Glimpses
A guest blog for the LGBTQIA+ and Adopted series by Diane D’Angelo
il•le•git•i•mate, adj. Being against established or accepted rules and standards.
I’m sitting on the front porch with my adoptive mother when the mail arrives. We go through the envelopes, sorting bills from the rest. I ask my mother why one letter is addressed to “Mrs. Raymond D’Angelo” instead of her first name. She shoots me a look: “Because that’s the way things are, Diane.”
I am just 6 but I know from her tone I’ve said something wrong.
“Childhood gender nonconformity appears to [correlate] substantially with sexual orientation.” - “Gender Nonconformance, Intelligence and Sexual Orientation,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2010.
Age 10: I’m in the back seat of our sky-blue Mercury. My dad tells my mom, “I heard two nurses at Kingman General went overseas and got married.” They chuckle. I pipe up: “What’s wrong with that?” My parents share a knowing glance, my mother’s lips pursed. “It isn’t right, Diane!” By this time, she’s cut my hair very short because my Italian curls get matted, and she doesn’t know how to manage them. People have begun to mistake me for a boy. It hurts, as does my parents’ threats to send me to charm school to become more “ladylike.”
Age 15: My mom is dragging me to yet another wedding shower where the old women will stand in a circle, point at me, make comments in Italian, and laugh. I feel the shame, humiliation, and my mother’s obvious disappointment (buyer’s remorse?) grab at my throat.
“Why do I have to go to these things?” I ask. “Scott never has to go!” She glares at me: “So when you get engaged, they’ll come to your shower. I’m doing this for you!”
I think about telling her not to bother, as the idea of walking down the aisle in a Catholic church with everyone staring at me is just about my worst nightmare, but by now, I know better. I have begun to shrink my soul.
***
Age 32: I’m working as a counselor for kids in foster care. Unlike other therapists, I find it easy to establish rapport with this population, but don’t know why. After all, I had such a good childhood with my adoptive parents. At least, that’s what I grew up hearing. I was chosen.
I open a new file. It’s for a 12-year-old girl who keeps “failing” potential adoptive placements. I read through it. Unlike most of her peers, this girl is an all-A student. She runs track and is well-behaved. It makes no sense.
I go to the home of the Christian foster family where she’s living and talk to the foster mom. She gives vague reasons as to why she and her husband are returning the girl. She shows me a family picture, perhaps as a bit of proof that they are good people. In it, Mom and her own daughter are dressed in frills and bows. I enter the foster daughter’s room. The reason for the rejection, although it’s never spoken out loud, is clear: This girl – smart, engaging, kind, but dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt – is just not quite right.
I’ve already been disowned by my now-widowed mother. She meets me at a diner a few days after running out of the therapy session during which I came out. As the waitress refills our iced teas, Mom rages about what a horrible, sinful person I am – a pervert. She pushes a check for a grand across the table and tells me to go away. My body goes numb. My brain loses its higher functions – an all-too-familiar phenomenon that renders me silent, unable to counter her attack.
Age 37: In an effort to heal the gaping emotional chasm that has become an all-too-familiar companion, and at the suggestion of my therapist, I travel back to the Midwest to meet my first mother, a woman who gave birth to me in secrecy and shame – the typical Baby Scoop Era scenario. In an emotional gusher of reunion, we establish all the obvious genetic similarities. Yet I tremble inside, knowing that before any emotional investment, I’ll have to risk abandonment again by coming out to her.
We go for a walk down familiar tree-lined streets, and I tell her. She looks at me and says, “Well that’s from the abuse, right?” Not wanting to disrupt a rare encounter with maternal compassion, I swallow an objection to this stereotype and smile. She adds, “Don’t you worry. You’re with blood now. It won’t happen again.”
But it did, a few years later, when she didn’t show for a long-anticipated visit. Just didn’t show. My adoptive mother? I learn via an Internet search that she’d died in 2001. No one told me.
Feel-good adoption myths to the contrary, the illegitimacy of my very existence was a palpable, driving force long before I recognized it as such. My identity as a queer woman compounds that illegitimacy, I suspect. Regardless, making the choice to preserve my personal integrity, as difficult as that has been, is worth it.
I’ve found deep support among other adoptees. As we share our common experiences – the ones mainstream culture ignores in favor of fairy tales – I find the connections I’ve yearned for my whole life. And that is where the healing occurs.