I don't know my biological father. That could have had a huge impact on my life had it not been for the fact that my dad married my mom when I was one and raised me as his own.
My adoptive mother always wanted to meet my biological mother.
My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
My mother was born in Switzerland, my stepfather in Canada.
I wanted a baby of color, to be honest, because I wasn't attached to the idea that I look like the biological mother. I liked the idea of the adoption being clear; it was and is not something I am interested in hiding.
The so-called mother of the child isn't the child's begetter, but only a sort of nursing soil for the new-sown seed. The man, the one on top, is the true parent, while she, a stranger, foster's a stranger's sprout.
Because you give birth, because you impregnate someone, that does not automatically give you that title of mother or father. You earn the title.
As comfortable as I was with my adoption, the nature-versus-nurture question has been a big one for me. I adore my parents, but I always wondered if I would feel a different kind of love-not more or less, just different-for someone who was biologically related.
My kids don't call me 'Mom' because I don't want them to. They're Michael's children. It's not that they are not my children, but I had them because I wanted him to be a father.
