When Richard returned from “Survivor” he found his previously healthy, happy son to be sullen and fat. “Eureka!” he thought. “This kid needs exercise!” And off they went, to resume their 4:30 a.m. six-mile runs. Only junior wasn’t very happy about it, and told his teachers that his father roughed him up when he refused to run any farther. Richard was arrested, and his son was put into a state-supervised shelter (though he has since returned to live with Richard).

Richard tells us, on “Dateline,” that he was only trying to help his son, because he knows the pain of being overweight. This child caused loads of problems for his previous caretakers (biting, kicking and hitting, Richard tells us), but because of Richard’s great love and devotion, gradually, the child began to heal and his behavior improved. Saint Richard, we learn, went so far as to adopt him.

What he doesn’t explain is why he feels compelled to let the world know that his son is a former troubled foster child. Why do we need to know this? How does this help his son?

The answer is, it doesn’t. It’s a fundamental tenet of foster parenting, adoption and, well, parenting, that to the extent you can, you protect your kid from public embarrassment over the events of his childhood. It doesn’t serve children to be forever stigmatized for childhood transgressions — that’s why juvenile court proceedings are confidential and why the criminal records of minors are sealed.

Foster parents have to go one step further than biological parents to protect their kids. They’re legally required to keep all of the personal information they learn about their children absolutely private. Richard knows this; he was a foster parent to his son before he adopted him.

But Richard is throwing his kid under the bus to save himself and his public image. (Leaving aside the question, of course, of whether we could stomach the scheming, back-stabbing Richard even without this nasty child abuse allegation.) His tattling merely confirms what we already knew about him from “Survivor” — Richard looks out for Richard.

His strangely narcissistic message echoes the rationale used by the parents of Jeremy Strohmeyer, the adopted child who murdered a 7-year-old girl in a casino bathroom. Richard conveys the same pathetic backpedaling and failure of loyalty as the Strohmeyers, as if to say: “Don’t look at me! He was adopted!”

True, his child was adopted, and it’s probably been difficult these past few years. And maybe Richard didn’t abuse him. But regardless of that, why do the American people need to know what should be the very private details of his son’s childhood? Assuming the abuse didn’t happen, Richard had every opportunity to simply deny the allegations, without letting the world know that his son had a troubled past.

We know this kid. We saw him on TV in a sweet videotaped message to his dad. “That’s my boy,” Richard said at the time. Now he wants to be sure we know that his kid was a foster child.

Now the kid’s friends, his teachers, his neighbors, the parking lot attendant and the grocery store clerk know that he was a troubled foster child. Wasn’t the stigma of being the son of the most reviled man on television enough? Apparently not.

I’m not suggesting that Richard should hide the fact that his son was adopted, though I don’t think adoption is something you need to point to in order to explain away domestic turmoil. I simply don’t believe that any child deserves to have the sordid details of their past trotted out to explain away why they might have accused their parent of child abuse.

The most diabolical bit in all of this is that Richard’s message seems crafted to lead us to the conclusion that he couldn’t possibly have abused his son, because (and watch this fancy leap of logic) his child was already troubled. And we all know that when you’re trying to straighten out a messed-up kid, it’s impossible to abuse them.

This confessional TV genre has seeped right into Richard’s soul, if it wasn’t already there to begin with. Admittedly, he had to be pretty narcissistic to even sign up for “Survivor.” He showed no shame in his devious plotting, bold-faced lying or the phony friendships he constructed and confessed about on camera. And then there was the unrepentant nudism.

But now we’re talking about something horrible enough to trip even Richard’s self-consciousness wire: child abuse. He had to do something to let us all know that even he’s not that bad. So it must have seemed perfectly rational to him to go all the way — with more confession.

Only this time, the confession wasn’t about his life, but about his son’s. And though his son didn’t sign up to have his secrets told, Richard, who believes that he is this child’s “last best shot,” tells us that he, as the boy’s father, knows better than anyone, including state authorities, what his boy needs. (Ironically, Richard may soon be treating more children to his special brand of guidance: He told Bryant Gumbel on last night’s post-Survivor reunion special that he plans to use his prize money to set up a camp for troubled teens.)

It’s alarming how much Richard’s story resembles the excuses I’ve heard from parents who have nearly killed their child in a failed attempt at “discipline.” And it reminds me that the most horrifying child abuse I see is too often perpetrated by people who justify their actions with nothing more than their self-perceived “superior” knowledge about their child’s needs and the authority of a title — father.

The information is, for the most part, either too shocking (Grandma committed suicide at age 47), too private (after four years of therapy, dad is finally conquering his obsessive-compulsive disorder), or too mundane (little brother Jimmy loves Elmo and Barney) for the principals to share with anyone outside of family. But it is all laid out for me, a complete stranger, on crisp white papers with the occasional Xeroxed photo to illustrate an achievement, a catastrophe or piece of ordinary life.

I am picking someone’s parents. I am looking for one family — the perfect family — to adopt a 2-year-old I will call Joshua. It is a surreal task that both requires and inflames my less admirable tendencies (prying, judgment). It is a serious job, but so huge it is almost laughable. Most people are stuck with who they’re born to, no matter what idiosyncrasies their parents possess or what transgressions they’ve committed. But Joshua gets to start fresh, and I am compelled to search until I find him the best new parents available, especially since he was cheated the first time around.

Joshua’s biological parents nearly killed him when he was an infant, throwing him down on the floor, breaking several of his bones, burning him with a cigarette, tearing his mouth apart by force feeding him. When Joshua left the hospital, nobody knew whether he would ever learn to walk, to talk or to interact with anyone. Mostly he just screamed. He held his body rigid and would not look at the face of whoever held him. He was terrified of men, and would wail inconsolably at the sound of a male voice. He was not hitting the normal developmental milestones. At birth he weighed 8 pounds; at 6 months old, he weighed 11 pounds. He vomited most of the formula fed to him. He got pneumonia and had constant ear infections. The antibiotics for his pneumonia gave him a diaper rash so bad that he bled. He didn’t smile and he flinched at any touch.

