Personal Narrative: My Childhood Memories Of Adoption

Of the few childhood memories I have kept, the one that especially affected me was to have a profound conclusion. When I was four months shy of turning five-years-old in 1965, my three brothers, two older and one younger, and I learned of our mother's pregnancy. I could not be happier by the news I was to become a big sister. There are no other memories about the months that followed until the night my brothers and I were huddled together on the couch in the living room listening to our parents arguing in the back bedroom. The anger was frightening and we children stayed silent.

My mother began to scream, I got up from the couch to look and saw my mom run down the hallway as my father chased her with a knife, yelling, "get the hell out!"

Shocked, by the implausibility of the idea, I turned to the next page. Unable to believe what I was reading, I doubled checked the specifics to be sure this was my mother's case file. Once confirmed, I took the file to my desk and sat down to continue reading a story that at its conclusion left me dumbfounded.

Like reading a horror novel, the full story unfolded beyond the adoption of my sister. For reasons not told in the report, my mother also surrendered my brothers and me for adoption. My brothers went to one foster home and I to another, but my mother changed her mind the following week, and we returned to her custody. In that I have no memories around these events, I assume the experience was traumatic.

I do not remember leaving my apartment and driving to my parent's home to expose the lifelong lie they kept from me. Nervously, I approached my father who was in the kitchen. After I explained how I found the case file, his response was, "you need to ask your mother about that." Fearful of this woman, I cannot remember anything about the conversation with my mother. There was no way I was going to let on I knew about her putting my brothers and me into foster care with the intention of getting rid of us for