My actual words were, “We’re not interested in labeling him at this point.”

I was standing under a tree with a woman from our home-school play group when this dreaded “developmental milestones conversation” occurred. Her son had all his multiplication facts memorized; mine still hadn’t memorized addition facts. Her son was complimented for being polite; mine often ignored other children’s personal space. Her son was reading three grade levels ahead; mine was reading three below.

Well-meaning folks, I discovered, were happy to share their unsolicited pop psychology diagnosis of my son, certain I’d be grateful for the 15 seconds of thought they put into it. In modern American culture, we are quick to participate in the labeling melee. Someone’s “ADD is kicking in,” and another is “so OCD,” and their boss is “obviously bipolar.” It’s common lingo. So why not label a kid who seems a bit different?

But it was this labeling issue that smacked me in the face when I became a parent.

In 2002, my husband, John, and I traveled to Ukraine to adopt our son. Jake was 7 ½, weighing 35 pounds and speaking rapid Russian, he raced into our lives like a little tornado. The adoption process prepared us for disabilities. We were told Jake had “psycho-motor delay,” a common catch-all meaning “he might be slightly behind.” He couldn’t read or write, not even his own name.

The typical route for most parents adopting older children from a foreign country is to have their kids evaluated as soon as they return to the States. We hesitated. “Of course he’s going to have delays,” John said. “He’s lived in an orphanage his whole life and he’s the size of a 4-year-old.” Before a professional informed us what was wrong with Jake, we wanted to let Jake show us who he was on his own.

The first weeks at home were thrilling and exhausting. Jake explored everything. He played with our two German shepherds, he flipped light switches off and on and off and on. He opened the front door and ran into the street with the dogs. He touched everything and sniffed everything else. He hugged anyone who showed him kindness, including the baggers at the grocery store.

He was curious, joyful and supremely energetic. He pounded trees with sticks, broke branches off the bushes to use as play swords, did flips off his bed, tried to do pull-ups off the bathroom towel bar. He enchanted and amazed us.

But he was also fidgety. As I began working with him on numbers or letters in brief sessions, our son demonstrated the attention span of a flea.

“He might have ADHD,” I told John. “He just can’t focus on anything — unless it’s something he really wants to do, like build with Legos.”

John could relate. As an adult he self-diagnosed his ADHD and understood what it was to grow up unfocused. With Jake’s 12-word English vocabulary and overabundance of energy, we decided to home-school him, at least until he caught up.

That first year was glorious. We went to the zoo every two weeks as part of animal study. We caught bugs in the backyard and took nature hikes. We cooked. We sang. We danced. We worked on letters, numbers and sounds. Jake thrived, and we kept going.

But after two and a half years, we hit a plateau. Jake was stuck. And I couldn’t figure out how to unstick him. John and I began to believe a diagnosis might help now, if only because it would help us figure out how to help him.

His assessment was no surprise. It included ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and auditory processing disorder. Overwhelmed but determined, I hoarded books from the library, talked to specialists and surfed the Web for techniques and curricula that would match his multiple diagnoses — and the boy I knew.

And a new question arose: What do we tell Jake?

I’ve talked to many parents, of both adopted and biological children, who’ve struggled with the same dilemma. Our kids usually know they’re different, but they often don’t understand it.

Some parents bust out the clinical terms and explain each: ADD, OCD, SID, ADHD, Asperger’s, autism. The alphabet soup of the multi-diagnosis becomes part of the family’s regular dialogue. Others take a less scientific approach, focusing on their child’s gifts and differences rather than deficits. We wanted to celebrate those differences, but also understand and work around his deficits, making certain he sees there’s a place for him in the world. Where was that line between cold analysis and sugarcoated truth?