Child Protective Services placed Joshua with foster parents whose family already included three teenagers, two 4-year-olds and another baby, also a foster child. The parents and the teenagers took turns holding Joshua as he screamed, day and night, for the first three months. The 4-year-olds sang to him. His physical injuries took months to heal and he was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder, which means that because of the abuse he suffered, he will most likely have a difficult time bonding with any parent figure in the future.

His foster mother took him to the pediatrician, the orthopedist, the pulmonologist, the neurologist and the psychologist. She sat through months of physical, occupational and speech therapy, and did hours of assigned exercises with Joshua every week. She carefully recorded every tiny step in his development in monthly reports to his caseworker. She comforted him through surgeries, stressful visits with his biological family, and screaming fits of rage that lasted far longer than normal temper tantrums — frequently an entire day. She opened her door to dozens of strangers who paraded in and out of the house to check under her stove for dust balls, and to track and report on Joshua’s progress.

And his progress was incredible. Gradually, Joshua began to relax in the arms of whoever was holding him. He smiled when the other kids made funny faces at him. He stopped flinching when people reached for him, and he started to giggle when he was tickled. He learned to run and to talk, to cuddle and to call his foster mom “Mommy.” When he is downstairs and she is upstairs and he hears the crash of a book falling on the floor, he runs to the bottom of the stairs and yells “Mommy? Mommy?” When she responds “Yes, Joshua, I’m OK,” he is visibly relieved.

Now it is time to find him a permanent family. So every night I ingest a bit more of the teetering pile on my desk — the life stories of people hoping to adopt children. Each file holds an application, some court papers, letters from the family and friends of the prospective parents, results of personality tests, medical histories, financial records, fingerprint checks, criminal background information, and detailed interview notes.

The tone is always confessional but polished here and there with a certain Stuart Smalley-esque flair, as if exclamation points with smiley faces belong at the end of every other sentence. “The Bensons say they have been praying for a child for four years,” says one. “The Millers have prepared a beautiful bedroom for the child they hope will come to them,” says another. Resonant in these declarations is the voice of an adoption agency, pushing potential parents with bright side language and images of stoicism.

Joshua’s foster mother cannot adopt him because she just adopted one of the 4-year-olds and he has been diagnosed as mildly retarded with severe behavioral problems. (He has lived with her since his birth.) She also is a professional foster parent, running a therapeutic foster home for medically needy children. The state only allows her to take a certain number of children, and if she adopted Joshua it would mean one less slot for a child in desperate need of medical foster care.

So it is my job (along with others) to select the people who will be Joshua’s parents. I am his Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), and I have been working with him for over a year, since he was 6 months old. I report to the court on his progress, and I have been with him for all of his “firsts” — the first time he crawled, his first haircut, his first birthday. He knows me and we have spent many lazy days together, swinging at the park, staring at orangutans at the zoo, floating in the pool on an inflatable boat, napping in a hammock. I’ve given him baths, fed him dinner, put him to bed, endured temper tantrums at Kmart.

It occurs to me that, for all these reasons, I will be too picky and emotional for this job. Or maybe I will be just picky and emotional enough. But my opinion of my own fitness doesn’t really matter. It is the fitness of others that I am supposed to evaluate. Every six weeks I have received packages full of red files, each representing the local adoption agencies’ best hopes for a family for Joshua. I must pore over these files and tell his caseworker which ones I like and which ones to discard.

When I first started, I thought we were going to vote, all the members of the family selection committee, on which family we liked the best for Joshua. As it turns out, I have veto power. Also, if I really like a family, I can tell the caseworker directly and she’ll flag that family’s file to arrange a meeting with all of us. The reality is that I cannot just hope or intend or wish for Joshua to have the family that he deserves. Instead I must choose Joshua’s parents and his siblings, where he will live and whether his pet will be a calico cat or golden retriever.

The first section I flip to in the red files is one marked “Child Desired.” It is a list of the attributes the family wants their child to have — or not to have. This is a peculiar and humbling document, reminding me that, even though I can virtually handpick the people I want to be Joshua’s parents, they can “pass” on Joshua if he doesn’t have the particular characteristics they’re looking for. Because Joshua is so young, because he is biracial and because we have no idea how he’ll behave when he gets older, I’m tossing out anyone who seems too concerned about how their child looks or how he behaves.

Next, I turn to the “Motivation” section. This is where the parents say why they want to adopt a child. Here, I’m sacking anyone who writes only that they want a child as a companion or playmate for another child in their family. I know this is a very common motivation for people to have a second child, but it’s pretty incongruous in the world of abused children. Joshua wouldn’t make a good “spare,” or “playmate.” He will need a lot of attention, encouragement, boundaries and direction. He’ll need parents who can fight to get him into special classes at school, receive better service from an HMO and who will be able to walk that fine line between being on his side and making excuses for him.

I’m also eliminating anyone who writes only that they are adopting because they are infertile. I want parents who write that they want to love a child, who believe that adoption is a great way to become a parent. I want them to have considered all of the issues surrounding adoption, and to have decided that they are ready to deal with some pain because the joy is worth it. Loving Joshua will be a gift; I don’t want parents who see it as a fallback position.

Finally, I move on to the individual descriptions of the prospective parents and their relationships. Here, I’m looking for two things: anything that indicates that a parent might have real difficulty adapting to stress, change, or chaos in their life; and any unresolved relationship problems. Joshua’s parents will need to be almost heroically flexible, tolerant and resilient.

Joshua is still tied up in the court system, and the adoption won’t be finalized for at least 18 months. His biological father claims he is going to court to fight to get him back. This is not likely to work because of the father’s drug addiction, his refusal to take responsibility for Joshua’s injuries (either abusing him, or failing to protect him from abuse) and the fact that he hasn’t done a single thing that CPS has asked of him.

Nonetheless, he will get his day in court, and Joshua’s prospective adoptive parents will have to endure the emotional turmoil of the severance trial, constant visits from Joshua’s entourage of caseworkers, therapists, and attorneys, not to mention the day-to-day challenges of raising Joshua. If marital problems or an inability to manage stress already are factors, entering Joshua’s world may be more than they can bear.

After weeks of winnowing the files down to the ones that don’t have any obvious problems, we’ve had some false starts. A family of two second-grade teachers looked great on paper; but when they met Joshua, it was a disaster. They obviously had in their minds what the perfect “first meeting” with their future child would be like, and Joshua did not follow the unwritten rules. They wanted to push him in the swings, he wanted to run up and down the hills. They wanted him to feed the ducks; he ate the bread. They gave him a special Beanie Baby; he threw it on the ground and ran on. Joshua ended the afternoon in tears, only quieting down when we got in the car to drive home. The couple later called the caseworker to specify that they wanted a girl, between 5 and 7 years old.

And then, in the last batch of red files sent to me, I find a family, the family — I think.

The Andersons seem like a perfect match for Joshua. The father is an artist who works at home; the mother is a speech therapist. They have an incredibly strong marriage. ( I cannot disclose how I know this except to say that, among other things, Mr. Anderson once risked his life to save his wife’s.) Their friends and family describe the pair as patient, devoted, loving and easygoing. They have a wide network of support — family and friends both near and far who are as excited about them becoming parents as they are. They have endured great challenges and have come out intact and happy on the other side. They want a child to love.

Joshua’s caseworker agrees that the Andersons look good, but she is worried. They don’t make a lot of money and they don’t live in a great neighborhood. Money can’t be the deciding factor, she says, but it can’t be overlooked. Once Joshua is adopted, his foster care payments will stop. He will be eligible for an adoption subsidy because of his medical and developmental needs, but the amount is barely enough to cover his routine medical appointments.

But we’ve looked at rich families, families who could provide Joshua with the best medical care available without thinking twice about the money involved. Not one of those families had the perseverance, the openness or the unconditional willingness to risk loving a child that I perceive in the Andersons. So we decide to let their adoption agency know that they are our top pick.

There are meetings, lots of meetings. First, we meet the caseworker who represents the Andersons. She gives us a detailed narrative of their lives, illustrated by a mini photo album — photos of the Andersons on their wedding day, on a trip to Disneyland, with their nieces and nephews, and in front of their home. We decide that we’re still interested and arrange a meeting between the Andersons and Joshua in his foster home.

That goes well too. Everyone is nervous, and Joshua acts shy, but by the end of the visit, he is sitting on Mr. Anderson’s lap. We arrange to have Joshua evaluated by his therapist to see if he is ready to move out of his foster home. While we wait for the therapist’s report, we decide that the Andersons can visit Joshua during the week at his day care.

The therapist reports back that Joshua is at a great stage for a move to a new home and recommends a three-week transition period. Joshua’s new parents will visit him in his foster home several times, observe and participate in his daily activities, meet his various doctors and therapists, and learn the routines and rituals of his everyday life. Near the end of the three weeks, the Andersons would bring Joshua to their home for three visits, and on the fourth visit to their home, he would stay for good.

At first, Joshua seemed to love his new parents, though it was clear he viewed them more as visiting playmates than as Mom and Dad. He was always excited to see them, engaging them in games, climbing on their laps, and crying when they left for the evening. Yet when he fell down or was upset, it was his foster mom he looked to for comfort.

The first day he visited the Andersons’ home, I arrived a few hours after he did. He was shy and hesitant at first, but he showed me his room, the cat and the sidewalk chalk he played with. He seemed anxious, though, and worried, and he tore through the house as if on a mission, touching books, the television, toys, the cat, the dog, opening cabinets, tearing books off the bookshelf, tossing his toys across the room. He wanted me to pick him up, so I did, and then he wouldn’t let me put him down. He clung to me nervously, like a little spider monkey. When it was time for me to go, I had to peel him off me and put him back on the floor. He tried to climb back up.

Maybe it was too fast. Maybe he needed to feel more comfortable in the house before we moved him. Maybe we — I — had made a mistake. I suddenly remembered staying all night at my aunt’s house when I was 5, being miserably uncomfortable and wanting my mom to come rescue me. I imagined Joshua feeling the same way. I was terrified of a disruption. What if he didn’t settle down, and had horrible temper tantrums, and the Andersons decided they didn’t want him anymore? I called his caseworker and his therapist.

Neither of them were worried. His caseworker, who had adopted a child of her own, said her son acted the same way on his first day at her house. I told her I just couldn’t stand seeing him in pain. She asked, “Are you sure he’s the one in pain?”

The move went forward as planned. His foster mother called me after she dropped him off at his new home. “He’s great! Everything is great! He showed me his room and he’s comfortable there. I’m going to visit later this week. He’ll be fine.”

Two weeks later, I visit him again. His dad meets me at the door. “He’s in the bathtub.”

I can hear singing and laughing coming from the bathroom. I peek in the door. Joshua is in the tub with his mom bent over him. The water is running, and he is splashing her, then they both laugh hysterically. When he sees me, he drawls a Fonzie-like “Heeeeyyyyyyy!”

“That’s his new word today,” his mom says.

When the bath is over, she wraps him in a towel and gives him a comb. He examines himself carefully in the mirror, and begins to comb his hair. Then he begins to comb his mom’s hair. Then he wants to comb my hair. Then he says, in a sing-songy voice, “Daaaaaddddddy, daaaadddddy.” His dad appears in the doorway. “Is it time for you to comb my hair?”

“He does this every night,” Joshua’s mom explains. She puts on his diaper and his pajamas, and he runs into the living room.

“‘Mon, ‘mon,” he motions to me.

“That means c’mon,” his mom tells me.

I follow. He starts pulling a photo album off a bookshelf. “See? See?” He sits on my lap. We flip the pages together, and he points. “Mommy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy, Mommy, doggy, kitty.” He is pointing out his new family.

His parents tell me he has been sleeping through the night, eating everything they put in front of him, playing with his toys, meeting the extended family. They noticed that he looked for his special duck blanket to comfort himself when he was unhappy or afraid. They noticed that if they ignored his temper tantrums, he would usually stop. He is learning new words. He pretends every toy is an airplane. “We have to remember to get him a toy airplane next time we’re at the toy store,” his dad says.

His parents are as thrilled, amazed, and in love with Joshua as, well, new parents. They tell me they had expected Joshua to express rage and sadness because his life was changing so much. They were ready for it. It hadn’t happened yet, but they were still ready in case it did, and would love him through it, and try to bring him back to his feelings of comfort and safety. When I leave, his dad is holding Joshua in his arms, and Joshua is waving, singing out “Byeeeeeee!” He doesn’t even cry.

I am not the type of person who instinctively believes that things will be OK. Instead, I am ready for things to be difficult and scary and complicated. I am primed for disaster and woefully unprepared for success. I think it’s the nature of this job, that it comes from loving children who have had so many horrible things happen to them. But as I do this work, I am ambushed by goodness, amazed by the faith of children, the courage of foster and adoptive parents, the dedication and stamina of caseworkers. I am reminded repeatedly that even though they are scarce or hidden or shy, there are sometimes enough extraordinary people to go around.

It’s not that I’m completely unsentimental. But those shows irritate me because they have motivated a generation of adult adoptees and birth parents to believe in that perfect reunion — the meeting that will fill all the voids in their lives, resolve all of their feelings of inadequacy, assuage all their guilt.

In fact, this image of divine reconciliation has fueled the voters and lawmakers of a growing number of states to amend adoption laws to allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates or their adoption records. A countermovement, comprising mostly birth mothers who entertain no fantasies about meeting the children they gave up for adoption, has grown in response, creating a deadlock on the issue, mostly in court.

In Tennessee and Oregon, open-access laws faced court challenges before they even went into effect. The Tennessee law was ultimately upheld by the state Supreme Court, but in Oregon, where a group of anonymous birth mothers opposed to open access lost their battle to strike down the law, the state Supreme Court may reconsider its decision and could issue a ruling as early as this week.

These laws make the assumption that every child who was given up for adoption burns with an overwhelming desire to meet, and fall in love with, his or her birth parents. Even the birth parents who oppose open access use this argument, believing that without legal protection they will surely be tracked down and exposed by curious birth children.

Did it not occur to anyone that there are some adopted children who aren’t interested in finding their birth parents? That some adopted children might want some guarantee that they won’t be hunted down by their biological parents? Shouldn’t they be entitled to a choice about who will barge into their lives and make themselves at home?

I was adopted as an infant on the Friday before Mother’s Day, 1970. My adoptive parents were assured that the records would be forever sealed, and that no stranger would ever show up on their doorstep and claim their baby as their own.

Eighteen years later, I received a thick envelope in the mail. I lived in Indiana and the postmark was from California, so I assumed it was from a camp friend. I tore it open, and a handful of pictures spilled out.

I didn’t recognize the brunet woman smiling at me in those snapshots, taken over a period of two decades. There she was in high school in the ’70s with a middle part and long straight hair, and then in the early ’80s, with big puffy hair and lots of eye makeup. And there were more recent photos too — professional, on glossy paper with vibrant color. Who was this woman?

The letter explained it. “I believe you are the baby girl I gave up for adoption in 1970.” Whoa. “Mom! Look at this!” My mom joined me at the kitchen table. Together we read the letter and stared at the pictures.

“She looks nothing like you,” my mom said. (She was right.) “How could she do this when she didn’t even know if we’d told you that you’re adopted? Why didn’t she contact me first?” There was fear in my mom’s questions; I could hear it. I shoved the letter aside.

At age 6, when I first learned I was adopted, I cried and cried, not because I wanted to know who my birth parents were, or because I felt lost or empty, but because I wanted to have been born to my parents. I loved them so completely that I didn’t want any mysterious thing out in the world to mean that I was less a part of them.

They pulled me into a tight family hug and assured me that I was even more a part of them, because of all the babies in the world, they chose me. They said we were meant to be together as a family.

I never felt like anything was missing, and I had only idle curiosity about my birth parents. My grandpa thought I looked like every famous blond on television, from Chris Evert Lloyd to Jane Pauley to Princess Diana, so sometimes I wondered if I was biologically related to someone famous. It was a fun fantasy, and a pretty common one among the adoptees I knew. But even as a teenager, when I believed my parents were the most embarrassing, uptight, rigid authority figures on the planet, I never wished for different parents, even birth parents.

As we read the letter that day, days before my 18th birthday, it seemed too personal, painfully so. It was filled with details of the woman’s life and her desire to know me. She wanted me to call, to write, to share the details of my life with her.

My mom and I agonized over what to do. My parents knew only a few details about my birth family, and there wasn’t enough in the letter to know for sure whether this woman was really my birth mother. My head was spinning with curiosity and fear, and from trying to fit this bizarre new piece of my life into the puzzle of my everyday existence — calculus finals, term papers due, my senior trip and planning for the prom. My mom suggested I skip school the next day, and that we go to the adoption agency to find out if what the letter said was true.

I called the number on the last page of the letter, and told an answering machine that I had received the letter and that I would appreciate it if this woman (I’ll call her Mary) didn’t contact me again. I told the machine that I needed to find out if Mary really was my birth mother, and until then, I didn’t want to be in touch with her.

She phoned five minutes later.

Mary was a deluge of questions — first, she wanted to verify that all the details fit, which, for the most part, they did. Then she wanted to know what I’d been up to for the past, oh, 18 years. The one question that kept drumming through my mind was,
Is she or isn’t she? Even though the details matched, I kept thinking that there must have been more than one baby girl born on my birthday who was given up for adoption. At the same time, I was curious to hear Mary’s story and to find out who she was and why she gave up her baby.

Mary said she and her boyfriend were 16 when she got pregnant and they both wanted what was best for their baby. As I listened to her talk lovingly about the baby she gave up, I was thinking in the abstract of a hypothetical baby, not that the baby could possibly be me.

It was too surreal, this stranger believing that she was part of my life, conveying the most painful parts of herself to me during our first conversation. I was embarrassed, because she was too interested in me, and because she was showing me all of the carefully sewn seams in her life, which now seemed to be unraveling as she revealed all of her secrets.

Apparently she took a long and complicated path to find me. She had first started attending meetings of Concerned United Birthparents, an advocacy group for birth parents. CUB led her to a Michigan detective who specializes in finding adopted children. He came up with my name and an incredible amount of information about me, including my SAT scores and my yearbook pictures.

As she recited all of my vital statistics to me, I began to feel uncomfortably exposed, like in those dreams where you show up at school wearing nothing but a too-small washcloth. As we hung up the phone that night, Mary told me that she loved me. I felt queasy, the way you do when a lover says those words too early and you don’t feel the same way. I muttered quickly, “OK, bye.”

The next day, I skipped school, and my mom and I drove to the adoption agency that had placed me to see what we could find out. Amazingly, the same caseworker was still there; even more incredible, she remembered my family. But the law at that time prohibited us from finding out the names of my birth parents without a court order, so we were stuck.

Back at home, I called Mary and told her that I couldn’t find out for sure if she was my birth mother. I asked her not to contact me again because it seemed strange to start such an intimate relationship with a total stranger. She asked if she could call, just every once in a while, to see how things were going with me. I said OK, thinking that if she was my actual birth mother, I didn’t want to push her away entirely. I imagined that I would treat the calls like rare communications with distant relatives: “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine. I’m getting ready to go to camp again this summer.” “Really? Great. Good luck with that.” “Thanks, bye.”

It seemed as if she called constantly, not because her calls were frequent but because they were so intense. I couldn’t hang up no matter how much I wanted to — Mary had a million questions and a million things to tell me. She would tell me over and over again that she hadn’t wanted to give me up, that she loved me, that she thought of me all the time, that she had always loved me.

I tried to answer her questions about my life, but I found myself feeling more and more invaded, as if layer by layer she was trying to get to the root of me, and she was still, in essence, a stranger. I didn’t want to upset Mary, in case she was my biological mother, but her phone calls were overwhelming for me, and disturbing to my parents, who were concerned that all this emotional baggage would disrupt my final months at home before leaving for college.

Because Mary perceived, correctly, that my mom didn’t like her calling me so often, she would lie to my mom about who she was. This heightened my mom’s panic about another mother moving in on her child, and her mama-bear instincts kicked in.

One night, after Mary had lied to her about who she was, my mom picked up the phone while we were talking: “I really don’t appreciate you lying to me about who you are. I know who you are when you call.” Mary: “Don’t feel threatened just because I gave birth to Beth.” Mom: “I don’t feel threatened, because I am her mother. I would just appreciate some honesty.” At that point, I hung up.

The next time Mary called, I asked her to back off. She responded by telling me that she had ordered copies of my high school graduation pictures and would be coming from California for my graduation. Would I meet her?

I agreed to meet her after my graduation at her aunt’s home nearby, thinking that maybe by meeting her I could figure out whether she was my biological mother. Also, I was curious. My mom didn’t think it was a good idea — she was concerned for my safety. But she didn’t forbid me from going. She had begun to see Mary as a stalker, convinced that she might kidnap me and whisk me away to California. (Considering Mary’s manic ardency, it was not a far-fetched scenario.)

I brought my then boyfriend, who was also an adoptee, along for moral support. We drove to a tiny bungalow in an older neighborhood. Mary answered the door and immediately reached out to hug me. She looked like her pictures and talked to me the way she did on the telephone. She introduced her aunt, who hugged me, too. I felt immediately uncomfortable, awkward and out of place. I was being embraced like I was family by people I didn’t know.

Mary brought out a folder full of photos of her family and the family of the man she identified as my biological father. I was glad to have something to focus on. Together we looked for resemblances. We were reaching — this jaw line resembles mine, this hair color. But there were no clear answers, no obvious signs.

I guess I was hoping that someone in those pictures would be a mirror image of me, so I’d know, finally, and for sure, but nobody was. Mary stared at me. Every once in a while she would touch me, or tell me that she loved me and couldn’t believe she was finally in the same room with me. She was weepy, too, telling me again that she hadn’t wanted to give me up.

She wanted me to hug her, she begged me to stay in touch with her, she pleaded for pictures — baby pictures especially. The closer she tried to get to me, the more distance and fear I felt. I wanted to leave, but she wanted to take photographs of me. Finally, emotionally drained, we left.

When I went off to college, she continued to call. Most often it was in the middle of the night, and I would answer the phone deep in the foggy netherworld of half-sleep to hear her shaky voice trying not to cry. “I had a dream about you, that something bad happened. Is everything OK?” I reassured her that I was fine, but asleep, as was my roommate. I asked her again to back off. I came to dread picking up the phone and hearing her voice.

She sent me presents: giant packages filled with stuffed animals, vitamins, perfume, candy and postcards pre-addressed to her. She wrote me long chatty letters detailing the minutia of her life. She begged me to send her a postcard a week, just to let her know I was OK. Every once in a while, I would send her a postcard or call, but I always felt awkward about it — like I was trying to humor a stalker to keep the hunting from getting any worse.

She was getting more and more needy, more obsessed; she told me her apartment was a shrine to me. She had blown up the photos she took when we met and hung them, along with the high school and prom pictures she had managed to get, all over her place. She told me she was coming to see me at school.

I worried about it for weeks. I didn’t want to see her, but didn’t know how to tell her that without devastating her. It was getting to be too much. Her clinginess repulsed me; I was emotionally plagued by her constant intrusions. I finally became convinced that I needed to “break up” with Mary.

The phone call took an hour. She sobbed the entire time I spoke. She called me her baby and told me she didn’t understand how I could do this to her. Couldn’t she just check in on me every once in a while? Couldn’t she still come to see me, one last time? I tried to stay calm and consistent, tried to achieve the conversational equivalent of backing away slowly, making no sudden moves. When we hung up, I knew it wasn’t over.

A year later, I was working at an internship in downtown Chicago. I was walking to the el station when a man jumped out of the crowd walking in the opposite direction and snapped a photo of me. He was instantly absorbed by the crowd.

Two weeks later, Mary called me at my internship. She had hired another detective to find me, convinced that I was sick or dead or in some sort of trouble. The detective had been to my apartment, had supposedly spoken with my roommates, had figured out where I worked and had taken pictures of me.

Mary had another reason to call this time. She repeated a convoluted story she had told me before about giving birth — to me, theoretically. She said the doctors told her that the baby had a simian crease, a horizontal line across the palm that is common in children born with Down syndrome. I don’t have the crease and that had always bothered her.

Now Mary wanted me to give blood for a DNA test so she could be sure that I wasn’t switched at birth. I was so cynical about the whole mess that it sounded to me like another way for her to prove that I was her biological daughter. I was afraid that if I took the test and it proved that she was my birth mother, she would become even more forceful and scary. I would no longer have an excuse to keep her away from me.

I told Mary I wouldn’t take the test, that I was angry about the detective she sent to spy on me. I really didn’t care if I was switched at birth and my biological parents were floating around somewhere out there. For me, one biological parent — this one, certainly — was already more than I wanted in my life.

We’ve done this dance several times now. She called me when she read in the newspaper that I was getting married. She called me when she gave birth to a baby boy, wanting to know if I was interested in meeting my “half-brother.” She called me on my 25th birthday. Each time, she would sob and tell me she missed me, she loved me, she absolutely had to call me, she hoped I understood.

She seemed so distraught, so obsessed and so demanding of my time and attention that it was just too overwhelming. Whenever I talked to her for too long or let her in on too much, she was back, full force, with cards, letters, photos and phone calls out of the blue.

I could have told her that I do feel grateful that she chose to have me, that she chose to give me up. I know she made a tremendous sacrifice — she’s obviously still suffering from it. But I knew that one simple admission might touch off a new, suffocating avalanche of attention and fixation.

When she called my husband and lied about who she was in order to talk to me (I had told him I didn’t want to talk with her), I decided I’d had enough. I wrote her a letter telling her that I couldn’t cope with her lack of respect for my privacy. I told her that her random weeping phone calls and endless letters were upsetting and disruptive.

I asked her to show me that she understood me by letting me go, by not contacting me, not even to respond to the letter. I told her that I didn’t know if I would ever contact her again, and not to count on it.

That was five years ago. I haven’t heard from her since.

Families are complicated, messy and primal. It takes years for children to fully embrace and understand all of the secret beauty and ugliness in their kin. The texture and rhythm of each family are so distinct that no matter how close or divided the family becomes over time, that primordial beat thumps through every sacred moment of a life. That thump is sweetness and bliss for me, and it consumes every need and every urge I have. My parents and I are so tightly bound to each other that I can’t breathe without feeling their love within me.

Perhaps I am too selfish, too self-absorbed or too afraid to add another family to my life. Maybe things could have been better if it hadn’t felt so forced, or if I had felt like she understood me better, including my need for privacy and safety. I never believed that she would hurt me, but having her repeatedly thrust herself into my life made me feel violated in some confusing, intangible way.

I know that some reunions work out. I have friends whose birth parents were able to pick up where they left off, and who never felt invaded or uneasy about the intimacy called for when adding a birth parent to their lives.

One friend found that his mother and his birth mother share the same name and look like sisters. He danced the first dance of his wedding with his mother and his birth mother, the three of them clinging to one another, heads pressed together.

But that type of harmony is rare, and it’s almost never immediate. If it can occur at all, it’s more often something that’s built, through time and trust and hardship and endurance, the same way all lasting relationships are.

To believe that blood ties alone can bind a family goes beyond the clichi of blood being thicker than water to assume a miracle. Sure, it’s possible that the long lost can be suddenly found and reclaimed in a hail of tears and kisses, but it’s not something I’d count on, no matter how many times you’ve seen it on TV.

The caseworker and I exchange raised eyebrows, alarmed that parents held responsible in juvenile court for nearly murdering their infant son are now watching someone else’s children. But we are powerless to do anything about it, since there are still no criminal charges.

The judge enters and we all rise. The bailiff records everyone’s presence: the parents, with separate attorneys; the caseworker, with two lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office; the guardian ad litem, who is an attorney appointed for Thomas; the two little girls; the judge; and me. I am the 1-year-old boy’s court-appointed special advocate.

The judge tells us she has read the motion and evidence submitted in support of the do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order. One of the AGs announces that a doctor is prepared to testify on speakerphone. The judge asks the parents’ attorneys about the parents’ position.

The attorneys whisper to the parents. The father’s attorney says, “Your honor, my client is very disturbed by having to make this decision, and doesn’t feel he can decide at this time.”

The mother’s attorney says, “Your honor, my client is very upset about what this decision would mean for Thomas, but she does not want her son to suffer anymore.”

This is a complete shock to most of us in the courtroom. We had been told that the parents were prepared to fight the DNR order vigorously, in an effort to keep Thomas alive so that they could not possibly be charged with his murder. We were ready for testimony, medical evidence, even witnesses. Apparently they have changed their minds.

The judge speaks carefully. “I hope I haven’t caused any confusion with my question. This decision is not for the parents to make, because their child is a ward of the state. Clearly, this is my decision to make. I am asking whether there is any testimony they want me to consider, or any questions they want to ask of the doctor or the caseworker. I can make my decision based on the motion and evidence already presented in writing, or I can hear further testimony.”

The attorneys again whisper to their clients, then turn to the judge. Both attorneys request that the judge make the decision based on the motion only. The AG speaks up.

“Your honor, I do have the doctor here on the telephone, and I would like him to testify to his recommendations for Thomas.”

“Any objections?”

There were none.

The doctor, his voice slightly hobbled by the crackles and feedback of the phone, begins to speak. He talks about the extent of Thomas’ injuries — the massive head trauma, the kidney failure, the seizures, the blindness, the constant diarrhea, the excruciating pain he appears to suffer. He says that if the court grants the DNR order, doctors would still do the utmost to keep him comfortable — they would fight infection aggressively, give him the Heimlich maneuver if he choked, give him pain medicine and carefully monitor his fluids to keep him from getting dehydrated.

He tells the judge that he is only asking not to be required to make any heroic efforts to resuscitate Thomas, unless the malady is something clearly reversible.

The father is crying silently, tears running down his cheeks, splashing the files and papers spread before him at the defense table. The mother sits unmoving, looking down, eyes wide and unblinking.

The doctor tells the judge Thomas could die at any time — he could live a day or 10 years, but his condition is irreversible and he will only get worse. He says it is unfair to Thomas to chronically resuscitate him, and that any heroic efforts directed merely at prolonging Thomas’ life would only prolong his misery and pain.

The judge’s voice cracks as she thanks the doctor for his testimony. She asks the parents if they want the decision today. They nod yes.

She hesitates, looking down, expressionless, for what seems an unbearable length of time. Finally, she speaks, her voice cracking again.

“I’m going to grant this order. Should Thomas reach a point where he would need heroic measures to save his life, none will be given. When Thomas has decided he’s had enough, I will let Thomas’ decision stand.”

The judge rises, and the bailiff bellows, “All rise.” We rise and file out of the courtroom.

In the hallway outside, the parents huddle with their attorneys. The father is still crying silently, and the mother looks vacant and numb. The two little girls, who were perfectly quiet in the courtroom, giggle and hug each other, glad to be free of the silence.

The “team,” those of us who work with or represent Thomas, form our own huddle. Voices shaky, with tear-stained cheeks, we somberly congratulate one another on our success.

Twenty miles away, in a nursing home for severely ill children, Thomas lies in a softly lighted room, in a steel crib, hooked to four different machines that monitor his bodily functions. He is sedated and quiet, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The only noises are the regular whir of his feeding machine and an occasional beep from his heart monitor.

He is done with foster care — his medical needs are too urgent and his health too delicate to risk keeping him at home. Yet his foster mother still shows up, every day, to hold him and sing to him. She keeps his clothes and blankets in a white painted chest of drawers next to his crib, and leaves a portable stereo for him so the nurses can play music to calm him.

The nurses touch him only when wearing rubber gloves, because he has a contagious virus that could be deadly to the other children in the nursing home. The dehydration caused by the virus, combined with his kidney failure, has wreaked havoc on his blood chemistry, which is why he was finally admitted here.

His foster mother and I take turns visiting, and hold him glove-free, despite the nurses’ warnings, because he seems comforted by touch — his heart rate slows and his breathing becomes more even. I pick him up and he wails in pain, but then he quiets and settles into me as I sink into a nearby chair. He likes to be held upright with his legs tucked under him, head on my chest. The tubes and monitor wires poke out from under his T-shirt and diaper, and wend their way across the floor to their respective machines.

I feel at once incredibly grateful and unbearably sad. I am grateful to the judge, and to the parents, and to whatever forces in the universe persuaded them not to fight this after all — to let Thomas go when his body can’t hold on anymore. Yet the sadness is an overwhelming, unspeakable, pit-of-the-stomach ache that leaves me trembling, and almost afraid to hold Thomas, because each time might be the last. Everything seems, suddenly, even more tenuous, and he seems more fragile, his bottom lip sucking in and out as he sleeps, his tiny chubby fingers curled around mine, the sweet baby smell of his hair and his cheeks.

Though I hated the thought, there was comfort in the fact that, before the DNR order, if Thomas died, we might not lose him entirely — the life support machines would keep him with us. I feel like I now understand why people leave their comatose relatives on life support for 20 years.

But I force myself to remember that it’s not about those of us who love Thomas — it’s about him, his suffering and his body’s ability to keep working. So I will keep visiting, and saying goodbye, and saying prayers for his comfort and my strength.

Thomas is asleep now, sedated, because he had been awake and crying for nearly 24 hours. He cries constantly when he’s awake because his pain is so severe. His internal organs were, as his doctors phrased it, lacerated. The medical report says that the injuries to his abdomen are the kind that usually come from being kicked or punched, or from being in a violent car crash. His skull was fractured, and he suffered a brain injury that left him blind. He was legally dead for a while, but the doctors brought him back. When his parents first learned the extent of his injuries, they decided to take him off life support. He lived.

Thomas has been in and out of the hospital since then. The doctors have said that he will not survive, that each of his systems will begin to fail, one by one, and ultimately he will die. He’s back in the hospital today because his kidneys failed last weekend.

I happen to arrive when his parents are visiting, along with the parent aide they are required to bring as a chaperone. I have never met them, and they are confused when I try to explain who I am. I am Thomas’ court-appointed special advocate, charged with reporting on his needs and his best interests. Thomas also has a guardian ad litem (GAL), an attorney who handles his legal interests. And he has a Child Protective Services caseworker and a host of doctors: a pediatrician, a nephrologist, a neurologist, an ophthalmologist, a retinologist and an internist.

Thomas’ mother and father crowd one side of the crib and I stand on the other side with the parent aide. I watch them and try to read their minds. There are no criminal charges yet in this case, as a result of what I can only describe as a stunning quagmire of police bureaucracy. The case has been bounced back and forth between the homicide and the family violence units because Thomas has been dead, then alive, then expected to die soon. Because the investigation is ongoing, I can’t get any information on its status.

The parents offered a story that the doctors have said does not fit Thomas’ injuries. But establishing the real story and collecting the necessary evidence are, apparently, complicated and time-consuming. Also, it’s not clear who abused Thomas, though his parents are the obvious suspects. There were other people in the home when the ambulance arrived. So while ordinarily, with injuries this severe, there would be an order prohibiting the parents from seeing their child, there isn’t one for Thomas.

His parents are leaning over him, stroking his face, touching his legs, examining the tubes snaking around him that are attached to now-permanent holes in his body: a feeding tube in his stomach, an I.V. in his arm and some other tube coming out of his foot. His mother is blinking fast, in that way you do when you’re trying not to cry. His father is murmuring: “Thomas, my big boy. You’re getting so handsome, little man. You have to get better so you can come home. I love you, baby.”

The nurse pulls me aside and tells me again that we really need a DNR on Thomas; a DNR is a do-not-resuscitate order, which is signed by the legal guardian. In this case, the legal guardian is the state. A DNR would mean that if Thomas’ heart stopped, or he stopped breathing, his caretakers would be prohibited from intervening to bring him back. Today, Thomas is “full code,” which means that if he started to die, the hospital would have to use every intervention possible to keep him alive, including long-term life support.

The nurses have previously told me that once a foster child is on life support, the courts will not remove it. I think this has something to do with pro-life issues and the state’s not wanting to be accused of letting a child die, but nobody has told me that.

Thomas’ doctors agree that he needs a DNR. His foster mother agrees. His caseworker agrees. His GAL agrees. I agree. Thomas will never recover, never return to health, never experience anything but constant pain or sedation.

The ironic twist in this case is the parents. They have court-appointed lawyers now, who have explained to them that if Thomas dies, they could be charged with murder. Thomas dying would mean not only that their first and only son was dead but that they each might spend 25 years to life in prison. They will fight the court in granting the DNR. They could win.

I let this thought sink in as the nurse is talking. I watch Thomas. His arms and legs are turned in, malformed because the muscles have deteriorated. He breathes heavily, with a gurgling noise, because of the mucus collecting in his throat. His face is relaxed for a minute, and then he winces in his sleep, makes a scritchy whining noise and shifts his body. The nurse is watching him now too. “This — what you see — this is his life,” she says to me.

A month later, I am visiting Thomas at his home, with his foster family. His foster mother chats with me as she tends to Thomas. He receives 13 different medicines in the course of a day, has shots twice a week to increase his blood platelets and has his blood drawn once a week. He receives four different therapies weekly, from therapists who visit the home.

His foster mother gives him breathing treatments. She thumps on his back with a small rubber tool meant to loosen the mucus in his lungs. She shoves a catheter down his throat to suction mucus out of his lungs. She flushes and cleans his feeding tube, and pushes the little button back into his stomach when it falls out. (This entails plugging the hole with her finger so stomach gases won’t leak out.) She massages him to improve circulation to his skin, which peels off like a lizard’s because of his kidney failure.

She tells me she has called a friend who is a foster mother to dying children. She wanted to know what it’s like when a foster child dies in her home and there is no DNR. The other foster mother explained to her that even if he’s dead, she’ll have to perform CPR until the paramedics show up. She’ll need to have his paperwork and medical records handy because they’ll want them, and she shouldn’t clean him or anything else up because the police will arrive to investigate. She also told her not to expect to be invited to the funeral — the most painful information she acquired during that phone call.

She picks Thomas up, and he curls into her like a newborn would. She sings to him softly and he is quiet. His eyes move and look normal for a moment, and he appears to be gazing around the room. Then he shifts and his breath seems caught; his arms and legs stiffen, he shudders and he begins to wail, a droning whine. His face squeezes to a wince.

Together we imagine what he was like before the abuse. When Thomas was first admitted to the hospital, his skull fracture had already started to heal, so nobody knows for how many weeks or months he was being abused before his family called 911.

But we imagine anyway that he was OK until the August day he received the injuries that brought him to the hospital. He would have been about 6 months old — a chubby, black-haired baby who giggled and flirted and chattered with quiet clucks and high-pitched squeals. He would have had a fuzzy sleeper and teething rings. He would have laughed at peekaboo, and might have liked applesauce and puried carrots.

If not for the abuse, today he would be crawling, surely — maybe walking. Maybe he would like Barney and “Sesame Street,” “Teletubbies” and Elmo. Maybe he would clap his hands and play with stacking cups and a tiny xylophone. He would be well.

I ask his foster mother what she wishes for Thomas. “Sometimes I think there could be a miracle,” she says. “It’s so hard to believe that he won’t get better, but I know he won’t. But you want to believe that he will, you know? It’s hard to hear when the doctors say there’s no hope.”

But when he goes, I ask? How will you stand it? If you’re not invited to the funeral? If you can’t say goodbye?

“Well, he’s a fighter, so I think he’s going to hold on for a while. He’s come back so many times already. But when he goes, I want him to go peacefully. I want him to be comfortable.”

I am preparing for court, writing a report about Thomas, documenting our visits, what his doctors say, my perceptions of the people involved in the case. I am also making recommendations to the court about what it should do and why.

I look back through my notes and discover that I have no picture of Thomas. Pictures are important for foster kids so that they have a record of their chaotic and scattered lives in different households with different parents. For Thomas, a picture is important for another reason. I want the judge to see him — not for the drama of how bad he looks but to see that he’s real, to identify that this is a baby and to have that picture in his head while he reads my report.

I am praying that the judge will be merciful, that he will see the reasons to grant the DNR and that he will spot and judge harshly the self-interest that led the parents to fight it.

The Child Protective Services lawyer tells me not to worry — the judge will surely grant this DNR. Even with the parents fighting it, I ask? Well, that complicates it, of course, she says. How often does the juvenile court grant a DNR? Hmm … well, it hasn’t come up that often in my cases; I don’t know.

So I continue to stack my deck, filling my report with all of the reasons, all of the documentation, all of the letters from doctors who agree with me, and I make a mental note to get that picture of Thomas.

His parents’ fighting the DNR seems like the pragmatic thing to do, given the possible repercussions for them. But it also seems like the ultimate act of selfishness, and even though they have denied committing the abuse, this level of selfishness makes me believe that they did it, or at least knew about it. Because of them, Thomas’ abuse could be never-ending.

He could live forever in pain, in a vegetative state, growing bigger without growing up, suffering through countless surgeries, medicines, doctors, therapies and tubes shoved into him.

He also is being abused by the system, in the same way a rape victim is. He is forced to relive the original atrocity at least for the rest of his natural life, but possibly longer, because the court may allow his life to continue beyond its natural limits, even though he is suffering, and even though the only thing of which he is cognizant is pain.

I have no answers, and nothing I do will guarantee that the judge will grant the DNR. No positive outcomes are possible in this case. A baby is dying, and the question we’re fighting over is when and how. I can only hope that when he is ready to go, he is able to go, and that this happens on his terms. I hope that for this one final act of his short life, he is in control.