Not exactly a piece of cake...

After a weekend’s break from all of the insanity of the previous week, I decided that I was ready to get my adoption paperwork from my father after school on Monday. Before I did, though, I had planned to meet one of my oldest friends for coffee.

We agreed to meet at a local Starbucks, catching up on our lives, as the school year is a busy time for both of us as we are both teachers.  As we spoke, I knew I had to drop the bomb that I was no longer sure was a bomb. I still hadn’t perfected a way to ease into the information, so I just smashed the wall instead.

“So… I found an email last week from four years ago. It told me I was adopted.”

“Oh…”

The level of butterflies someone must have in his/her stomach before asking a semi-life altering question is really nothing compared to this anxiety of everyone, even your close friends, potentially knowing so much more about you than you do. It’s unnerving, and terrifying, and saddening. And it’s something I’ve now had to go through, and may continue to go through, repeatedly. Forever.

And, I decided, no matter what her response was, it was the last time I would feel it (Now, I can’t say that the feeling has disappeared entirely, but I’m gaining more and more grace in realizing that everyone must carry on in daily life, and if it involves keeping a secret, it means keeping a secret. Otherwise, we couldn’t function. Welcome to humanity!).

“You knew, didn’t you? It’s ok if you did. Apparently everyone knew. Except me.”

“Well, I didn’t know for sure… My dad made a comment once. It was strange, and what he said clearly implied something about you being adopted, but I didn’t ask the follow up question to know for sure. If I had, and I found out for sure, I would’ve had to tell you. And It wasn’t my place to tell you.”

It’s never going to be entirely easy for me to hear a response like this again. The “I knew, but I didn’t want to tell you” response. I still can’t fully describe it. It’s not anger, exactly, but more a mix of frustration, confusion, hurt, with a slight burn of an anger chaser, and all because people were afraid of sharing the truth. And even though it’s from a good, though misguided attempt, at kindness, it still is a very trying, bittersweet experience and still stings.

We discussed so much.  It was good talking about everything that had happened with someone who has known me for almost my entire life, especially the new context it gave me about so many things. It allowed me to start to think about some of the things that my mother had said to me, or situations where people’s reactions to things made much better sense, or even comments I vaguely recollected from classmates in elementary school.

We said our goodbyes, and I went off to get whatever adoption paperwork my father had for me. I let him know I was coming and drove over.

The anticipation for what would be in that file was almost overwhelming.  I walked into my father’s condo, greeted him with a half-hearted hug and asked for the paperwork. He gave it to me, but asked me to dinner.

He had to be kidding—I couldn’t eat. I needed to read every single page that was enclosed in this folder.

I declined, and rushed home. I sat down and tore open the file.

There were so many random things inside. Thank goodness my father kept them all. Documents in legalese that detailed what was happening, or would happen soon after. Doctor’s receipts. Letters from my father’s lawyer. The adoption agreement. The final court proceedings. And, on these legal documents, the paperwork which had my parent’s names on it.

My roommate was watching as I opened all of this. I can only imagine what he thought as the following happened:

I gasped loudly as I read my mother’s name. And then I started to laugh. We were back to the crazy, maniacal laughter from the day I first read Xena’s email, it seemed.

I kept reading, and continued laughing as I read my father’s name. And then I said (some say said aloud… some say shouted…) “You’ve got to be joking. You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

I then explained that my mother was apparently named after someone who met the business end of the guillotine for wanting people to eat cake, and my father’s name was now synonymous with a famous TV drug dealer who was less of a baker, and more of a cook.

My mother’s name was Marie Antoinette? Seriously?

I was pretty convinced this story couldn’t get any stranger.

I have decided to stop thinking such things. The universe always seems to up the ante to prove me wrong.

I’ll admit. I was wrong. This was much stranger than I expected.

I suppose it takes a queen to make a queen. And I like to bake... and cook. So, I suppose that makes sense.

But as the laughter subsided, I slowly realized the universe’s crueler joke-truth in the paperwork. My biological mother, whose last name is very will different now than it was when I was born, did have a complete address from Washington DC, while my biological father’s details only included a city in Maryland.

Why would I see this as a joke? Because with the distinct possibility that my mother might have gotten married at some point, her last name has likely changed, as well as her address.

And the person whose name hasn’t likely changed never disclosed an address to begin with, and had a name that was both relatively common as well as recognizable to practically everyone on earth because of a television show. Google searches have provided little assistance. Believe me.

So I started reading through every word of everything. I was fascinated at the story these documents told. How could I not be?

As I came upon the paperwork for the final adoption proceedings, I had a moment of suspended disbelief.

First, the final adoption went through of August of 1983, which made the timeline my father shared with me inaccurate.

Second, in reading this document, it actually had a statement from the lawyer to the court, that, if, for whatever reason, the court didn’t grant my adoption to my parents, he implored the court to allow himself be adopted by my parents… 

Just like my father said when we spoke.

And it was in the documents. Legal court documents.

In so much of this experience, each time I take one step forward, I then immediately take one step back; the more information I gain, and less information it seems I have. The simultaneous feeling of knowing both more and less is so odd and difficult to describe. But, it’s why I keep describing it as cognitive dissonance, except deeper and more confusing, like I'm a living example of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

However, in this case, I was more confused and less confused, because at least one specific thing in my father’s story was documented—the statements from the state's lawyer. Yet, at the same time, the timeline he shared was not accurate. Then there's the lack of a physical address for my biological father, which seemed to indicate that, perhaps, my father was correct in saying that my biological father wasn't interested in me.

Or maybe he always came to the office to sign paperwork.

I didn’t, and still don't, know what to think.

Why was there seemingly contradictory information? Was I ever going to get an easy answer from all of this?

Apparently not. At least not tonight.

I waded through the final pages to find an envelope I had somehow missed before. It was titled “The Final Documents” and written in my father’s script. I flipped it over, and began to open it, assuming it was my final, approved adoption paperwork.

I also thought to myself, Wow. I didn’t realize that there were self-adhesive envelopes in the early 1980’s. Cool.

As I opened the envelope, I slowly realized it was a trap. It was a trap!

These were not documents about my adoption. They were a letter from my father.

A five page letter from my father.

You know, because I had asked for space on Friday night.

What better way to give someone some space than to write them a five page letter? It’s not obtrusive or cowardly at all.

I threw down the paperwork onto the easy chair and shouted a few choice expletives. By few, there was a string of ten to twenty words which would make sailors blush and ensure a movie be granted an R rating, spewed in very quick succession.

My roommate, I think, found it mildly amusing and slightly concerning. He asked what I found.

I explained why I was screaming curses as I shoved the letter back into the envelope and put everything back into the folder. I then promptly decided we needed to get out of the house and go eat something.

Oddly I wanted cake… with blue sprinkles....

I mean, it’s what Marie thought we all wanted. Who was I to disappoint?