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.

The Rainbow Connection

As someone who is gay, coming out is a life-altering rite of passage. For years, you will likely have avoided the truth, pretended that you are normal, and that if you just try to be straight you can survive. Slowly, you are consumed by the fear that your friends and family won’t accept you. Before you come out, you panic, and examine every word and phrase that you say, ensuring that you haven’t given away your secret. When you finish all of that, accept that you need to be honest and truthful with yourself and those around you, and finally tell people, the relief that you are finally living your truth is indescribable.

Most people don’t even have a coming out experience. They are who they are, and can live their lives without needing to explain anything about who they are. If they do, they have one coming out experience so as to live honestly. Because of the letter from Xena, I was in the midst of my second, which is why I was increasingly furious that I was going to have to do it all again.

I mean, I didn’t have to tell people I’m adopted. I have a decent poker face. I could internalize this information and live my life, right?

Except, I couldn’t just live my life with a secret of this magnitude. If you’ve had to go through the process to explain to others about why being gay isn’t a choice, and it is part of who you inherently are. Admitting something about yourself to others, when others don’t have to (and often never will) do the same with you fundamentally changes you. Once you begin this endeavor you cannot fathom staying silent anymore. You have a need to be honest in all things. Anything untruthful becomes distasteful and dangerous to your well-being and sanity, as you have survived the double-life you once lived.

I was beginning to understand more and more why me being adopted bothered me. It wasn’t the adoption. In many ways, the adoption was both an answer to many questions and a relief. It was the fact that because I was never told, I was party to an inadvertent lie.

I was not OK with that.

While I’m well aware that for a lie to be an actual lie, there has to be intent to deceive. But, because a lie had been created about me, my circumstances, and it therefore involved me, which made me party to the lie, whether or not I wanted to be. When I introduce myself to my students, or to new friends, invariably what I believed to be my ethnicity and cultural identity came up. I was proud to be British. I was proud to be Portuguese. I loved describing myself in playful oxymoronic statements, like that I love coffee, but often drink tea.  Regularly, I would joke that I’m sort-of Hispanic, because of a misunderstanding on a government form.

Now, it was both a joke and not a joke. My identity was in flux, as was my integrity. I could no longer claim to be any of the things my parents were, because they were not my biological parents. I felt uneasy talking about anything which related to my perceived identity. But I struggled with the idea of standing in front of my students and being anything other than genuine with them. How can I encourage them to live honestly, if I have not been living honestly, even if I didn’t know?  Perhaps these were irrational thoughts, but I still struggled with them as I thought about getting back to “normal” life.

I was deep in these thoughts after my work out on Tuesday. As I got into the shower, one of my work-out buddies pointedly and unexpectedly asked if I was OK.

Clearly, I was not.

Guess my poker face wasn’t that good after all. It seemed a little too literal to expose myself to someone who is between acquaintance, friend, and co-worker while in the shower. I wasn’t ready to discuss this yet with anyone who wasn’t very close to me.

But, that doesn’t mean that I was incapable of laughing when one of my coworkers arrived in my classroom with a copy of Are You My Mother? by Dr. Seuss.

Some people might have found this in poor taste. I, however, thought it was hilarious. Even more so, because it was also available in Spanish. I mean, I might be Hispanic now. Who knew? Not I. At least not yet.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I took a picture of myself reading it and sent it to a few friends. I may have suggested that it would be my holiday card this year. Even better—I could make business cards and hand them out to strangers.

I may not be ready to discuss this with people yet, but my dark sense of humor has gotten a bit of an upgrade.

So…

I am curious…

Are you my mother?

Reactions and Revelations

I woke up and began to cook breakfast for everyone in the house. Again, I’m a fairly practical person. Everyone needed to eat. I like to cook. Being adopted doesn’t stop basic biological functions. It also didn’t stop the need to attend our friend’s wedding, which was lovely, but, I was unsurprisingly distracted. I became more so, when, upon arrival to the reception, I found my name card. It informed me my seat would be at table 12.

I like the number 12. There’s religious significance (I grew up in a stricter, evangelical church environment). Most of my friends have also been placed at table 12.  I joined them, and walked to table 12.

All the seats were filled at table 12.

So, I sat at table 13. A great, super lucky number for someone who has developed slight abandonment issues as a result of finding out he was adopted the day before. It seemed appropriate.

At the table were two friends from my school. Also, there were two younger couples. Next to me there were two empty seats. I soon realized that these were, in fact, “empty” seats, as they were actually occupied by toddlers who belonged to the two couples at our table.

Toddlers. Great. Because I wasn’t fixated on how as a child I was potentially given away. Nope. Not at all.

Also, children cry. I wasn’t really ready to cry, so being around small, crawling children who might cry heightened my anxiety about feeling things.

So, the wedding was really nice, given that there was a potential tropical storm slated to hit the coast where it was taking place.  The sun beamed, the music played, and I made small talk with the appropriate people.

I was pleased with myself for not asking every person of a reasonable age “Are you my mother?” or “Are you my father?”

Don’t get me wrong—I wanted to. I really wanted to grab the microphone and tell everyone my saga, and make them share my pain.

I didn’t want to ruin my friend’s wedding—though she had a second planned in New York the following week. I felt it might be in poor taste to upstage the bride and groom on their special day.

