselves of that relationship to protect another person's pain. She didn't even feel close to her adopted family. It's funny isn't it, we get so used to holding the pain of actually being adopted yet we don't want anyone else to feel any.

I told Ken that I often talked to dad about Aline our dead mother and he didn't seem to mind. Ken said that was because it wasn't threatening to him but he'd feel threatened by the adoption stuff, scarred that I might reject him. Dear Dad I want you know more about who I am. I want you to know that I've found out where by birth mother lives. Doesn't he wonder? After all it's common knowledge that a high percentage of adopted people search for their birth family. What the ear doesn't hear the mind can ignore, can live on in sweet oblivion.

sunday
Told everyone a joke at breakfast and they all laughed especially Ken. I laughed because they were all laughing so much. When our family laughs at jokes it easily gets slightly hysterical there's always one person who can't seem to stop laughing and that starts everyone off again long after the joke itself has ceased to be funny. I wonder if it's because of the underlying fear ever present in our family, the underlying tension of the pretence that goes on. Laughter is the only acceptable release.

What it is about families? About knowing your origins? We were at dinner when Cathy noticed dad's ear for the first time. She realised that it was just like hers, the top bit is kind of folded over and stuck down. He told us that when she was carried out of the birthing room and he first he saw her ears he knew that she was his. It hit me in the gut. He could never say anything like that about me. I wasn't his.

Then Cathy and Mum held up their left hands, both their little fingers are crooked. I get to be included in this one because years ago I fell off my bike landing on my left hand. It's not as pronounced as their's but my little finger is definitely bent, and could convince people that we were related. I like the irony in that. Ken joked that all Cathy would inherit was a bent finger and a stuck down ear!

Cathy looks like one of our cousins on my dad's side and our aunts on my mum's side. When she was a teenager she had the heavy lidded eyes that I'd seen in pictures of my dad when he was a teenager - neither of them have it now, so not only did they have the same feature but they had it for the same time span - that's genetics for you. Cathy said she really likes it when she can see a resemblance between her and people in her family, she can see where she comes from. Ken told a story of meeting a business associate, who was also our Uncle's friend, for a game of golf. When they met the first thing this man said was that he could see the family resemblance. What do you say to that?

People used to say that when I was young I looked like dad when he was a baby. When my friend Molly was a baby she looked like me when I was a baby. So there will often be a resemblance between apparent total strangers. This isn't so surprising since recent DNA research has shown that all Europeans are descended from one of seven clan mothers who lived between 15,000 and 45,000 years ago.

On the drive home Cathy told me when she was young she wished she was adopted, it was something that me and my brothers had in common and she felt excluded.

To be continued next week.............

For more on modern Europeans being descended from a small group of women read an article by Bryan Sykes the researcher who made the discovery