Someday, Maybe, Baby, This Could Break Your Heart.

I'm parenting a child with a closed adoption. While we lack the connectedness to his birth parents, my son doesn't consciously notice their absence yet. He's too young. As a parent, it's too easy to take comfort in not having the privilege of negotiating roles, relationships, and rules. But the responsible, forward-thinking part of me looks forward to an eventual reunion between my child and his birth parents. When he's ready, of course, on his terms.

But... what if he's ready, and they're not? What if he knocks, and door remains shut? What then, do I say to my child?

When the boy I dote on grows into a six foot tall man, with stubble on his cleft chin. How will I look into the face, the now-porcelain skin turned rough; years of enjoying life carving delicate creases in the folds of his mouth and eyes? Can I look at him someday and see a grown man instead of the little boy I cherish now? Can I look into his adult face and break the heart of a man, knowing that the soul of my small child is still there, just below the surface?

How will my spirited, emotional son manage? How does it feel to be placed for adoption once as a child, and to be told "no" as an adult by the same family members that weren't able to raise you?

I asked a dear friend of mine - an adult adoptee - who had been turned down by his birth relatives in his own search. He's guarded. Not wanting to say too much, not wishing to superimpose his feelings, emotions, and experience onto my son, when he's years away from such a possibility.

"I... just want to know WHY." he said simply. "Just why." 

Not good enough...I thought. To leave a grown man still wondering, still searching, half a century later.

I scoured our library. Lots of books on reunion. Stories of twists in fate reconnecting families. Tales of sometimes awkward, sometimes distant relationships. Of once-or-twice meetings followed by a return to the usual worlds. Booklets outlining how and where to search. Groups devoted to supporting adoptees and birth relatives on the road to reunion.

But nothing devoted entirely to refusals. Isn't that painfully ironic?