John and I tried to find a middle road that explained his diagnoses but focused on his uniqueness. So ADHD became: “You have a turbo-charged jet engine that likes to move fast.” Dyslexia was: “Your eyes sometimes flip words around like a carnival ride, which makes it hard for you to see what’s actually on the page.” And auditory processing disorder was: “Sometimes things float in the shallow end of your mind for a while before they go in deep so your brain can make sense of them.”

I think these gave Jake a sense of peace. But that didn’t mean we didn’t have problems. A few months later, mid-morning of an early fall day, the kitchen table was stacked with school books and laptops, mugs of hot tea, and plates scattered with pumpkin muffin crumbs— and Jake was in the throes of a full-scale math meltdown.

“There’s something missing in my brain,” Jake wailed. “I’m missing a wire somewhere that ruins my thinking. I think God made a mistake on my brain.”

“Jake,” I said his name clearly and firmly, and as lovingly as possible, “there is nothing wrong with you, and God does not make mistakes.”

We pushed math aside for the day and took the dogs for a walk. Outside, I told Jake a piece of his story, our story. A story he’d heard before.

“On the day we met you,” I said, “your dad and I were amazed by your joyfulness. Here you were, abused and practically starving, yet you decided you would find joy in life. Now your dad and I are here to help you remember the Jakeness deep inside you — and to help you work on everything else. You don’t have to survive on your own anymore. You have a mom and dad — and five dogs who love you. And you know how much those dogs love you!”

The smile returned to Jake’s face, and we talked about happier things. In the weeks following, I consulted with experts, researched new curriculum, and tried to focus on what was right about Jake rather than what was wrong about Jake.

Friends helped in ways they couldn’t possibly understand. Every few weeks, someone shared a story about Jake’s happy spirit — how he’d walked all the way across the room to say hello to them or told another kid not to make fun of someone, and I stored these nuggets as precious jewels, never knowing when we’d need affirmation that other people saw the specialness in our son, too.

About a year later I turned a corner in our home-school co-op just in time to see Jake scamper down the hallway, peek into a classroom, pound on the door and run away. “Jake!” I whisper-shouted.

“Oh, that’s your son,” a voice said from behind me.

One of the co-op board members gazed at me down the hallway. “Yes,” I said, “that’s Jake.”

“He’s completely out of control,” she declared.

My skin prickled. “He has boundary issues,” I said, “but he’s not completely out of control.”

“No, he’s completely out of control,” she said. “I know exactly what he needs.”

“I bet I can tell you exactly what you need,” I declared, in my head. Instead, she rattled on while I entertained thoughts of stuffing her into a supply closet.

Aloud, I mumbled, “Thanks so much.”

I retracted my claws and headed toward the multi-purpose room to reprimand my son. I found him helping a harried mom of seven with her unruly toddler. There would be ample time to scold, but just at that moment, it was time to appreciate what my son was doing right.

My circumstances were unique and who knows if I would have been this happy if I were a teenage mum with no support.

The only problem, Cary, is that despite being educated and well informed, I can not imagine telling my daughter that she is adopted. I thought adoption is so cool, I would be transparent.. Many times people talk of adoption as some altruistic act, but my lil monstah has given me more than what I could ever give her. It would be selfish to even want to be the center of her life, but she truly is the love of our lives. Seriously every parenthood cliche has come true for us.

