Don’t Forget to Call Your Mom

Perhaps it is the company I keep, but most of the parents I know consider the word “parent” a verb instead of a noun. I chose to adopt waiting children who were in need of permanent, safe, and loving homes. My peers are families who have adopted older, hard to place and institutionalized children. Marissa entered my home as a child who had already been hurt by life. She was eager to attach and to please other people, but her attachments were superficial. She would walk up to a stranger, grab their hand and ask them to escort her to the bathroom. It didn’t take me long to realize that my dreams of what it would mean to be a mother needed to be replaced with the reality of parenting a child who was exposed prenatally to drugs and alcohol.

Marissa’s mom lost physical custody of Marissa when Marissa was still a toddler. Marissa was “cared for” by the state’s foster care system for the next four years. During that time, Marissa experienced six different placements. Can you believe six new homes, six new moms, a myriad of brothers and sisters in only four years? Marissa used to tell people she had twenty-four brothers and sisters. Of course, everyone thought she was lying; she wasn’t. Every child who shared a home with her became her sibling. Children who have had disrupted childhoods want more than anything to appear “normal” to their peers. In “normal” families, there is a mom and dad, brothers and sisters. Marissa called me, “Hey you,” for less than a week before she started calling me mom. Friends at school would ask her, “Is that your mom?” Neighborhood parents would tell her, “Ask your mom,” Marissa followed suit. She called me mom. It was much easier than explaining who I was. She had called all of her previous foster mothers mom too.

I love Marissa. I have legally and permanently accepted the responsibility to parent her. I have made sure that, if something happened to Ron or I, Marissa would have the same legal rights and privileges a child born to us would have. She can inherit from us. She is entitled to survivor benefits. Marissa will never again be institutionalized because she is a minor and doesn’t have a safe, loving home. She will not chronologically “age out” and be on her own before she is ready emotionally. As long as I am alive, she will always have a safety net and somewhere to go on holidays. I am her mom; however, I share that honor with another woman. The woman who gave birth to her, raised her for the first several years of her life and loves her still today — Marissa’s mom.

When you are part of a family formed by adoption, total strangers seem to have some weird, twisted idea that your family is now their business. “How could a mother give a child away?” “How could a mother drink alcohol and use drugs while she was pregnant?” Or, the worst, “Marissa is so lucky.” It simply is not my job to educate every person about adoption at my child’s expense. So, when I am faced with these responses in real life, particularly in my child’s presence, I normally try to say something that affirms Marissa’s inherent value and communicates that it is I who am lucky.

When I think of Marissa’s mom, I think of what Marissa’s future might have held. Marissa’s mom was exposed to drugs and alcohol prenatally. Marissa’s grandmother, her mom’s mom, has a history of depression and was taking physician prescribed amphetamines throughout her entire pregnancy. She drank throughout her pregnancy too. Her obstetrician told her she could as long as she didn’t over do it. (Dangerous advise that is passed along by some physicians even today.) Marissa’s grandmother told me, “I never drank like [mom's name].” She didn’t get drunk. But she had wine with dinner and an occasional martini with her friends. Marissa’s mom’s school experience was marred by problems and suspension. She dropped out and never graduated from high school. She was considered immature. She describes her early years as “like a nightmare.” Her IQ is borderline. She has never been able to keep a job. Not long after she lost custody of Marissa, she was declared incompetent, appointed a guardian. Her only income is Supplemental Security Income (SSI). I am sure that she has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder too. Unlike Marissa, she is not diagnosed.

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, some adoption agencies, birth mothers and adoptive families celebrate and honor birth mothers. Our home does not. It’s founder intended the day to be honoring and affirming; it is neither. I do not want Marissa or society to imagine that all Marissa’s mom is is a woman who happened to give birth to her. She is much more important and significant than that. Marissa honor’s her mother on the second Sunday in May. “Hi, mom ~ Happy Mother’s Day!”