THE UGLY DUCKLING
Maria Roberts
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
August 13, 2002

My adoptive parents told me I was adopted when I was very young — actually before the age of five. Interestingly enough, they devised a clever means by which to do this. It was a rather progressive idea. They explained the process of adoption to me by taking me to the local animal shelter and having me choose a kitten to adopt. Simplistic as it was, it made perfect sense. I was a little girl who wanted a kitten to love, my parents were a couple who wanted a baby to love. And so I grew up with this special tale to tell, and apparently I thought it was such a cool story I told nearly everybody I met.

As I got older, the little story about myself that made me special evolved into questions. I wasn't satisfied with the story any more nor my parents explanation. It started to bother me when people asked questions about my adoption that I didn't know the answers to. (I was child who had to know the answer to absolutely everything.) Did I know who my biological mother was, where I was born, questions like that. It would sting a little when kids would talk about what time of the night they were born, even how long their mother was in labor. I didn't have such stories to relate.

In my primary school years, I developed what I now refer to as the "ugly duckling syndrome", though not in the sense you would expect. It wasn't really a self-esteem issue. If you recall the actual children's tale of the Ugly Duckling, it involved a lost duckling looking all around the animal kingdom, and when it saw a bird or animal it liked, it would go up to it and ask "are you my mother?" While I didn't actually go up to strange ladies I thought were nice and tug on their skirts and asking that question, I would wonder the same thing. That sort of wondering stayed with me for a long time.

In sixth grade, we were asked to compile our family tree. I did mine, and did well with the assignment, but deep down I knew this was a history bound to me by a very thin line. My adoptive family loves me, and there's no doubt in my mind that I would not be a quarter of the person I am today without their love, patience and influence. But this family has little to do with the ancestral, biological and geneological part of my being.

Only in my tumultuous teens did it give way to outright anger. Who doesn't have anger in their teens when struggling with identity. Of course, I thought my problems were all the more serious because of my adopted-status, and as much as I wanted answers, I wasn't old enough to register for information or a search. The thing that once made me special now became the excuse for my rage, and in my mind set me apart.

I finished high school and shed many a tear as I danced with my father at the reception. My father was a ally of mine during those years when my mother and I would have the usual mother-daughter clashes. When I left home and started trying to make a life of my own, however, my mother echoed in nearly everything I did. My choices, my attitudes, even my eating habits. She is now one of the strongest fibres holding me together.

I went to university, and while there I turned 19. I didn't even notice until someone mentioned that I could now call the Post Adoption agency and start the search. The magical age. The mysterious roster of all unknown information would open for me with one phone call. I registered in the summer of 1998. I got a short letter, divulging minor, non-identifying information that was essentially the same things my parents were told when they adopted me, and in turn, the same things they told me.

I continued my university education. Then I had two irregular Pap smears in a row, and after a biopsy, my doctors began to suspect I may have had the beginnings of cervical cancer. I wrote Post Adoption and urgently requested medical information. As it happened, there was no history of cancer in my mother's family. The information regarding my father's input into the whole affair was sadly vague. Thankfully all tests after that were normal and I went on with life, a relationship, work and school.

The last year of my degree, I went to Harlow England for about eight weeks. I celebrated by 21st birthday for the first time without snow. For a long time, the issue of my adoption never crossed my mind. Then during my midterm break, I went to Devon, Cornwall and Bude to visit living Roberts ancestors that surfaced when my father began correspondence with a distant cousin online who was compiling a family tree. Again, the experience was lovely and my relatives were excellent folkes, but the feeling was the same as my sixth grade project. I made a poor pilgrim. That history was not mine. Still, I felt a certain affinity with the English countryside. Perhaps there's some basis for it buried in my actual ancestral past.

I'm caught now in the limbo of my twenties- in between degrees and work and relationships with family, friends and significant others. My adoption has slipped back into a little tale I tell about myself when it occasionally comes up in conversation when I chance to meet someone else who is adopted. It's a little stripe running through the tartan of who I am.

It is now 2002. Admittedly, I've not been actively looking over the past four years. Life happens. It doesn't permeate my being that I don't know the answers to these questions anymore. I've heard horror stories, disappointing stories, funny-coincidence stories and happy-reunion stories. It would be nice, but as others have related to me, sometimes it's best for it to happen when "you're ready."

I'm happy to let fate decide when that is.

 

[TALES]

 

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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