I felt such a  possessive primal emotion from the first, which really surprised me. I don’t think you can be a mum with all the sleepless nights and life changes, without this bonding; she is mine and I am hers. From the start I started getting irrationally offended when friends referred to it. I cut off someone because she said “oh, she has really taken to you.” Like, why should she not, she is my daughter. I regret that this was shared with the whole family and I had a bit of a showdown where I made it clear that this is not something we discuss or even refer to whenever we meet or ever. Everything I read tells me that this information should be shared early. However, I also read that adopted children grapple with the issue, agonize over it. I mean, why should my lovely daughter have to deal with something her peers do not? Also, her birth mother cannot be traced. The information will really not help her get her genetic or medical information. If after a childhood of happy memories she does come to know, would it really shock her so much? Surely she would be strong enough to deal with it then. I had a tough childhood and teenage years. I was never close to my parents. Now I acknowledge that this could partly be my fault. All kids go through a rough teenage when they hate their moms, don’t they? What if knowledge of adoption compounds this angst? Leads to greater estrangement? I am going crazy, Cary, I can’t think straight. Isn’t love enough? Have you seen how the press always refers to the Cruise kids or the Jolie-Pitt kids as “adopted kids”? It makes me so angry.   I just want to be her mother, not her adoptive mother. And I want to give her a perfect childhood, though I realize it’s not wholly up to me. Already she has her own life and friends and soon she will go to school and my daughter can’t help but be independent. I am happy except when this issue comes up. What’s wrong with me? Am I turning into the crazy mom?

Can’t We Just Forget About It?

Dear Can’t We Just Forget About It,

What would you learn if you learned you were adopted?

You would learn that what you thought was true wasn’t true. It would be more a kind of unlearning than learning. It would be an acquisition of not-knowledge.

Maybe it would be like learning that most of the universe is dark matter and dark energy. You would have to start over. That might not be a bad thing. You might  acquire a new, more flexible notion of selfhood.

For one thing, you would have to conclude that you are not your genetic origin, right? Ideally, you would learn that you are a unique being, much loved, who came to be in a particular family here through unique circumstances.

But it isn’t as simple as that. We envision the unbroken line of success leading back to some early forms of human being and then back beyond them to advanced apes and less advanced apes and back and back and back to archaebacteria, the very earliest life forms. We see ourselves in a continuum, and we find comfort in imagining ourselves before we were born, and the lives of those who gave birth to us. We love deeply these images of those we take to be our parents. So it is a big disruption to what we thought was true, to what we thought we could depend on.

And it’s not a simple thing, for we are not simple creatures and we are not computers; we do not just know things and move on. We are haunted.

Old lovers haunt us. Things that might have been haunt us. It’s the season of haunting and we are haunted by ghosts.

It’s how we handle the ghosts that counts. There are always going to be ghosts in our lives. You may be adopted or not; you don’t really know where you come from. No one does. Your daughter, once she realizes she did not come out of your womb, might take some wise comfort in realizing that those who feel they know exactly who they are don’t really know, either. It’s much more complicated. Maybe this will be a gift to her; it will stretch her mind, her self-concept.

My best friend in junior high found out he was adopted and it bothered him. I don’t think it was the fact that he was adopted. I think it was the way his parents handled it. The being-adopted part of it just stood in for a much larger grievance.

You are a good parent. You love this child and as far as you are concerned she’s your daughter and that’s that. That’s pretty powerful. She belongs to you. She’s yours.

If someone along the way should whisper to her this secret, and if she should become confused and ask you, then you can tell her that she’s your daughter and you’re her mom and you love her. There’s no question of who’s her mom. Who else would be her mom but you? You don’t need to deny the truth but you can direct her to what is important and away from what is not important. You love her and she’s your daughter. That is what’s important.

And if at a certain more advanced point in her evolution you must discuss the biological details of whose womb she came out of, well, discuss. What’s wrong with that? It would be disrespectful to lie to her, wouldn’t it? Then you may get into the difficulties of the hard fact that her birth mother cannot be traced. Well, there is another mystery that if handled well could be a kind of enlightenment: For who among us can say with any certainty that our origin is not in some way a mystery to us?

Let’s put it this way: What does it matter whose car we came in? We’re at the party now.

We step out and there are glittering lights and a carpet and we walk up the steps to be greeted by old friends and new. Whose car did you come to the party in? What does that matter? We’re here. Let’s find the coat check.

Tricky moments will come to pass in time, or not. What else can you do but handle them with love?

Right now, you are happy, and she is loved, and you are loved in turn, and these other things, let them be. Let them be for now. Let time and circumstance decide. The basic truths are enough for now. You love her. She loves you. You’re happy. She’s your daughter. You’re her mom.