I furiously texted a few people. One of which, was my friend M. Since she’d been with me, digitally, through my break-down the day before, I felt it was appropriate to enlist her assistance. Her family was practically mine. I consider her parents to be like extra parents to me. Therefore, where else would I go to get support?

So, with M’s help, we organized a cookout for the next day, ensuring that her entire family would be there. I even thought to invite my best friend, C, for additional support.

The remainder of our trip was uneventful, and even pleasant. Upon arrival to the rental, we even facetimed a friend, J, just to see her reaction to the news. It was totally worth the facetime experience just to see her speechlessness and facial expressions.

Throughout the evening, we laughed, and talked, and I realized how thankful for my friends I was.

However, I also thought about additional things which bothered me. The first one being that because of this insanity, I would have to come out to people again (yes… again. I’m gay. You didn’t pick up on that from the name of this blog?). Not only that, but I’d been lying to people about who I am.

Well, not lying exactly. Lying implies that there was a knowing consent to avoid the truth, which was clearly not the case. But, for example, I begin each semester by sharing with my students my background. As an English teacher who was better at Math in school, I find it important to emphasize that the different perspectives we might have assist in the greater understanding of a given situation or reading. In telling my students I was ½ British and ½ Portuguese, I was 100% dishonest with them for my entire teaching career.

Rationally, I understand this was not my doing. Irrationally, I am annoyed and furious. Mainly, this is because, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s really important for me to be honest in everything I say and do. I think it’s partly because once you start telling people that you’re gay, honesty is the only way to continually ensure you live your truth. This, on a fundamental level, was something I’d been denied. For 33 years. Unsettling, to say the least.

So, Monday we arrive home. I go to the store, and get over to the B family cookout. I took my place in the kitchen, to begin cooking, waiting for my friends M and C to arrive. I get one dish finished, C arrives, so I make the request that we gather around to discuss something.

The family listens as I explain the past 48 hours… the email from Xena, the information that I was adopted, the confirmation from E…

I was expecting shock, or an expletive, or something visibly angry at my pain.

K (M’s mom) quietly responded by saying “We knew.”

WHAT?!?!?

“You knew? How?”

M’s sister, only three years older than me, said “I knew too…”

The only emotion I can fully relate about that was intense betrayal. How could these people, who have treated me like one of their own children (and siblings), not have told me that I was adopted?!?

K wraps her arms around me and gives me the hug I initially thought I wanted, but now wanted to push away, and begins to babble apologies… “I’m sorry... We should have told you! I’m so sorry... We really should have told you... You shouldn’t have found out this way… You’re like our son… We should’ve told you!”

And then I did something I continually keep doing in this topsy-turvy experience. I told K it was ok.

And this is where the cognitive dissonance I realized I had been experiencing since I found out became even more real.

See, I know I should be furious. I know I have been betrayed. I understand that there are intense emotions that I should be feeling because people that I love and who supposedly love me have kept this secret from me my entire existence. I should want to lash out. I should want to punch something. I should want to scream. Right?

But, as a person who has an above average amount of empathy and compassion, could I really expect anyone other than my parents to shoulder the burden to tell me? I mean, would you tell someone that he/she is adopted, knowing that they very well could react to that news in a negative way? Can you blame them for trusting in the idea that a person’s parents would do their job, and share the truth with their child?

I don’t know what stage of grief or acceptance or insanity I was experiencing, or still am experiencing, but I truly find myself unable to feel like I can direct my anger toward anyone in particular.

Except, maybe my mother.

Especially as I started reviewing conversations about how I must have inherited my dark, curly hair from her father…

But I digress.

So, I did what I thought and felt I needed to—hug the woman, and the man, who have literally taken me into their family and home, and tell them that I understand why they wouldn’t tell me. And that I know they love me. And that this just really sucks.

In looking at their daughter, M, I’ve never seen such fury. Ever. I thought she was going to fight her family.

“How could you not have told him? I would’ve told you!” she shouts. It’s also slightly directed at her sister. I realize that it might not have been a good plan to do this in the kitchen. There are knives in the kitchen. Because there are knives in the kitchen, there could be bloodshed.

And then, oddly, I know why I don’t harbor anger to anyone in the room. It’s because these people genuinely care about me and my well-being. M feels the anger I can’t for me. K and R feel guilt for hurting someone they love. M’s sister, K, explained that she threatened violence to anyone who might have told me when we were in high school, and there is a wariness that begins to recede in her eyes.  K’s husband, B, literally breaks into tears to experience the tears that have not yet arrived for me (well, other than the one break down. I mean, I am human… as far as I know…).

This is love. This amalgam of emotional response is what a family is, and it is mine. It might not be mine by blood, but it’s mine by choice, and shared experience, and genuine concern for one another.

And I realize that even if a fraction of my friends react this way (and, for the record, it’s pretty much all of them. My friends, I’m discovering, are the most amazing people in the world. More amazing than I expected them to be, actually. And this applies now to anyone reading, especially from your reactions.), then I am truly loved, and will make it through this. Their love makes me strong.

And it also lets me experience emotion that I cannot begin to process yet, so there is that too.

I might feel lost, but I’m definitely not alone. And, for now, that’s enough.