Heather
Yesterday I finally met the person I gave birth to over 22 years ago. She and her boyfriend are having an "excellent adventure" in Europe for 6 weeks, and she made a brief detour here in order to meet me. Fortunately her boyfriend has a brother living in London, so it was a most convenient arrangement.
I was really nervous in the lead up to the meeting. I was terrified I would burst into uncontrollable floods of tears or say something really stupid that would have some deep, longlasting impact on her psyche. From the outset, it has been my goal to focus on her needs in all my dealings with her. When people asked me, "What do you want out of the meeting?" My stock response was, "That's not important." Of course, my feelings are important to me, but I was determined that Heather should draw out of the situation what was important to her.
I had so misinterpreted the situation that it was almost funny. I thought she needed to meet me to satisfy herself that there were no gremlins floating about in her genes. That she needed to close that loop in her sense of self. What a lot of bunkum! She is completely her own person and just wanted to meet me to meet me. She needs absolutely nothing from me. We were talking about the approach her parents had taken to the subject of her adoption, and I asked if she had ever wondered why. Of course, I meant: wondered why I had chosen to give her up. I had to smile when her answer was purely from the perspective of why her parents had chosen to adopt. For her it's all about them. Which is exactly as it should be.
I suffered such a sense of loss when I left her behind in that hospital. I grieved for a long, long time. When Björn was born, seven and a half years later, and we took him home from the hospital, I burst into tears and wailed, "I get to take this one home!" All down the years, there was this sense of a piece being missing. But of course, the same was not true for her - she had a Mom (and a Dad, which I would not have been able to provide). When I think about it now, that should have been perfectly obvious. But at some subliminal level, I had somehow projected an answering longing onto her. On the one hand, my ego would have been stroked if she had said that that were the case, but the same drive that made me give her up in the first place found utter peace with the fact that she had not suffered any such sense of deprivation.
It was a surprisingly unemotional experience. For me, a missing piece of the jigsaw of my life slipped quietly into place without any fanfare. I was at last able to really let the baby Amy go. Amy was my daughter for 4 days. Heather has different parents and she is a credit to them.
So what's she like? She's vivacious, expressive, confident, intelligent, articulate, animated and has a dramatic flair. She can sing. We found that we have a lot in common - we share a passion for shoes, and are attracted to similar colours and cuts of clothing. Of course, all that can be put down to being female with similar colouring and build.
She looks like her biological father, although her colouring comes from my side of the gene pool. She has Kevin's long legs, and his feet and hands, to a T. Her hair is darker than mine - closer to my cousin Kath's colour, and she has a gorgeous complexion. And she's tall. Very tall. Hardly surprising - her biological father was 2m tall. In the attached picture (ignore the date stamp, I didn't reset it after we took the memory card out), we are standing on a level base wearing flat shoes. Bear in mind that I am 169cm (5'7" tall). She has my hourglass figure - lots up top, small waist and curvy hips. She grinds her teeth trying to find underwear in Australia, which sounds about as well provisioned as South Africa on that score.
We spent a very pleasant day together, and parted on good terms. We plan to keep in touch. For me, a little gap has been filled, a long-standing wound healed. For her, well, I don't know what she gained.
I was really nervous in the lead up to the meeting. I was terrified I would burst into uncontrollable floods of tears or say something really stupid that would have some deep, longlasting impact on her psyche. From the outset, it has been my goal to focus on her needs in all my dealings with her. When people asked me, "What do you want out of the meeting?" My stock response was, "That's not important." Of course, my feelings are important to me, but I was determined that Heather should draw out of the situation what was important to her.
I had so misinterpreted the situation that it was almost funny. I thought she needed to meet me to satisfy herself that there were no gremlins floating about in her genes. That she needed to close that loop in her sense of self. What a lot of bunkum! She is completely her own person and just wanted to meet me to meet me. She needs absolutely nothing from me. We were talking about the approach her parents had taken to the subject of her adoption, and I asked if she had ever wondered why. Of course, I meant: wondered why I had chosen to give her up. I had to smile when her answer was purely from the perspective of why her parents had chosen to adopt. For her it's all about them. Which is exactly as it should be.
I suffered such a sense of loss when I left her behind in that hospital. I grieved for a long, long time. When Björn was born, seven and a half years later, and we took him home from the hospital, I burst into tears and wailed, "I get to take this one home!" All down the years, there was this sense of a piece being missing. But of course, the same was not true for her - she had a Mom (and a Dad, which I would not have been able to provide). When I think about it now, that should have been perfectly obvious. But at some subliminal level, I had somehow projected an answering longing onto her. On the one hand, my ego would have been stroked if she had said that that were the case, but the same drive that made me give her up in the first place found utter peace with the fact that she had not suffered any such sense of deprivation.
It was a surprisingly unemotional experience. For me, a missing piece of the jigsaw of my life slipped quietly into place without any fanfare. I was at last able to really let the baby Amy go. Amy was my daughter for 4 days. Heather has different parents and she is a credit to them.
So what's she like? She's vivacious, expressive, confident, intelligent, articulate, animated and has a dramatic flair. She can sing. We found that we have a lot in common - we share a passion for shoes, and are attracted to similar colours and cuts of clothing. Of course, all that can be put down to being female with similar colouring and build.
She looks like her biological father, although her colouring comes from my side of the gene pool. She has Kevin's long legs, and his feet and hands, to a T. Her hair is darker than mine - closer to my cousin Kath's colour, and she has a gorgeous complexion. And she's tall. Very tall. Hardly surprising - her biological father was 2m tall. In the attached picture (ignore the date stamp, I didn't reset it after we took the memory card out), we are standing on a level base wearing flat shoes. Bear in mind that I am 169cm (5'7" tall). She has my hourglass figure - lots up top, small waist and curvy hips. She grinds her teeth trying to find underwear in Australia, which sounds about as well provisioned as South Africa on that score.We spent a very pleasant day together, and parted on good terms. We plan to keep in touch. For me, a little gap has been filled, a long-standing wound healed. For her, well, I don't know what she gained.
posted by karynr at 12:49 pm
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