When it became clear that her two-year battle with cancer was drawing to a close, my mom put a lot of effort into apologizing to me. As I sat by her beside, trying to comfort her now that we knew she was near death, she told me, “I know I was a bitch to you.” The confession came as a surprise, but I smiled, figuring it was the morphine talking. Maybe the drug gave her the freedom to let go of her pride. “You were a lovable bitch,” I responded, with a wink and a smile. But inside, my heart was breaking. Why couldn’t she have apologized years ago? We could have had so much time to rebuild our relationship.

We both laughed. For the first time in years, maybe ever, we opened up to each other. In this dreary hospital room, with its green walls and its threadbare divider curtains, with its IV drip and heartbeat monitor, my mom, for the first time in memory, wasn’t judgmental. When she told me she was proud of me, I had to wonder: Why did she wait until now? I felt so much pain growing up, but I couldn’t tell her how she had hurt me. Not now. Not when she was dying.

A week before she passed away, she told me about a lockbox hidden in her bedroom closet. “There are important papers in there,” she said. Then she gave me the secret code: “Your daddy’s birthday.”

For the first time in my life, I felt nervous being alone in my childhood home. As I prepared myself to open “the secret hidden box,” I felt my heart pounding in my throat.

Balancing on a chair in front of the closet, I reached past the stacks of hat boxes, the silk scarves, the leather gloves; my hand touched metal. I pulled out the box, placed it on my mother’s quilted bedspread and stared at it.

I took a deep breath and rotated the first cylinder to “6.” The second was already in the correct position. After easing the third cylinder into place, I felt the lid release and slowly open. It was filled with papers. Insurance documents. Itemized lists appraising the trinkets my parents collected: jewelry, furs, monogrammed silverware, the china my father shipped over from Hungary during the war. “My inheritance.”

 As I worked my way through the documents, my heart stopped: “Adoption Papers.” The piece of paper listed my birth name. I could hardly read through the hot tears that filled my eyes. After removing my fogged-over contact lenses, I was able to examine the hand-typed court documents drafted so many years ago. While I studied the pages, one memory came to mind.

“Don’t ever ask me that again,” she’d yelled, so many years ago. Had she told me where this box was so I’d find the papers and open up a dialogue? Did she want me to ask her about this now? She had apologized for all of her cruelties. She realized she had been unfair. But was she ready to talk? Was that the reason she told me about the box?

I returned to the hospital the next morning expecting her to ask me about it. Did you find the box, do you have any questions? I’m ready now to answer anything. But she never mentioned the lockbox and I didn’t have the heart, or guts, to bring it up there, on her deathbed. I wasn’t going to do or say anything to upset her. She had to be the one to broach the subject. I waited.

In the end, no matter how many disappointments my mother had in her life, she couldn’t bring herself to talk to me about her greatest disappointment of all: that she could not give birth. She said nothing and I said nothing.

She died the following week. We never discussed her secret.

- – - – - – - -

I wasn’t surprised, but clearly everyone else was. I looked again at the bundle in my arms. I felt joyful and tender as I rearranged the tiny blanket around her. I cooed to her, my little sweetheart. She didn’t stir, still exhausted from the delivery.

I said quietly to the room, “You could be happy for me.”

The nurse said, “It’s a kitten. You delivered a kitten.”

“She’s beautiful,” I said. Then more firmly, “We’re going to be fine.”

I heard clucking tongues, spilling pity. Two nurses stood by me, trying to take her from me. I petted her cheek, turning over names in my mind. Could I call her the same name I had chosen for a human baby — Emily? Maybe just Emmy. I whispered it, and she sighed softly. “Then Emmy it is,” I said. I looked up, ready to confront them,”I want you to treat her like any other baby on this unit, or you will hear from my lawyer. She’s my baby, and I love her.”

