Keith now remembers that merry-go-round & is still recovering.
If Keith is searching for a person that was formally adopted he could well end up on a never-ending merry-go-round. Upon my adoption I was issued a new birth certificate phonied up with my new name and adoptive parents' identities. The original is locked away in a state vault (where not even I can see it). The phony birth certificate gives no indication that it does not reflect truth. Indeed, I can't even be certain that the place and date of birth are accurate.
Unlike all those "guests" on TV shows and subjects of Lifetime movies, I have never felt "a piece of me" was missing". I will confess to childhood fantasies of being a long-lost prince.
Of course there was the time when I was six that I went home and told my Mother that my teacher had called me aside and had chastised me for mentioning that I was adopted and told me that it should be my secret that I should never shared. I gather that poor Miss Williams had quite an earful the following day! My Mother had always made me feel that being adopted made me special, so when the teacher asked all of us to share "where came from" - I shared.
When others learn more details of my family situation, they usually jump to wrong conclusions: my parents lost a child when he was 18 months old, and adopted me when I was 18 months old - didn't I resent being a "replacement" baby. Nope! (When my parents were told shortly after my older brother's birth that they could have no more children, they decided to adopt another so they would not be raising an only child; Bobby died before I was adopted. The only thing I resented was not having that older brother. When 8 years later on, my Mother found out the hard way that "couldn't have any more children" really meant "shouldn't have any more children she gave birth to Chuck, it seems I was expected to feel eternal resentment because they now had a "favored" natural son and I was just an also run adoptee. Well, wrong again. If anything it was Chuck who probably had the resentment of growing up in the shadow of an older, seemingly more favored, brother.
I bet my story would drive a Psychoanalyst nuts.
der Brucer
