When people hear \u201cadoption\u201d, they get this idea in their head that it only happens to orphans or kids who were abandoned. The funniest response I ever got to someone hearing that I\u2019m adopted came from one of my 2nd grade classmates, because her way of making sense of the situation was to say \u201cOh so you\u2019re like little orphan Annie, that makes sense because you have red hair\u201d. But when most people find out that I\u2019m adopted, they often get very confused. For starters, I look just like my Mom, which always throws people for a loop. Then I have to do the whole explanation of \u201cmy Mom is my biological mom, but my Dad is my adoptive dad\u201d to which many people have said things along the lines of \u201cOh so you\u2019re not <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> adopted, he\u2019s your step dad,\u201d as if I am a silly girl who does not understand my own family setup. I do understand that my situation is confusing, because from an outside perspective my family doesn\u2019t fit the mold of a typical adoptive family. But every time that I hear someone else try to explain my own life story to me, I still feel frustrated. For most of my life I thought that I was irritated because people tried to tell me that I was wrong or talked to me like I was stupid, which is still part of the reason, but now I\u2019m thinking that their word choice played a part in my emotions as well. You see, a lot of times a \u201cstepfamily\u201d implies that the other half of the biological family is still there too, or at least still considered to be a part of the family. It\u2019s a cliche to hear in movies and books to hear a stepparent say something like \u201cI will never try to replace your dad\/mom\u201d, but the thing is, my Dad <\/span>did <\/span><\/i>replace my biological father. Being a \u201cstep\u201d is adding on an additional parental role, but adoption is legally taking over in place of the biological parent. If I were to call him a \u201cstep\u201d dad, not only would that be incorrect in the eyes of the law, but that would not be an accurate depiction of the role that he plays in my life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Every year on October 18th my parents tell the same story on the anniversary of my adoption. All of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, my parents and I were gathered in the courtroom, and like a typical 4 year old I simply would not sit still. I was jumping around from lap to lap to see who would entertain me (and also to see which of my grandmas had candy hidden in their purse, of course). My Mom fondly remembers how the judge presiding over our case said \u201cWell I think you all are making the right decision here, because by the way she acts I can\u2019t tell who the adoptive side of the family would be!\u201d Dad remembers how as we were all leaving the courtroom, our judge said to him \u201cCases like this are the best part of my job. I see so many families getting torn apart in this room that it\u2019s nice to see one getting brought together.\u201d In my day to day life, I don\u2019t call any of them my \u201cadoptive\u201d family, even though legally that\u2019s technically what they are. As far as I am concerned they are my family period, and adoption is just the process that lets the rest of the world know what we had all already decided: that we are a family even if we don\u2019t all share blood.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My biological father has seen me exactly once. He was there in the hospital after I was born, which I know to be true because my Mom has told me that she has a picture of him holding me right before he signed over all parental rights to her. She has said that I can see this picture any time that I would like, but I always lie and say that I\u2019m not curious. I tell her that I have the only dad that I could ever need so why would I need to see a picture of someone who I don\u2019t know. This is a partial truth, I do want to make sure that I don\u2019t give my Dad any reason to think that he hasn\u2019t been enough of a dad for me. But the other reason is that sometimes I just want to pretend that my biological father doesn\u2019t even exist, so maybe it won\u2019t hurt as much that he didn\u2019t want the responsibility of being my parent. When I was growing up I was angry at my biological father because I didn\u2019t understand. In cheesy movies and tv shows, the parent, who is hesitant about having a child at first, sees their helpless perfect baby for the first time and their whole world changes. All their concerns and hesitations slip away as they fall in love with their tiny child. How could he hold me in his arms and still decide that he wanted nothing to do with me? Why wasn\u2019t I good enough to magically make him want to stay? I was a <\/span>child<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The thing is, now that I am older, I understand better why my biological father took the out when he had the chance. He was <\/span>eighteen years old<\/span><\/i> when I was born, practically a child himself. When I finally reached the age of eighteen myself, when a person is legally considered to be an adult, is when it really began to sink in just how young eighteen actually feels. They were children too.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I was born, my Mom was in the best possible situation a teenage parent could be in. While her parents certainly weren\u2019t overjoyed that their eighteen year old daughter was having a baby, they still loved the two of us wholeheartedly. My grandparents put a roof over our heads, and bought us food and clothes, and took care of me for free so my Mom could continue getting a college degree. I don\u2019t know what support my biological father had. If I were in his shoes, would I give up my own future if I knew that the child would be given more love and care than they could possibly know what to do with, even if I weren\u2019t around? It\u2019s not like he skipped town as soon as my Mom got pregnant, he was <\/span>there<\/span><\/i> after I was born, he made sure to know that I was safe and well taken care of, even if it wasn\u2019t by him. Maybe he was just a kid who did what he thought was best.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I was 14 years old, my parents drove me, my two younger sisters, and my Dad\u2019s parents fifteen hours to visit my Dad\u2019s family in Canada because his nana was dying. We were tired, hungry, and feeling rather gross after being in the car all day, but Nana Molly wanted us to come straight to visit her in the nursing home before visiting hours end, and how do you say no to a dying woman?