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T A B L E_T A L K Octuplets: Is it irresponsible to have eight kids at once? Discuss the new fertility treatments in the Mothers area of Table Talk ___________________ Find books about adoption at barnesandnoble.com
R E C E N T L Y The baby girl I gave away Millennial family values The last waltz Forever young Star quality BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 During high school, I looked up "weed" in the dictionary. It was defined as an undesirable plant. I desired weeds. By the time I was in college it seemed to me that we hate weeds only because they are so stubbornly alive and easy to care for. It seemed to me that dandelion-revulsion is a symptom of capitalist dementia: We love only what we cannot have or that the having of makes us first work, then suffer to maintain. We hate what is free. I tried to love what is free and even to be free of such mind-sets that pull weeds. I avoided any group with the semblance of "normal"; I majored in philosophy; I studiously avoided all fraternities, sororities, their parties and their beverage, beer. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, a college and town that are well known as beautiful playgrounds pickled in beer, I read thick books, dressed in black, observed a circadian rhythm of 11 a.m. wake-ups and 4 a.m. bed times, and drank coffee or vodka. Two weeks after graduation I moved to New York City to pursue a graduate degree in literature. And it was on a trip back to Colorado that I learned from my birth mother, and then from Harry, that during what he called his "weed phase" I had been conceived on a couch in the basement of a fraternity house after they had drunk a lot of beer together on the single night of their acquaintance. So went the story of my seed. I would have been more honest with Harry during our meeting; would have told him that I liked being a product of sex for sex's sake, of spontaneous passion. (Was mine not at least as auspicious a beginning as one inspired by ovulation and driven by baby desire?) I would have told him that I did not mind, and sort of favored, the idea of myself as a mistake, a weed, or that I adored my boyfriend's look. I didn't tell him these things because I was touched by his honesty and his effort to act like my father. I was touched by him in part because he told me a story about his neighbor's son -- who, like me, had been born out of wedlock and unknown to his father until the boy (who, like me, had been adopted) showed up at Harry's neighbor's door at the age of 27 (which was my age when I met Harry). I don't know what happened next, but the fact that Harry's best friend and neighbor had sired a weed the same year Harry had sired me was a coincidence I took as confirmation that Harry was my biological father. Harry and I had not yet had blood tests to verify his paternity. But I knew. And I promised him I would stay away from the cupcakes, even as I wondered how long it would take him to realize I was a cupcake, too. I also knew him to be my father, and was touched by him, because he was so much like the man who raised me, Frank Zarlengo -- a strong, captivating, somewhat intimidatingly charismatic man who cared for my sister and me with fierce loyalty and stern, deep love. Frank died when I was 15; his death was horrible to me. I missed him terribly, dreamed of him frequently. And here I was with a stranger, also my father, who insisted as haughtily as Frank had on opening the door, on paying the bill, on strict honesty in conversation. Harry had a mustache like Dad's; he was tall, tan and convinced like him. I think at one point he winked, like Dad, which about slayed me. I decided after I met with Harry that blood relations are what give us our emotional templates; that our capacities, our attractions, our loves are hard-wired. I decided that one of the reasons I had loved my father, Frank, so fiercely was that he was very much like my biological father, Harry. I had learned as a philosophy major how, for the purpose of understanding, to assume a new philosophy as one would put on a pair of glasses. But adopting a philosophy that made my love for my adoptive father look like an effect of my genetically hard-wired disposition was not easy. It meant accepting determinism, the power of the kind of genetic fate and destiny I had always shunned. It meant finding sympathy with the nature people in the nature/nurture debate. I had spent hours on term papers in attempts to dispose of everyone from Hitler to Freud to Marx on the ground that theirs were pernicious determinisms. But I tried to accept Harry as a father; I tried, too, to accept that my life was not something I had chosen. I wore the lenses through which my life was predetermined. I saw myself balanced on a great wave of destiny, the contours of which were vaguely revealed by my meeting with my biological father. Harry and I arranged to conduct a paternity test. I had my blood taken at a Denver facility, gave the nurse there his name, then flew back to New York. It took Harry six months to give his blood to that nurse so our test could be performed. I didn't mind his delay -- his becoming a father of a grown woman needed necessarily to shake his well-weeded world, and I did not need for us to begin acting as father and daughter. I was raised by the man I considered to be my father; I did not want a new one or a replacement -- the very idea was heresy. I was prepared never to see Harry again, or for us to meet infrequently and awkwardly, or to become friends or whatever. I was not prepared to have our blood test come back negative, which it did. N E X T_ P A G E: Of course I'm adopted -- isn't everybody? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |