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Pieces of Me 5 Chapter 1 Gathering the Pieces Pieces of Me: Gathering Who do I Want to Be? Published by EMK Press © 2009 EMK Press all rights reserved. the unauthorized duplication prohibited to order, Pieces visit www.emkpress.com Remember when you opened the box and you saw all the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle? And then you wondered what to do next – dump them out or keep them in the box? Sort them by edges or by pattern? You were trying to figure out how to gather the pieces so you could put the puzzle together. It’s the same with our lives as adopted persons. We are trying to gather the pieces so we can put them together. We’re trying to reconnect with birth family or birth country. We’re trying to find a friend or role model. We’re trying to find ourselves. We’re trying to relate to our adoptive family or adoptive community. We’re trying to understand the importance of blood ties or birthmarks. We’re showing how it doesn’t have to make sense for it to be connected. We’re showing how gathering pieces helped us see our puzzle in new and revealing ways. This section tells these stories. With stories, art, poem, and passion, many have and are still trying to gather those pieces to figure out where they fit into our personal puzzles of who we are and who we want to be. 6 Gathering the Pieces My Birthmark: Finding My Real Family By Gerard Wozek rowing up, I was often teased because of an oddly shaped, dark G brown blemish that floats just below my navel. “Is that where the stork bit you?” I would sometimes hear my peers shouting out at me. “Is that where you’re growing another bellybutton or did you spill some ink near your waistline?” Even though the discolored blotch was only about the size of a quarter, the imperfection felt immense to me as an adolescent as well as through- out most of my teen years. It was so large in my mind that I never liked to go shirtless in public. At the beach, at the community swimming pool, even after gym class, when all the other boys were stripped down for their locker room showers, I’d wear my undershirt pulled down securely over this congenital skin anomaly. “It’s just a birthmark,” my high school best friend and next-door neigh- It was a bor Edward would often remind me in a consoling manner. “If you don’t clear make a such big deal about it, then no one else will.” But it was a big deal to me. It was a clear hereditary link to a family I hereditary grew up never knowing. It was the mark created at birth that identified me as part of a unique and particular tribe—a blood related brood that I link to a would never be able to locate because of the strict privacy laws in place family I during the time of my closed adoption that permanently sealed my birth records. grew up “See now this is where they cut the umbilical cord to my biological never mother,” I remember pointing out to Edward one day as we lay in our connecting backyards with our sixteen-year-old bellies exposed to the knowing. summer sun one afternoon. “And right underneath is the ‘mother-spot’ that connects me to my real mom, the woman who carried me for nine months only to give me up to the Catholic Charities, she is the woman I can never begin to imagine or really know as my real family.” The Dutch word “moedervlekken,” or “mother-spots,” refers to a birth- mark that an infant supposedly inherits solely from the mother. It is also claimed that the birthmark is a result of a mother’s unfulfilled hopes and unrequited desires. “So supposedly, you’re carrying all your biological mother’s disappoint- ed wishes with you then?” Edward said after a long while scrutinizing my uneven nevus in the stark sunlight. “Yes,” I responded. “And maybe the biggest regret was that she never got to know me. She never had the chance to see me grow up or had the opportunities to influence or plant in me the kinds of ideas and life les- Pieces of Me 7 sons that she would have hoped to.” I often fantasized about meeting my biological mother. I would imagine walking in a crowd of strangers, and suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I would see a striking birthmark on a woman’s forearm or neck or ankle that would match my own completely. Then I would look into her eyes and instantly recognize her as being the mother who was unable to keep me and raise me as her own child. For a long while growing up, I found myself actually examining people for conspicuous birthmarks that were similar to my own. I remember even asking my freshman composition teacher in high school if the spot under her earlobe was a mole or a beauty mark because it looked so identical to mine. Her initial response was a somewhat bewildered and flushed look that indicated perhaps I was being a bit too intrusive. But my whole life I’ve struggled to locate the obvious and identifiable attributes in others that might somehow connect me to them as family. In each of the close, biological families I knew of growing up, I was always able to discern a distinguishing physical or emotional feature that was prominent—a characteristic that would connect all of the clan members together. So it would make sense that as a teenager, I would seek out those noticeable familial traits in others that would suggest just exactly where I belonged. Whether it was a birthmark, or similar facial features, or a particular gait or disposition that corresponded to my own, I have always been searching for my true relations in the world. The fact However, my journey as an adoptee has led me to discover that what of the I’ve actually been doing all along is redefining and reinterpreting the notion of what exactly a family truly is. A family isn’t necessarily the one matter is, you are biologically connected to, or even and especially not the family as that you physically might resemble the most. The fact of the matter is, as adoptees, we choose our families—not because the other individuals adoptees, favor us through some identifiable characteristic or even share our indi- vidual tastes and proclivities. Rather, our selected families are comprised we of a mutual understanding of what is most important in life. This coordi- choose nation of values and sympathies extends beyond physical and mental aspects and goes to what is at the very core of our being. our I have met my real brother and my real sister and my real mother and families... my real father in the most uncommon of places. No, this chosen family does not share my bloodline or my experiences of childhood or even my eye-catching birthmark. But my selected family is as authentic and as gen- uine as any biological family that I know. We share a bond that connects us on the deepest of levels—as well as real-life struggles, misunderstand- ings, and disappointments as any related group does. Together, we enjoy the kind of understanding and shared values that I would hope for in any group of individuals that calls themselves a family: mutual respect, 8 Gathering the Pieces absolute trust, tempered patience, and unflinching honesty. If birthmarks really are unfulfilled wishes then that is what binds me to my biological mother. It is also what I have learned to accept as part of who I am—a complex portrait of someone who was delivered into the arms of another family from a mother who undoubtedly did have dreams and wishes for me. I’m certain, however, that one of her wishes has been fulfilled, the wish that I could locate a family that would care for me and love me in the most authentic of ways. Those are the qualities that make up the family that I have discovered—the family that I have chosen to be part of my life. That summer day long ago when my buddy Edward was scanning the imperfection just below my navel, he remarked that perhaps there might be another way of looking at my birthmark—another way in which I could interpret this small blemish which at the time felt so prominent to me. “Maybe your birthmark isn’t a symbol of a hopeless wish,” he said, “Maybe this is where your real mom kissed you as an infant, maybe this is where she pressed her lips as you were released into the world. And this permanent mark is your biological mother’s way of letting you know that she is like your guardian angel, always with you, right next to your umbilicus—the place where you were forever separated from her body.” After that revelation, I began to slowly lose my shame and embarrass- ment for my birthmark. I’ve come to understand that I was carried for nine months, and somehow really loved completely through that experi- ence and beyond it. I know that I carry my birthmother’s kiss wherever I go, a tangible, physical symbol of her devotion and concern, as I contin- ue to look for her indelible spirit in the faces of everyone I meet.

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