meet me, neither of them sleeping for more than a few minutes here and there, even though they knew it was the last good rest they’d have for a while. In the meantime, they discussed baby names, my mother lobbying hard for her maiden name, Kirby. We have to see her first, my dad insisted. I had to look like a Kirby—whatever that was.
My dad typically picks up the story from there, telling me how he cut himself shaving, his hands shaking so much that he almost let my mother drive to the hospital, something he never does because she sucks so badly at it. Then he skips ahead to the papers they hurriedly signed, and the moment the lady from the agency returned with a baby— me —swaddled in a pink fleece blanket.
“Meet your daughter,” the lady said as she handed me to my parents. “Dear one, meet Lynn and Art Rose. Your parents.”
It has always been my favorite part of the story. The first time they held me, gazed down at my face, felt the warmth of my body against their chests.
“She has your nose,” my dad joked, and then declared me a Kirby.
It was the moment, they said, when we became a family. They said it felt like an absolute miracle, not unlike the moment they met Charlotte, my little sister who was conceived by complete surprise shortly after they adopted me. The only difference, my mother was fond of saying, was that she wasn’t in any pain when she met me. That came later.
Growing up, I heard the story a million times, along with all the sentimental quotes about adoption, like the one framed in my bedroom for years: “Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but somehow miraculously still my own. Never forget for a single minute, you didn’t grow under my heart but in it.” I knew which celebrities had adopted babies, and more important, who had been adopted themselves: Steve Jobs, two presidents, including Bill Clinton (who was in the White House when I was born), two first ladies, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (who happened to also be married—how cool is that ?), Darryl McDaniels from Run-DMC and, as my mother sometimes pointed out, Moses and Jesus.
Yet despite my full understanding of my adoption, I didn’t give much thought to my birth mother, and even less to my birth father. It was as if they were both bit players in the whole drama, completely beside the point but for their necessary contribution of a little DNA. And I certainly never felt rejected because they had given me up. My parents knew nothing about my birth mother, yet always explained with certainty that she didn’t “give me up” or “give me away”—she made a plan for me, the best one she could make under her circumstances, whatever those were. Looking back, I think they were probably just following the advice of some adoption book, but at the time I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. If anything, I felt sorry for her, believing that I was her loss; she wasn’t mine.
In fact, the first time I really wondered about her with anything more than a passing curiosity was in the fifth grade when we researched our family ancestry in social studies. I did my report on Ireland, like many of the kids in my class, explaining that my father’s people came from Galway, my mother’s from Cork. Of course, I understood that they weren’t really my bloodlines or my ancestors—and I made no bones about that fact in my report. Most everyone knew I was adopted, as I’d been in the same school since kindergarten, and it was no big deal, simply one of those bits of trivia, like being double-jointed or having an identical twin.
So I matter-of-factly informed the class that I knew nothing about my birth mother except that she was from Chicago. I didn’t know her name, and we had never seen a photo of her, but based on my blond hair and blue eyes, I guessed that she was Scandinavian—then narrowed it to Danish, maybe because I have a sweet tooth and liked the sound of it. My classmates seemed satisfied with this theory, except for
My dad typically picks up the story from there, telling me how he cut himself shaving, his hands shaking so much that he almost let my mother drive to the hospital, something he never does because she sucks so badly at it. Then he skips ahead to the papers they hurriedly signed, and the moment the lady from the agency returned with a baby— me —swaddled in a pink fleece blanket.
“Meet your daughter,” the lady said as she handed me to my parents. “Dear one, meet Lynn and Art Rose. Your parents.”
It has always been my favorite part of the story. The first time they held me, gazed down at my face, felt the warmth of my body against their chests.
“She has your nose,” my dad joked, and then declared me a Kirby.
It was the moment, they said, when we became a family. They said it felt like an absolute miracle, not unlike the moment they met Charlotte, my little sister who was conceived by complete surprise shortly after they adopted me. The only difference, my mother was fond of saying, was that she wasn’t in any pain when she met me. That came later.
Growing up, I heard the story a million times, along with all the sentimental quotes about adoption, like the one framed in my bedroom for years: “Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but somehow miraculously still my own. Never forget for a single minute, you didn’t grow under my heart but in it.” I knew which celebrities had adopted babies, and more important, who had been adopted themselves: Steve Jobs, two presidents, including Bill Clinton (who was in the White House when I was born), two first ladies, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (who happened to also be married—how cool is that ?), Darryl McDaniels from Run-DMC and, as my mother sometimes pointed out, Moses and Jesus.
Yet despite my full understanding of my adoption, I didn’t give much thought to my birth mother, and even less to my birth father. It was as if they were both bit players in the whole drama, completely beside the point but for their necessary contribution of a little DNA. And I certainly never felt rejected because they had given me up. My parents knew nothing about my birth mother, yet always explained with certainty that she didn’t “give me up” or “give me away”—she made a plan for me, the best one she could make under her circumstances, whatever those were. Looking back, I think they were probably just following the advice of some adoption book, but at the time I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. If anything, I felt sorry for her, believing that I was her loss; she wasn’t mine.
In fact, the first time I really wondered about her with anything more than a passing curiosity was in the fifth grade when we researched our family ancestry in social studies. I did my report on Ireland, like many of the kids in my class, explaining that my father’s people came from Galway, my mother’s from Cork. Of course, I understood that they weren’t really my bloodlines or my ancestors—and I made no bones about that fact in my report. Most everyone knew I was adopted, as I’d been in the same school since kindergarten, and it was no big deal, simply one of those bits of trivia, like being double-jointed or having an identical twin.
So I matter-of-factly informed the class that I knew nothing about my birth mother except that she was from Chicago. I didn’t know her name, and we had never seen a photo of her, but based on my blond hair and blue eyes, I guessed that she was Scandinavian—then narrowed it to Danish, maybe because I have a sweet tooth and liked the sound of it. My classmates seemed satisfied with this theory, except for
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