The Divine Secrets of the Yiayia Family-hood

Two days after I received all the adoption paperwork, I traveled to visit my grandmother, her son, and his wife.

Suddenly it made much more sense why we referred to her as my adopted grandmother.

You see, with my mother’s family in the UK, and my father’s family spread out, Yiayia (It’s grandmother in Greek. She’s Greek. Yay for a diverse and disconnected heritage!) lived next to us when I was brought home. She became my grandparent proxy, and has been there through everything important in my life. She has lived with her son and daughter-in-law for many years, which is how we were introduced. They now also blur the family line for me, acting like aunt and uncle and pseudo-parents too.

We spend multiple holidays throughout the year with my grandmother’s family. After almost 20 years and the addition of all of the children, and grandchildren, other family members, and friends gathered, celebrations like Thanksgiving, Easter, and other events are only real to me when we are together. They are all another example of why an adoptive family is not foreign to me, and why I am still so baffled by this experience. They all love me, and I love them, and we’re not related. It doesn’t matter.

Upon arrival for dinner we greeted each other warmly, and hugged, and chatted for a bit. I could tell that J and P were both wondering what prompted my call for dinner on a school night in the middle of the week. But, being kind, they didn’t push me, which is good since I am still no good at casually dropping my adoption into conversation.

P suggested I go get Yiayia from her rooms for dinner, which would be in about ten minutes.

Instead, I said, “OK… but before I do I need to let you guys know something.”

They both stopped and looked at me. “Um… Ok…”

“Before I get Yiayia, I wanted you to know that part of the reason I wanted to come over to dinner tonight was, besides wanting to spend time with you, was that I just found out that I was adopted.”

My heart was in my throat again. I really hate having to say this, especially to people who likely knew. However, their reaction made this time worth it.

“Oh thank God! We’ve been fighting with your parents for years about telling you.”

 A tension I hadn’t officially noticed in my stomach and my back suddenly unclenched. They knew… but they also actively said something to my parents about telling me? That was new. And important. And… I cannot express how much positive emotion sprang from this realization that people I love fought for me to know about myself. To this point, no one else had reacted this way. I was almost speechless.

“You fought with my parents about telling me?”

“Of course. You had a right to know!”

And, right then, if possible, I loved them both a little bit more than I did before.

We talked for a few more minutes before I went to get my grandmother for dinner. They suggested that I tell Yiayia before dinner, so we could all talk at dinner. I agreed.

I climbed the stairs, suddenly lighter than I anticipated. I gave my grandmother a hug, and I told her what I’d found out. She hugged me, genuinely happy that we could finally be truthful. She also told me that I was and would always be her grandson. Nothing changes that.

It’s amazing how hearing little things like that make such an intense impact on you.

I burst into tears.

For anyone who knows me, and for those who don’t, I will remind you all that I generally have a short range of emotions. Excitement, frustration, and sarcastic. That’s pretty much it. I don’t love human contact, unless we are very close, and can count on one finger how much I cry, on average, per year.

I liked to think that it was my cold, cold British heart that only showed affection to dogs and horses. Except, I can’t officially claim that any more. So, I guess I have 33 years of emotions to experience. And I started feeling many of them at that moment, while hugging my grandmother.

We made it downstairs, and started eating. And I had 1,000,000 questions. I started by explaining what my father had told me, trying to be clear about every detail he’d shared.

After I was done, Yiayia offered what she knew. My grandmother’s version of events was very clear, and matter of fact… and different from the events my father shared.

Not everything was different, because she wasn’t involved in the meeting or the adoption paperwork. However, there were things she said that made more sense, and aligned more with what Xena and my friend E had said.

“If I’m not mistaken, your mother as a student at American University in Washington DC. Possibly your father too. They were both musicians, as I’m sure your father told you.”

“No… he said my biological father might have played oboe… but nothing specific about either of them. And, remember, my biological father didn’t seem to want much to do with me.”

“That’s not true.”

My heart stopped. “What?”

“That’s simply not true. I was at your house at least once, possibly twice, when he called to check up on you. I remember specifically because your mother didn’t know how to respond to him.”

“Seriously?!?”

“Yes. Please don’t think he didn’t care. He cared enough to make sure you were alright.”

This changed everything. He wanted to make sure I was doing OK? Does that mean that my father didn’t meet him on a subway platform to sign me away? I mean, someone who cared probably wouldn’t do that, would he? Or maybe it was just guilt for signing me away on a metro platform.

Either way, it gave me hope that if I ever found him, he might want to talk to me. And that changed everything because it was the motivation I needed to start looking for him.

But it also meant that my father’s version of events needed to be called into question. His narrative was flawed.

The rest of the evening was spent discussing and dissecting what I knew, what I didn’t know, and what my current plan would be to begin researching my biological parents, in order to find them.

Two big revelations of the evening:

The first came when P, J’s wife, asked me unexpectedly, “Out of curiosity… How did your mother react when you came out to her?”

“Not well. After I told her, there were three days of crying, and avoiding me, and both of us generally feeling awful. She came into the guest room/office area of our house, since I still lived at home. I was grading, and she needed to use the fax machine. When she saw me, she gave me a terse ‘Oh. Hello.’

I looked at her after a very awkward pause and asked her the following. ‘Mom… do you remember how you always told me as I grew up that you would love me no matter what? That even if I were a murderer you would love me?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘I just wasn’t sure if me being gay would be worse than that.’

And she stopped for a moment, and looked at me for the first time in three days. As she took the paper from the fax machine, she stopped again, looked at me and gave me this encouraging gem:

‘Oh… Well… Don’t get AIDS.’ And then left.

I think that pretty much sums up how she took my coming out.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah… not the best, most welcome reaction.”

I suddenly realized this is probably why I was so hesitant about telling people about this, and other life-changing situations. It stemmed to my mom’s reaction when I came out. I also realized that I was allowing myself to have that reaction.

That had to stop.

If I was allowing it, then I could stop allowing it. I could empower myself to tell everyone and take back the power of this situation by telling my story. It’s one of the main reasons why I started writing this blog.

The second realization came when J asked me about how I was reconciling the different version of events, between my father and everyone else, and how I realized it also applied to my adoption.

I related it to a gigantic game of telephone, where it would appear that my father’s version of events was also echoed and altered by his own experience. Given that he is now the sole person who knows any first-hand knowledge, and how in everything he told me about my adoption, he was the central figure of how I joined his family. This, I continued, is not surprising, given that my father tends to have narcissistic tendencies, and often changed events when it suited his purpose.

I cited a few specific situations that had occurred in one way at their origin, and then another way years later when each story’s events were no longer relevant and needed to be adapted to perpetuate his series of events.

J laughed and said “Oh… so you are aware of that. Good.”

This is the second reason I needed to write everything down.

It’s no longer anyone’s story but mine. Everyone in my life are players in this production. And I did need as much information from people who were around at the time of my adoption to share with me everything they knew. However, their understandings of events are clouded both by over three decades of time passing, and of love and affection for my parents and me, and of the echo chamber that happens when people talk amongst themselves about a given situation and, eventually, their stories conjoin into a more unified series of events.

The final realization for the evening: I have more support than I realized before walking into dinner. I’m really lucky. Even though there is no one else who knows what I’m going through. Not really.

Well, except for the possible half-brother Yiayia seems to believe my mother gave birth to and gave up for adoption the year before I was.

He might know.

Yeah. Bomb dropped.