The Day I Was Born: The Story Denied to Many Adoptees

Jane

"Tell me about the day my mom was born," my eight-year-old granddaughter Katie requested as I drove her from school to swim team practice Monday. Her request surprised me; I expected she would want to listen to Radio Classics as usual. I obliged. "Your mother was born in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter," I began. When I finished she asked about the day she was born, a story she had heard often: how I had come to the hospital with her two year old brother Chris; how her mom told him the baby was no longer in her stomach and how her father lifted Chris up and showed him the baby, all snuggled in pink in her crib.

When my three raised daughters were little, they too loved the story that began "on the day you were born."  Every time I told them the story, a wave of sadness crept over me because I did not tell, could not tell, my first