As a low birth weight baby, I was housed in an incubator for a month before being discharged to a foster home. According to the Background Information, compiled for me by a social worker with the Children's Aid, my birth mother visited during this period. While she knew she would have to relinquish me during the pregnancy, she did not sign the 'Consent for Adoption form' for another three months. She struggled with her decision. After she signed the forms she visited the social worker again needing reassurance about my progress in my new home.

I met my foster mother once, a chance meeting in a mall. I would not have known her if my father had not told me who she was. I was an adolescent, awkward and shy and did not say much. Looking back I wished I had asked her questions. I would have liked to see the house I spent those first four months of my life in. I dream often of houses, most creative amalgamations of past spaces. Does that house surface somewhere like a ghostly BLUEPRINT?

My mother tells me the story of my rocking behavior the first year I lived with them. I would rock so hard that the crib, on wheels, would cross the room. I always thought this widely funny, especially the story of her not being able to enter the room because the crib was butted against the door. I realize now that it was a source of anxiety for my mom as she worried about my adapting to another new environment.

Studies have shown that the stress of continually adapting to new situations at an early age can manifest itself in rocking behavior. The term MULTIPLE DISLOCATIONS is used to describe the adjustment of the child from the initial separation from the birthmother to the foster mother to the adoptive mother and the effect of these changes on the consolidation of a cohesive core self. 1

When I met my birth mother and we exchanged childhood stories, I found out that I came from a long line of ROCKERS — that is, rocking chair fanatics. When I told my mother she laughed but was saddened. She felt like she would have been 'better equiped' to deal with the rocking situation had she know this little tidbit of information. Seems to me the unknown — created by the closed system of adoption— created a lot of unnecessary anxiety for both my birthmother and adoptive mother.

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1 JOURNEY OF THE ADOPTED SELF — A QUEST FOR WHOLENESS, Betty Jean Lifton, Basic Books: New York, 1994 (p.30)

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