Does She Remember?

My birthday is coming up soon and I wonder now as I do every year: does my mother remember my birthday? I've watched The Locator with Troy Dunn since its' inception. It never ceases to amaze me the number of mothers looking for children they gave up for adoption and they can't give the actual birth date. What! One of the most important days and perhaps the most traumatic incident in your life and you can't remember what day it was? I don't understand, but some days I don't even understand the whole concept of adoption. How a mother can just give her baby away to strangers. People she knows nothing about. Thank God we now have open adoptions. But even with that, how much can the birth mother really learn about the family she is giving her baby to. The adoptive parents have put on their best game faces in order to get that baby. What's behind the mask?

My adoptive parents used to always say "you were chosen." I guess that was supposed to make me feel better. But as I grew older, the visual it gave me was tantamount to looking for an animal in a pet store window. Not exactly an image I like to think about. And what I learned later during my research about adoption was that when a birth mother tells the authorities she wants to relinquish her baby, that baby is then placed in a separate room away from the other babies in the hospital nursery. Isolated. And that about sums up how adoption can make you feel some days. Isolated. A secret. Something to be hidden. Unseen.

So does my mother remember? Does she remember my birth date? Has she tried to find me? Did she love me enough to give me away hoping for a better life for me? Or was she selfish in her decision? Would I have been a burden to her? Would I have ruined her image? I have so many questions. I wonder if I will find her while she can still answer.

Maybe I'm just a sleigh ride away from finding myself.