Slow Scab: Adopted Kids Don’t Forget Being Left

A few weeks ago, a two year old girl was found alone at a McDonald’s on Milwaukee’s south side, no parents or relatives around; police were called and her picture was put up on the evening news.  Because she looked amazingly like our older son’s daughter, my husband decided, as he often does, to “mess with him.”  So Dad texted son.

Dad: How could you leave Alita at McDonald’s?

Son:  what are you talking about

Dad: Somebody left a kid that looks just like Alita at a McDonald’s in Bay View.

Son (responding within seconds):  Oh yeah i just heard about that this morning how could someone do that well guess my mom can 🙁 n joes and jhosys but whatever we are better off without them

Of course, right away I’m thinking he’s talking about me.  As if I would leave him anywhere….but immediately realize he’s talking about his birth mother who did, in fact, leave him when he was six months old.  She left him in a hospital, in good care, and, I believe, because she felt she had no other option.  This is what we were told.  This is what we told him.  We also know that his picture was printed in La Prensa, the Nicaraguan national newspaper at the time, asking people to come forward with information about his parents.

No one stepped forward.  He was placed in an orphanage.  We adopted him nearly a year later.

He was a boy adored by the orphanage staff.  He was tended and worried over.  The Nicaraguan government expedited his adoption so he could receive good medical care in the U.S.  The Nicaraguan women who worked in the orphanage held him and cared for him.  I know this because I met people years later who remembered caring for him in the orphanage; their faces would soften and crease into smiles talking about Nelson Bravo, the beautiful boy.

What did this little episode teach me about adopted people — even 26 year old, self-sufficient adult adopted people?  Scratch them and it’s there.  It doesn’t get resolved.  It doesn’t get explained.  It forms a slow, sketchy scab that can catch in anything — a song, a phrase, a text message — and rip off.

We adoptive parents – with all our books and conferences and support groups – think we know.  But we don’t know.

But I’m really glad I got told.

BTW, use of the text message was ok’d by the sender. 🙂

Oh….and his Dad’s response:  Well, U r still my boy.  And u still owe me money.