I am not able to see my grandchildren often. One lives in Los Angeles, the other in Brazil. Yet I feel a strong bond and a deep excitement when I am with them.
My friend Joe told me an interesting story a while ago. He had received a letter from an old girlfriend, telling him, first, to be sure to sit down when reading it, and second, that he would probably be hearing from a seventeen year old boy who was actually his son. Eighteen years before she had become pregnant and not told my friend. Their relationship was over. She gave the child up for adoption.
When Joe did hear from his son, he decided to go visit. Apparently the child had been adopted into a good, kind family, with many advantages and loving support. The adoptive parents had kept three photo albums, one for themselves, one for the birth mother and one for the birth father, preparing themselves for the time when their son would want to meet his birth parents.
There were many similarities between Joe and his son. Both were excellent at math, the son was about to go to the same university that Joe had, and when seeing the two of them sitting next to each other on the couch, the adoptive parents said it was easy to see who the father was. Even though they had never met before, they had similar mannerisms.
The fascinating part of the story is that when the newly acquainted father and son were alone together, the son could talk to Joe about things that he could never tell his adoptive parents. And these “things” were very similar to what Joe had experienced in his life: an interest in drugs, jazz, an underlying rebellion against his middle-class upbringing.
The ties that bind run deep.
Posted by leya at January 26, 2004 08:21 AM