Complex Numbers

Adoption

4. I was adopted.

I've never made a secret of this, but it's not exactly something that comes up in casual conversation.

My parents never made a secret of it, either. One of my early memories involves me telling this to some shocked adult who had commented on my resemblance to my father.

Any physical resemblance to my father is coincidental. (What was that long-ago adult thinking, anyway? Dad had black hair and deep brown eyes and a huge Jewish honker. I had blond hair (since darkened) and blue eyes (which I still have) and a straight European nose.) Any other resemblance to my father is probably intentional on my part, and I take it as a compliment.

The first thing people usually ask me is, "Do you know who your biological parents are?" Which is a perfectly reasonable question. "Do you know who your real parents are?" gets an unequivocal "Yes," and nothing more. It's rude. Anyway, to answer the non-rude version, no, I don't. At least, not entirely. I've learned a name, which I discovered when I went through Dad's safe-deposit box after he was declared incompetent due to Alzheimer's. Actually, I learned two names, my biological mother's, and my birth name.

This latter surprised me. I mean, I always knew I had a biological mother and father, though I never knew or cared to know their names. But what I didn't know was that the person who birthed me had given me a name, before my adoptive parents gave me the name on my birth certificate.

The papers don't disclose my biological father's name, and to tell the truth, I haven't given him much thought. This was the mid-sixties in the midwest, and the sexual revolution was getting going. Even without that, it wasn't exactly unheard of for a woman in college to get knocked up and then give the kid away so as not to jeopardize her education or life. I suppose a few years later, when it was legal, it was more common for such women to get an abortion. I suppose I should be grateful for that, but really, if she'd gotten an abortion, I wouldn't be here to be ungrateful, so who cares? I'm completely pro-choice anyway.

I've known several people who were adopted, and there's nothing that we all have in common save that we were adopted. Some were abused; some were not. Some were pushed aside in favor of their parents' genetic offspring; others weren't. I can say that in my case, it made me know, for a fact, beyond a doubt, that my parents wanted me; some kids could think they were accidents, but never me.

It's just not something that matters, especially now that my parents are dead and, as best as I've been able to determine, my genetic mother died in '89. Could have been someone else with the same name who was in her late teens when I was born. I haven't looked deeper into it.

My birth name, discovered in my father's papers? Robert Waltz.

You don't think I'd use my real name on the internet, do you?