My mother, like so many others, was shunned and shamed and forced to be silent for the whole of her life. Many girls never went on to have more children. Many more have died alone with their sorrow. Too many have not searched for their children.
What happens inside a person under such conditions? What slips inside the brain or the psyche or even the soul to make such an experience bearable? How does a person—a mother—go on? I cannot know the answer to these questions. They are impossible for me to ponder.
My heart breaks for my mother and what she has endured. I have no right to judge her and when I find I am judging her, I make myself think again—I push my heart to open wider still. I look for the love that is my original connection to Catherine and I keep my focus there.
I wish my mother well.
BACK IN THE car for the last leg of our drive, the children are eager to pick up the story of the kite rider, who now ties himself to a kite and has become the one who casts himself out—despite the danger.
Sarin and Ray are very quiet. They eat snacks. They pay sharp attention.
This is no Disney tale. In fact, it’s a terrible tale of cruelty to children and the abuses of those who hold power. The plot twists like paper in the wind. The powerful get more powerful. The weak become weaker. In the end, the child nearly dies and finally goes blind in one eye. He cannot continue as a kite rider. Instead he makes kites and decides a better life is one where he keeps his feet firmly on the ground.
I like the book, I guess. It’s an award winner recommended by the librarian but I hope it wasn’t too much. I turn off the CD.
“Whew,” I say. “What a story.” I practically wipe my brow.
Sarin and Ray say nothing. Neither of them breathes a sigh of relief.
If Spencer and Jo were in the car, they would be outraged, surprised, and even shocked at the injustices in the story and the way the characters behaved. Both would ask a thousand questions that I’d attempt to answer while also trying to protect them from the fact that outrageous injustice exists.
But for Sarin and Ray, the story of a child cast on the winds is not unusual. A child who suffers isn’t something new. They are old beyond being seven and nine.
As I watch them in the rearview mirror, these little recognizable strangers who occupy my heart, I wonder how far they will be unfurled in their own lives, before, like me, they find a way to reel themselves in again. Will they go home to their mothers and families in India and Vietnam? Will their adoptive families have the courage and wisdom to give them that gift, even if the children don’t ask to go home? Will those families also be there to support their charges if birth families reject them a second time around? Will they survive? Will they be happy? Will they be whole?
We cross a long bridge that takes us to the edge of North America, just outside Astoria. Tonight the class will camp at a park a few miles beyond Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark stopped their westward journey, took a break for the wet winter, and then turned around to return east. This bridge, more than two miles long, crosses the Columbia River as the river meets the Pacific Ocean. The children look over the waves of the sea. Do they know, not far away, lies Russia and beyond is Vietnam and India?
Sarin asks if she can open the window. She wants to feel the wind on her face.
“You bet,” I say. I roll down all the western windows and the inside of the car fills with the salty taste of the sea. Wind whips napkins and empty wrappers around the interior of the car. Sarin and Ray laugh.
The purity of their sound rearranges my cells and brings such hope to my heart and soul.
ON THE OTHER end of the bridge, the caravan reaches its destination and we all park.
In tight clusters, children emerge from cars and run to the campground, chasing each other and yelling to unleash pent-up energy. Jo Jo sprints off with her best friends, Grace and Marbella. Their giggles fly through the air.
The other drivers look tired, worn out, and even harried.
I get out of the car and stretch my arms and my legs. Sarin and Ray do the same. I am not tired.
“Good trip, you guys,” I say. “You are wonderful travelers.”
“Do we go back home with you?” Ray asks, taking hold of my right hand.
“Yes, of course, I’m your guide.”
Sarin takes my left hand. “Good,” she says.
Before we cross the road and join the others, I look both ways, which is rather silly and redundant. There’s no car on the road and we are the only ones out here. But I can’t help it.
Off in the distance is the ocean and the sun goes down, turning the sea the color of steel. I get Sarin and Ray across the road, safe and sound, and release them to the group.
The End
END NOTE
SINCE THE CREATION of this book, I have been involved in many conversations about adoption and have attended several conferences. I am a member of The Adoption Mosaic in Portland, Oregon, which offers support to all members of the triad, which include adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth families. I maintain a close connection to the leaders in the field and am a member of Concerned United Birthparents as well as the American Adoption Congress.