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We all crowd together in a room that is much too small, and take turns sitting on the one metal chair that is the only other place to sit other than the bed. Eventually the adults step out of the room to go speak with the caretakers, about what I don\u2019t remember, leaving us three children with Nana Molly. We stand in uncomfortable silence in the presence of this woman that we barely know, but know that we\u2019re supposed to love because she is family, when suddenly in an attempt to ease the tension she turns to my younger sister, Brianna. \u201cOh come here Brianna,\u201d she says kindly \u201clet me get a better look at my first grandbaby, my eyesight isn\u2019t so good anymore\u201d. In that moment I am paralyzed and my whole world shrinks down to one word.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her \u201c<\/span>first<\/span><\/i>\u201d grandbaby. My <\/span>younger<\/span><\/i> sister.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I feel like I\u2019ve been slapped in the face, although part of me would have preferred that because physical pain would fade faster. Somewhere along the way I had begun to take for granted that everyone who I considered to be my family had accepted me into their family right back, up until this point.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I had decided to keep quiet about the whole thing until we get back to the place where we were sleeping for the week when Brianna goes \u201cWhy did Nana Molly think that I\u2019m the oldest?\u201d and suddenly chaos ensues. The adults bombard us with questions that embarrass my already injured pride as they ask what was said and demand to know my feelings about the matter that I am not quite ready to face yet. I feel like a child for being upset, because even then I knew that Nana Molly\u2019s intentions were not to be hurtful. And besides, why should an offhand statement from a woman I barely know hit me so hard? But it\u2019s her obliviousness to my very existence in the family that cuts so deep. She didn\u2019t know that what she said would be hurtful because she didn\u2019t know that this is my family just as much as it is hers.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The adults make the decision for me that, even though they too are upset by her careless statement, they will not say anything to Nana Molly because she could die any day now and they do not want their last memories with her to be a fight. Half of me is relieved because I want the whole thing to just go away, but the other half is crushed that they don\u2019t find it necessary to explain to her that <\/span>I do<\/span><\/i> belong in the family. I want someone to scream it from the rooftops that I belong here, but I\u2019m embarrassed that they\u2019d even need to do that in the first place. That night, I cried myself to sleep in anticipation of a full week in that cramped room in the nursing home, making polite conversation with a woman who happens to share my relatives but still doesn\u2019t consider me to be a part of her family. The pitying looks I receive from my family over the course of that week are a special form of torture.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t die until over a year later.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When my parents were getting married, my Dad made it very clear that he wanted all three of us to share his last name. He didn\u2019t want to be seen by the world as just \u201csome guy\u201d to my Mom and I, he wanted us all to be a family. At the same time, my Mom didn\u2019t want to change my original last name because the name \u201cLaley\u201d was a part of my identity for the first 3 years of my life. She wanted me to keep the name because it was something honoring my Grandparents who had been integral in raising me for the first years of my life. Both of my parents intimately understood that names have power. Why my Dad didn\u2019t want to take <\/span>our<\/span><\/i> original last name instead of us taking his is a mystery to me. After all, he was outnumbered 2 to 1 with who already was sharing the same last name. It would\u2019ve been easier in some ways if he had taken our name instead. If I had to guess, it was probably something to do with society and gender roles, especially since my Mom didn\u2019t seem to have any trouble with changing <\/span>her<\/span><\/i> last name, just mine even though the name was a \u201cpart of <\/span>her<\/span><\/i> identity\u201d for even longer.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The compromise that they made was, when I was officially adopted, my last name would change to my Dad\u2019s, and Laley would become part of my middle name. My Mom dropped the \u201cLaley\u201d in her name entirely. I am the only one that still has both of the family names, almost as if the second name is a \u201cstep, adoptive, or surrogate\u201d declaring me as separate and \u201cother\u201d, but not necessarily in a bad way. Names are one way of telling who we \u201cbelong\u201d with, and I appreciate that I do not belong with only one or the other part of the family, but with both.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Every so often, my Grandma asks me if I still use the Laley in my name. She asks casually enough, but I can sense the undercurrent of anxiety in the question. It\u2019s a bit ironic that she feels this worry that I\u2019ll drop her last name, (a name that wasn\u2019t her\u2019s to begin with as it was given to her by her husband) when neither of my sisters have the name and she doesn\u2019t feel the same fear. She is my biological grandmother on my mother\u2019s side, so by legal <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> societal standards she has the most claim to be considered my grandma. I wonder if the fear comes from the fact that I got to choose to replace parts of my family. My sisters both stuck with the family that they were born into, claiming both of their DNA givers as their parents as well, but I got to pick someone else to be my \u201cdad\u2019s side\u201d of the family. Since I got to choose, maybe she thinks that I could choose to replace her as well. Maybe she\u2019s just as afraid as I am that someone that she considered family might one day decide that she doesn\u2019t belong in their family any more.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think that we\u2019re all at least a little bit terrified that people will decide that they don\u2019t want to claim us. The power to choose or not choose who we consider to be our family can be wonderful, but it also opens us up to being chosen or not chosen ourselves. We can pretend all that we want that we\u2019re confident in our place in people\u2019s lives, but on the inside most of us are terrified children, just wanting to be chosen and hiding from the very real fear that sometimes we won\u2019t be.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kara DiFilippo When people hear \u201cadoption\u201d, they get this idea in their head that it only happens to orphans or kids who were abandoned. The funniest response I ever got to someone hearing that I\u2019m adopted came from one of my 2nd grade classmates, because her way of making sense of the situation was to Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-182","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions\/186"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}