My adoption story is really the life story of my adopted mother. She was born in rural Mississippi during the Depression. Her mother was a flirtatious Southern belle who married a prosperous, elderly cabinetmaker with children from his previous marriage who were older than she was. Shortly after the wedding his new wife announced that she was pregnant. Her husband was furious with her. They had no other children, and her husband died when my adopted mother was about six or seven.
A-mom had issues. She also managed to not inherit either her mother's people skills or her father's crafting skills. The former she valued, the latter she loathed; thus setting her up with a lifelong envy of social people and a lifelong hatred of creative people.
But if she couldn't be a Queen Bee herself, she could make herself valuable to a Queen Bee. According to her own stories, she and the other well-to-do little girl in her class bullied everyone in their elementary school. Mom was the Enforcer to the other girl's Queen Bee, a role she would go on to play for the rest of her life.
(That Queen Bee dumped her for a Sugar Daddy as soon as she could, and only coarsened my a-mom's opinion of other women.)
A-mom graduated a year early thanks to summer school (she hated classrooms) and married an Air Force pilot named Pierre. She found out she was infertile, ostensibly thanks to malnutrition but that doesn't seem to fit the evidence. Circumstantial evidence (I'll talk about it later) points to them trying to adopt through Catholic Charities, and Catholic Charities rejecting Mom as being unsuitable to parent. They divorced shortly thereafter.
In the late 1950s in the South, a divorce was little different from a death sentence on the social scene. So when she met my also recently-divorced adopted father-to-be, they married quickly. Actually they eloped on Christmas Eve; were married in the office of the church, not the chapel; and took their own wedding photo by placing the camera on the table in the honeymoon hotel room while they sat nervously holding hands on the bed. It was just as awkward as you imagine.
My adopted father was a bookish railroad representative who liked to spend his spare time reading and crafting things. They soon realized they didn't really belong together, but neither could take the social stigma of a second divorce. In the early 1960s one divorce might be blamed on the other spouse, but two divorces meant there was something wrong with you. Neither could stand that thought directed at them.
But a socially acceptable sham marriage needed real offspring, and that's where I came in. I was adopted, well purchased really, to complete "the set", in the same way people of that day would buy a matching armchair to go with the rest of the furniture in the living room and complete "the look". My adopted younger sister, purchased 2 1/2 years later, was the optional accessory that was supposed to make the look "soar", more ottoman than armchair.
That's enough for now.
My Adoption Story Part 2: Cindy
A-mom had issues. She also managed to not inherit either her mother's people skills or her father's crafting skills. The former she valued, the latter she loathed; thus setting her up with a lifelong envy of social people and a lifelong hatred of creative people.
But if she couldn't be a Queen Bee herself, she could make herself valuable to a Queen Bee. According to her own stories, she and the other well-to-do little girl in her class bullied everyone in their elementary school. Mom was the Enforcer to the other girl's Queen Bee, a role she would go on to play for the rest of her life.
(That Queen Bee dumped her for a Sugar Daddy as soon as she could, and only coarsened my a-mom's opinion of other women.)
A-mom graduated a year early thanks to summer school (she hated classrooms) and married an Air Force pilot named Pierre. She found out she was infertile, ostensibly thanks to malnutrition but that doesn't seem to fit the evidence. Circumstantial evidence (I'll talk about it later) points to them trying to adopt through Catholic Charities, and Catholic Charities rejecting Mom as being unsuitable to parent. They divorced shortly thereafter.
In the late 1950s in the South, a divorce was little different from a death sentence on the social scene. So when she met my also recently-divorced adopted father-to-be, they married quickly. Actually they eloped on Christmas Eve; were married in the office of the church, not the chapel; and took their own wedding photo by placing the camera on the table in the honeymoon hotel room while they sat nervously holding hands on the bed. It was just as awkward as you imagine.
My adopted father was a bookish railroad representative who liked to spend his spare time reading and crafting things. They soon realized they didn't really belong together, but neither could take the social stigma of a second divorce. In the early 1960s one divorce might be blamed on the other spouse, but two divorces meant there was something wrong with you. Neither could stand that thought directed at them.
But a socially acceptable sham marriage needed real offspring, and that's where I came in. I was adopted, well purchased really, to complete "the set", in the same way people of that day would buy a matching armchair to go with the rest of the furniture in the living room and complete "the look". My adopted younger sister, purchased 2 1/2 years later, was the optional accessory that was supposed to make the look "soar", more ottoman than armchair.
That's enough for now.
My Adoption Story Part 2: Cindy
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