My general feeling about adoption is that we are not thinking very well about this very important subject, nor are we applying common sense to the biological connection of mother and child.
Is this lack of thought due to the fact that there is just so much money to be made in the field of adoption? From lawyers to agencies to intermediaries and over to churches, adoption is a big business.
Perhaps our lack of thought also comes from a strong need to idealize family and to behave as if everything is perfect—when it’s not.
It’s hard to know why we do as we do, but when we adopt, we face a myriad of complex challenges and opportunities that must be faced, discussed, and resolved.
Adoptive parents must be better informed.
Birth mothers must be better informed.
Adoptees must be better informed.
IT IS DISTRESSING to learn that the U.S. leads the world as the single largest adoption nation. It seems startling to me that Americans are so fast on the scene of international disasters, and we scoop up orphan children and have them adopted into U.S. homes before body counts are added up.
Imagine if a collective of Chinese emissaries rushed to our shores after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina and took off with Louisiana babies. Or say a collective of Australian humanitarians came to Manhattan after 9/11 and hauled away orphans. These scenarios are ludicrous, and yet this is what American representatives are doing under the guise of being helpful.
Helpful is keeping children within their own culture and empowering the people of those lands with resources, food, medicine, and water. Helpful is helping children to grieve and move forward in their lives with dignity. It is not helpful to take a child, in the midst of a crisis, from her land and her people.
Nor is it helpful, within our boundaries, to take a child from a mother due to her economic struggles, her age, or even her education. It is helpful to offer support, education, and solutions.
We can fund wars and build bombs, but we cannot empower mothers to keep and care for their children?
Yes, much thought and much conversation are needed on adoption.
The high instances of mental health disturbance in adoptive children and grown adoptees are stunning, and yet, there is little to no recognition of why. I once listened to a high-level government official and lawyer (who is an adoptive mother as well) explain that she felt there were higher instances of mental health issues in adoptees due to poor reporting—prior to placement—by birth parents.
Her comments held no recognition of the practical and welldocumented evidence that shows trauma occurs in a baby at the time of separation from the birth mother.
This gap in the conversation needs to be straddled and I hope we, in future generations, can recognize that displaced children have legacies, genetics, and lineages that predate
placement in their adoptive homes.
Think of this practically. If you or I found a small child in the aisles of a grocery store—lost and crying for her mother—would we snap the child up, strap her into our car, and drive away while admonishing her to “forget that mommy, I’m your mommy now”? Of course not. That would be kidnapping. Yet this is exactly what we do when we adopt and somehow this is legal.
Adoption, in an open situation, is humane.
Adoption where the baby is given a time of physical proximity to the birth mother is also more enlightened as it allows a more healthy development of the child’s brain.
Reunion, at some point in the adoptee life, is vital.
I do not have answers for how to structure adoption to make these scenarios manageable.
I do believe women, especially the educated women of the West, have the power to heal this world. I also believe that in honoring and empowering women worldwide, we will certainly come to the obvious conclusion that our future is our children. To create generations of children nurtured by their mother’s touch and care will make this a world worth living in.
I suggest more conversation, more compassion, much more common sense, and much better thinking. I also suggest we place children not last but first.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER we took a break from the reunion, Catherine and I spoke again and reinitiated our reunion process. In our time apart, we had both entered support groups and have now agreed to know each other with care and caution. We may never find our way fully home to each other. Perhaps sometimes, it’s enough to just try.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WRITING IS A MOST personal journey, but to bring a book to the world is a collective endeavor. This story may not have been written, and certainly would not have been published, had it not been for the conviction, insight, and perseverance of my agent, Anne Edelstein. Thank you, Anne, for your high standards in craft and storytelling. Thank you for telling me, again and again, what this story was truly about.
Thank you to Seal Press and my editor Brooke Warner. It is an honor to work with fearless women who are ready to take on the tough issues of our time.
Thank you to Nancy Verrier. I am quite certain no one else could have pressed me to take that final step in the journey and to finally find my mother.
Thank you Rogelio, the kids, and of course, Steve. It’s not easy to live with a writer or to understand her ways. My family bends around me and I am blessed.
Thank you to my beloved friend Anne Gudger for listening to each revision with such interest and insight.
Thank you to my mentor, Dinah Lenney, and to the Rainier Writing Workshop as well as Stan Rubin and Judith Kitchen.
And great enduring thanks to my spiritual teachers: H.H., Rinpoche, Jetsuma, Anne Klein of Dawn Mountain, and Joanna Macy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JENNIFER LAUCK HAS WRITTEN THREE MEMOIRS and a collection of essays, including the New York Times bestselling Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found. She has her MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University, her BA in journalism from Montana State, and was an award winning investigative TV reporter.
Lauck has studied Tibetan Buddhism for nearly ten years, is a dedicated meditation student, and has received teachings from many great masters including the H.H. Dalai Lama, Lama Adzom Rinpoche, and Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy.
Lauck teaches writing in area high schools for Literary Arts, conducts private seminars on her technique known as Transformative Writing, and speaks nationally on issues of adoption, motherhood, transcendence, happiness, and writing as a way to heal. She is at work on a novel and makes her home in Portland, Oregon, where she is happily married and raising her son, Spencer and her daughter, Josephine.
Learn more about Lauck, her teachings, and her writing at www.jenniferlauck.com.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SEAL PRESS
For more than thirty years, Seal Press has published groundbreaking books.
By women. For women.
A THOUSAND SISTERS: MY JOURNEY INTO THE WORST PLACE ON EARTH TO BE A WOMAN, by Lisa Shannon, foreword by Zainab Salbi. $24.95, 978-1-58005-296-2. Through her inspiring story of turning what started as a solo 30-mile run to raise money for Congolese women into a national organization, Run for Congo Women, Lisa Shannon sounds a deeply moving call to action for each person to find in them the thing that brings meaning to a wounded world.
THE CHELSEA WHISTLE: A MEMOIR, by Michelle Tea. $15.95, 978-1-58005-239-9. In this gritty, confessional memoir, Michelle Tea takes the reader back to the city of her childhood: Chelsea, Massachusetts—Boston’s ugly, scrappy little sister and a place where time and hope are spent on things not getting any worse.
SWEET CHARLOTTE’S SEVENTH MISTAKE, Cori Crooks. $18.95, 978-1-58005-249-8. In this stunning visual memoir, Cori Crooks searches for her identity among the old photographs, diary entries, and letters left behind by her delinquent family.
MAMALITA: AN ADOPTION MEMOIR, by Jessica O’Dwyer. $16.95, 978-1-58005-334-1. A harrowing, heartbreaking, and inspiring memoir detailing an ordinary American woman’s quest to adopt a baby girl from Guatemala in the face of overwhelming adversity.
THE QUARTER-ACRE FARM: HOW I KEPT THE PATIO, LOST THE LAWN, AND FED MY FAMILY FOR A YEAR, by Spring Warren. $16.95, 978-1-58005-340-2. Spring Warren’s warm, witty, beautifully-illustrated account of deciding—despite all resistance—to get her hands dirty, create a garden in her suburban yard, and grow 75 percent of all the food her family consumed for one year.
WANDERLUST: A LOVE AFFAIR WITH FIVE CONTINENTS, by Elisabeth Eaves. $16.95, 978-1-58005-311-2. Documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures as a young woman traveling the world.
FIND SEAL PRESS ONLINE
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FOUND
A MEMOIR
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Lauck
Published by
Seal Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, California
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lauck, Jennifer.
Found : a memoir / Jennifer Lauck.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-580-05406-5
1. Lauck, Jennifer. 2. Adoptees—United States—Biography. 3. Abandoned
children—United States—Biography. 4. Birthparents—United States. 5. Iden-
tity (Psychology) I. Title.
HV874.82.L378A3 2011
362.734092—dc22
2010038734
The author has changed some names, places, and recognizable details to protect the privacy of people mentioned in the book.
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found Page 19
