My therapist is trying to get me to write about my conception, gestation, and birth. It's a very painful topic, and I'm playing for time by writing about the other actors first. Hell, listen to me: "other actors". I wasn't much of an actor at all. All the consequential action was done to me.
Still, it seems to me that I need to write a reconstruction of my relinquishment first, if only to get the timeline straight. Here's an experimental framework, put together with dribs and drabs of personal and historical information:
I was born in late July, 1966 in New Orleans. I was told my biological parents were college students of French and French-English ethnic origin. While this information is oral and unconfirmed, therefore suspect, it's all I have to go with. New Orleans + French means the simplest explanation is that I'm Cajun and my biological parents met at college in New Orleans.
But things aren't always simple in Adoption-Land. It's common practice there to send a prospectivemark birthmother to an area where she has no backup she can call on for help or guidance other than the adoption agency which is trying to pressure her into giving up her baby. It's possible my biological parents were non-Cajun Franco-Americans. I go look up the distribution of French immigrants on Wikipedia:
So we're looking at #1 New England, #2 South Louisiana, and #3 The Great Lakes. But what are the odds that the adoption agency would just happen to send my biological mother from one area rich in Franco-Americans to another area that just happened to also be rich in Franco-Americans? Not very high. I think we can safely go with Cajun.
But which college? It looks like there's around 40 in Louisiana and around 10 in New Orleans, so for the sake of this experiment I'm just going to say "a college in New Orleans".
We have an 18 year-old girl, probably from one of the other South Louisiana towns, who's a freshman in college in New Orleans in 1965. What was she like? I don't know. I've actually got more information on my biological father (tall, red hair, played the guitar) than I do on her. But I can look for clues in my genes.
I have an IQ of 165. Since children usually have IQs within 10-15 points of their parents, that would put her IQ between 150 - 180. She's a genius (IQ 150) in South Louisiana in 1965, a time which did not offer much opportunity for girl geniuses, and a conservative Southern culture that offered even less than the rest of the country.
She's an 18 year-old genius in her first year of college. Is she excited to be there? Hell yes I'd say. High IQ can be isolating. The smarter you are, the harder it can be to find someone to talk to. In the days before the internet unless you lived in a major metropolitan area or a high-IQ cluster like a college town or research center you could feel incredibly lonely. New Orleans is a major metropolitan area and a multi-college town.
And it's the Big Easy, the most inland seaport on the Gulf of Mexico, the center of "Whatever you want, we got, even if you can't put a name to it," for not only the South but the Lower Mississippi Valley since the late 1700s. That's a lot of options available, even if you have no intention of taking advantage of them.
But I must resist the urge to overly personalize this reconstruction. Growing up I found my high IQ to be incredibly isolating because there was no one else in my adopted family or neighborhood who was even in the same ballpark as me, so that it seemed as if my intelligence amounted to a lifetime sentence in solitary confinement. It seemed as if I spoke a different language from everyone around me that no one could understand.
But that would not have been the case for my biological mother. She would have had her equally brainy biological family and their potentially equally brainy circle of contemporaries. She probably had someone at home to talk to on some level. While she would have been excited and eager to attend college with age-mates who could have been true peers, she probably did not experience the utter desperation to get to college and finally meet someone I could talk to that I felt.
Another genetic clue to examine is my shape. While I don't know I'm going to assume she is a petite endomorph like me. But a petite endomorph in 1965 is not the same as a petite endomorph in the latter half of the 20th Century or the beginning of the 21st. Twiggy would not introduce the skinny, androgynous look that would define women's fashions up to the present day until 1966. In 1965 a petite endomorph was still complimented as a "pocket Venus". I don't know what she personally thought of her body (How many 18 year-old girls are satisfied with their appearance?) but to Society in 1965 and to heterosexual teenage boys in any time she would have looked beautiful.
But what was going on in New Orleans in 1965 when she got to college? I'm googling that now, and I'll post my findings later.
Still, it seems to me that I need to write a reconstruction of my relinquishment first, if only to get the timeline straight. Here's an experimental framework, put together with dribs and drabs of personal and historical information:
I was born in late July, 1966 in New Orleans. I was told my biological parents were college students of French and French-English ethnic origin. While this information is oral and unconfirmed, therefore suspect, it's all I have to go with. New Orleans + French means the simplest explanation is that I'm Cajun and my biological parents met at college in New Orleans.
But things aren't always simple in Adoption-Land. It's common practice there to send a prospective
So we're looking at #1 New England, #2 South Louisiana, and #3 The Great Lakes. But what are the odds that the adoption agency would just happen to send my biological mother from one area rich in Franco-Americans to another area that just happened to also be rich in Franco-Americans? Not very high. I think we can safely go with Cajun.
But which college? It looks like there's around 40 in Louisiana and around 10 in New Orleans, so for the sake of this experiment I'm just going to say "a college in New Orleans".
We have an 18 year-old girl, probably from one of the other South Louisiana towns, who's a freshman in college in New Orleans in 1965. What was she like? I don't know. I've actually got more information on my biological father (tall, red hair, played the guitar) than I do on her. But I can look for clues in my genes.
I have an IQ of 165. Since children usually have IQs within 10-15 points of their parents, that would put her IQ between 150 - 180. She's a genius (IQ 150) in South Louisiana in 1965, a time which did not offer much opportunity for girl geniuses, and a conservative Southern culture that offered even less than the rest of the country.
She's an 18 year-old genius in her first year of college. Is she excited to be there? Hell yes I'd say. High IQ can be isolating. The smarter you are, the harder it can be to find someone to talk to. In the days before the internet unless you lived in a major metropolitan area or a high-IQ cluster like a college town or research center you could feel incredibly lonely. New Orleans is a major metropolitan area and a multi-college town.
And it's the Big Easy, the most inland seaport on the Gulf of Mexico, the center of "Whatever you want, we got, even if you can't put a name to it," for not only the South but the Lower Mississippi Valley since the late 1700s. That's a lot of options available, even if you have no intention of taking advantage of them.
But I must resist the urge to overly personalize this reconstruction. Growing up I found my high IQ to be incredibly isolating because there was no one else in my adopted family or neighborhood who was even in the same ballpark as me, so that it seemed as if my intelligence amounted to a lifetime sentence in solitary confinement. It seemed as if I spoke a different language from everyone around me that no one could understand.
But that would not have been the case for my biological mother. She would have had her equally brainy biological family and their potentially equally brainy circle of contemporaries. She probably had someone at home to talk to on some level. While she would have been excited and eager to attend college with age-mates who could have been true peers, she probably did not experience the utter desperation to get to college and finally meet someone I could talk to that I felt.
Another genetic clue to examine is my shape. While I don't know I'm going to assume she is a petite endomorph like me. But a petite endomorph in 1965 is not the same as a petite endomorph in the latter half of the 20th Century or the beginning of the 21st. Twiggy would not introduce the skinny, androgynous look that would define women's fashions up to the present day until 1966. In 1965 a petite endomorph was still complimented as a "pocket Venus". I don't know what she personally thought of her body (How many 18 year-old girls are satisfied with their appearance?) but to Society in 1965 and to heterosexual teenage boys in any time she would have looked beautiful.
But what was going on in New Orleans in 1965 when she got to college? I'm googling that now, and I'll post my findings later.
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