01/01/08

I went to an adoption conference in one of the suburbs of Boston, attended by about 300 people. It was a remarkable experience for a number of reasons, including these:

I attended with my biological mother.

All attendees with whom I interacted with were decidedly sad, with the exceptions of myself, and of a young woman my age who was attending with her biological father. I nicknamed her Mrs. Michael J. Fox because she looked the spitting image of the actor, but a female version.

In 1968 I was given up for adoption in Massachusetts, USA. This was on March 8th.

For most of my upbringing, which occurred halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, being adopted was simply a part of the description of who I was. Blond, blue-eyed, shy, and adopted. All characteristics, with no meaning really.

My mom & dad, adoptive, were in Massachusetts in 1968, but moved shortly after my birth to come to Cali for my dad's school. Too bad I didn't inherit my McDad's intellect. He was at Cal Tech. #1 in his class. Crazy.

My biological mom and I were at this conference, along with my mom's friend who was also adopted. There was one presentation by a male artist. It was comic books, if I remember correctly, and the images were full of pain. He talked about his work, and he tried to get the audience to interact. He talked about the pain, and he acknowledged the sadness. Then he asked us, to the point of challenging us, why he should be feeling so much pain. Why should he, an adoptee who hadn't found his mother, be expressing so much pain, he asked.

My throat was feeling full, and I could not muster my response, but it would have been this: because you have lost the fundamental bond of the human relationship.

You are sad because you lack the fundamental bond that most humans take for granted, I thought.

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There I sat with my newfound biological mother, the woman who stole secretly out of school to bear me for nine months, who hid away in a home where she could give birth silently, and who continued on, accelerating her college syllabus so that she could graduate with her classmates despite my induced delay...There we were, hearing the pain of an adoptee looking for answers.

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The day I met my biological mother and father was arranged in the following way. I loved playing basketball on the two half-courts on Main Beach in Laguna Beach, California. I tried to play there every chance I had. It was my home court, and a beautiful scene for playing hoops in the most glorious climate on the planet. So, when the dust settled from finding my parents, he in Hawaii and she in Massachusetts, I suggested they come here, get settled, and we would meet at some point between 11 and 1 on the beach in Laguna. I'd be there playing hoops, and they could just show up. My mom has said by telephone that she had often wished she could be a fly on the wall, watching me, seeing what I was up to. Seeing that I was OK. Wish granted. Element of excitement, what?

I asked my buddy Jeff Snyder and his then-girlfriend, now-wife Jill Pannich to film it. I hired a camera for the day. So I was playing hoops, and shortly after 11, my biological parents, the two people that made me, come strolling down the beach, close to me for the first time in 26 years. Jeff & Jill capture it perfectly.

I was in the middle of a game, but I saw them.

Hoops has an effect on me - I can't stop in the middle of a game. I remember nudging the guy I was guarding, telling him hey, those are my parents watching. He looked at me like I was a Christmas fruitcake nut.  I started to amp. We finished the three or so more points, and I went over to my parents, who gave birth to me, who joined to make me, for the first time, and we hugged and wept and laughed all at once. I have never felt a more completing feeling than I did from meeting Marilynn O'Brien and Paul Hennessey. I don't think one can feel a more completing feeling.

Even before the issue of adoption, I developed a saying that you never know the burden you are carrying until it is lifted from your shoulders. When I met my biological parents, by telephone even before the in-person encounter, my life clicked, audibly. Suddenly I knew the answers to all the what ifs. Miraculously I was placed within reach of the answers to the questions that I thought would never be answered.

Why is that?

Because the fundamental bond between the woman who gestates you in her belly for nine months and the child born of that labour is the ultimately important one. The reestablishment of that changed my life in every aspect. It raised my baseline, from the guy who wonders to the guy who knows.

I love to tell the story of my adoption and the Finding in exquisite detail. I really do - it channels me full of energy for a good several hours, on top of what it has done for me in my life overall. One of these days I will transcribe this experience here in more detail. Until that time, I hope that you will appreciate the importance of the fundamental bond between a mother and a child.