“But she’s not a real baby,” the charge nurse said.

“This isn’t right, honey,” said the plump nurse. “Let us take her, and you can try again.”

“I have been trying for seven years!” I screamed. “This is my baby. She’s beautiful, and she’s mine, and I will not give her back. “

When I woke up, I had a sore throat.

- – - – - – - -

When we first met Daria, the birth mother, at Big Boy’s, I thought she looked like Mariah Carey. She had blond, streaked hair, big, aqua-colored eyes (they had to be contact-enhanced), and high cheekbones. She smiled at us as though she knew us. Well, of course she did. We had sent her our adoption portfolio, full of pictures and personal history. She knew the colleges we attended, the size of our home, our family history, our medical history, even our dog’s name, for Christ’s sake. We knew only her first name, a few vital statistics, and that she was pregnant.

“There she is,” I whispered, and we both rose to greet her. I noted the slight drag of her right foot, but I tried not to look at it. I remembered that on her medical sheet, she said she had had a slight stroke after her last pregnancy.

I smiled at her and extended my hand. “I’m Lydia,” I said, and then shoved Sean forward, eager for him to take the lead for me. He shook her hand and looked at me. He never had accepted responsibility easily. What was I thinking?

I grabbed the flowers we had bought on the way up, trying to cover my embarrassment for him. “These are for you.”

Daria looked surprised.

“You said your favorite color was purple,” I said, pointing to the delphinium and iris.

“And you remembered that?” Daria asked, referring to our previous phone conversations, where we had asked everything from, “What’s your favorite color?” to “Do you have any communicable diseases?” I had remembered every answer; obviously, she had not even remembered the phone call.

“Thank you. They’re pretty,” she said. I had been hoping for more.

She was pretty too. Sean pulled out a chair for her, and Daria sat down, oblivious to my stares. She was wearing a tan sundress that ballooned away from her. She wore heavy ’80s makeup, foundation that had been carefully tinted, blue eyeliner that matched her stunning eyes, blush striped to her hairline, and lipstick with a glossy finish. It wasn’t garish, but it was practiced and perfect. She wore little jewelry, except for a blue topaz ring that was boldly expensive. I hoped the father of the baby had given it to her. I wanted the baby to have been conceived in love.

- – - – - – - -

On the day that we were to give Emma back, James and I went down to the lake. It was about 85 degrees, and the sun was just starting to warm up. I took care to shield Emma from the sun, making a tent of sorts with her blankets. James was playing in the sand, “Making tracks” he called it, cutting tributaries down to the water. He asked me to play with him, but I said no rather sharply, and he got the message.

I looked down at Emma and at the lake. Both were still. I knew I should pray. I knew I should cry. I knew I should clasp her to me and rock and cherish her and memorize her every bone. I couldn’t do any of it.

I felt movement before I heard it, and turned to the swamp to my left. Seven blue heron rose from the reeds, perfectly spaced. They called and crackled; I know of no other word for it, maybe it was their wings beating or maybe it was the wind vibrating, but as they rose, the weather, the wind, the cloud, the bird, and my hope gathered as one, and flew.

James was already staring, and I lifted Emma’s blankets, and this I swear: She opened her eyes and saw her first miracle. It was the first of many in her young life. Fortunately, I was there to see them all. For I was, eventually, legally named her mother, although it took an 18-month court case and all our life savings to be so. But that is a nightmare that deserves its own story.

The memo, which dates from April 1961, was released by the Homeland Security Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the author.

Jacobs notes that it is possible that the elder Obama made up adoption plans simply to appease immigration officials, who were allegedly concerned about the Kenyan student’s “playboy” lifestyle. Sources close to Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham — including her uncle — told Jacobs that Dunham had always been committed to bringing up her son and had never mentioned adoption.

Similarly, former White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told Jacobs that the president had never before heard of his parents’ adoption considerations and did not believe that his mother actually ever contacted the Salvation Army.